June 14, 2008 – Losanjealous

7.01pm, June 12, Losanjealous, CA. DF careens through another tunnel, hopelessly lost in the city planning nightmare that is downtown LA. Desired destination: LA City Music Hall, and in particular, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, or REDCAT (get it? it’s an acronym) for the premiere of “Free Pegasus”, a film about skateboarding in Barcelona. It’s totally going to be like Dogtown & Z-Boys meets … um … Barcelona.

7.10pm. After countless trips through tunnels and down infuriatingly unhelpful one-way streets, an impromptu and unwelcome tour of Little Tokyo, and enough swearing to melt the tender hearts of a thousand Mormon babies, DF hangs a left, ascends a random upslant, and all of a sudden the music hall rises before him in the crepuscule, looming like an unthreatening alien spacecraft.

7.15pm. REDCAT is easy to find tonight; just follow the cortege of boarders along Grand Avenue and down Second Street. The crowd milling about is decked out in skater-casual. DF feels uneasy in his de rigeur tuxedo, and sidles up to the bar for a nerve-soothing beverage, whereupon he is informed that the drinks are on the house. No, bartender, there is no need to console me. These are tears of joy.

Last last Saturday, while most people were still recovering from their hangovers, my crew was travelin’ to the Manimal Festival in the low desert. I was a little worried, because when we neared Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, the horizon was burning like Mordor—big black plumes of smoke were flying out of Joshua Tree National Park, threatening to engulf us all in a fire like the one that ravaged this area two years ago.

But it was worth a little danger to be there. The Manimal Festival promised to have everything Coachella has—multiple stages, wildly different acts, desert heat, the faint smell of sage and horse poo wafting through the air—but no seven dollar Heinekens or need to buy a cheap plastic spray-mist bottle to avoid heat stroke. And while we expected a large crowd sprinkled liberally with familiar faces, we wouldn’t have to stand behind 50,000 people to see a band or wait in a three hour traffic jam just to get to the venue.

Actually, when we got to Pappy & Harriet’s, the crowd wasn’t all that big yet. I felt bad for the first band, Corridor, really just one guy who had a cello, guitar, and all these effects pedals and equipment up on stage. He sounded great, playing more intricate music with one member than most bands do with four, but the heat was his enemy: the two-dozen people who showed up early were all scrunched into the shady bar area on the right, trying to ward off instant melanoma from the blistering sun, so he kind of had to play with his neck craned to see the audience. Too bad, because the noise-drone experimentation he was doing perfectly matched the dusty haze of the hot sun beating down on those of us who sat up front. He started packing before we could snap a photo, but my photographer Amy Jo got one later of him, hanging out in a Chinook.