For the official day 2 of Byron’s visit (I’m not counting the days inbetween when I’m at work and in class all day) we started off hiking Runyon Canyon.  From there we headed to Micelli’s.

After downing that big pizza we headed to Amoeba Music.  From there we went to Little Tokyo and walked to city hall.  Earlier in the week I had called and asked when City Hall would have the observation deck open.  The woman had told me “it is 24 hours a day, so all the time!”  After walking all the way around the building and finding every door locked we walked across the street and asked the security guards at the other building what the deal was.  “oh yeah, it’s open 24 hours during the WEEK”  Great. 

We walked back down the other side of Little Tokyo, stopping momentarily to ponder a street closure for a Nissan commercial shoot and then headed home to prepare for the next step.

We planned to go to see Black Mountain at the Echoplex.  When we got to the Echoplex we found a line of people literally backing up around the block (under that bridge and beyond).  We decided since there was already a line we’d get something to eat at the nearby taco bell.  After waiting behind the Filipino crossdresser we had our ghetto tacos and walked back to the line.  After standing there for ten minutes (by the way – this is a full hour after the show was supposed to start anyway) an Echoplex employee went through the line and told everyone without tickets they had to get into the “other” line that was backing up the other way around the block.  After waiting in this reject line for a few minutes we knew our chances of getting in were slim.  I’ve never had to buy tickets for an Echoplex show before.   Live and learn I suppose.  We decided to head to nearby Spaceland for plan B.

When we arrived Sweater was finishing their anemic set.  If the hipsters weren’t bad enough when they started wearing their girlfriend’s pants, now they’ve sunk to a new low by bringing back flannel.  Byron coined this the “hipster lumberjack” look.  I expect he’ll be seeing a lot more of this when he goes to Seattle.

The headliner took the stage.  The Low Flying Owls were better than Sweater, but they suffered from Lead Singer disease.  It was kinda clear the rest of the band wanted to go in a more nu-metal direction, while the lead singer wanted to ape maroon 5.   Most of their songs would start off with a decent heavy riff, not from the guitar player but from a bass grunge pedal.  The drummer was doing his best impression of Animal, pounding the drums with a big open mouth, wiley red hair and scrungy beard.  He even had dark circles under his eyes.  Then the metrosexual posterboy in a horizontal striped shirt and hat who probably weighs less than I did at age 11 started crooning, vogueing and trying to “connect” with the audience.  There wasn’t much of an audience to connect with, probably the most “dead” I’ve seen Spaceland.  Most of the patrons were in the bar section, to which the singer kept reminding them “hey, the party is over here (in front of the stage), don’t be afraid, you’re invited.”  The hipster girls in the audience were doing some kind of strange mixture of 1950s “twist” dance and 1960s go-go jiggling.  At one point Byron mentioned the rule that there is always a section of the show floor reserved for white girls who can’t dance. 

The highlight of the show though had to be the Common impersinator.  This guy had Common’s look so completely copied I almost wanted to believe that Common was slumming it for the night and it was actually him.  However, when I saw him put his hand on a middle aged overweight white woman’s neck the jig was up.  Byron would later inform me that he saw the guy take his hat off in the light by the bar and discovered the guy wasn’t even black.

But, out on the floor he looked exactly like this (same beard and everything but with a white/pink sweater):

On the way back to the car Byron picked a rose off a nearby rosebush.

This would become a theme of the trip, and I’ve become accustomed to finding dead wilted flowers in my car in the morning.