Performance revues: h.wood, Palihouse and the Edison

(Credit: Jim Pease)

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If you read the NY Times review of h.wood, published on Feb. 21, 2009, you might never go. While it gives props to club’s celebrity draw, it essentially leaves an icky impression: it’s located in a former Burger King within a mall, the owners don’t pay their bills, and Cher parties here. While an amusing read, it doesn’t impart one very important detail—that h.wood, like Palihouse and the Edison, has emerged as an unexpected breeding ground for artists of all stripes.

Stop by h.wood on Thursdays for artist Samantha Magowan’s club night with Jillian Kate and DJ/designer duo Posso the DJ (née Marylouise Pels and Vanessa Giovacchini) and you’ll find a spectacle: hula hoop contortionists, magicians, double dutchers, tap dancers, fire twirlers and marching bands, not to mention visual artists, like geometric enthusiast Tofer Chin, hanging their pieces on the club's walls. 

Not surprisingly, the crowd’s just as entertaining. “People keep showing up with their most interesting friends,” Magowan says of the tarot card readers, spiritual healers and drag queens she's spotted mixing with fashionistas. “Someone even showed up in a rat costume a couple weeks ago.”

Nearby at Palihouse, variety also spices up the scene for Anthology Recordings’ Sunday Salons. (The event happens monthly, but there's no set schedule.) Artists showcase their paintings, photographs, illustrations and films on a projection screen along to a soundtrack of Anthology’s digital re-issues, many of them unheard tracks from the last three decades. “Fingered,” Ryan Heffington’s avant garde dance troupe, puts on a wild show too. (If you’ve seen him perform with Peaches, Fischerspooner and Ladytron, you already know it’s a sight to behold.) Combined with a smart, stylish crowd, Sunday Salons creates a convincing vibe: that there’s no better place to be in the whole city at that moment in time. The free Red Stripe doesn’t hurt.

Of course the Edison is no stranger to putting on a show. Even on an evening without burlesque dancers hanging from the rafters, the bar feels theatrical with its turn-of-the-century design and vested bartenders to match. On the last Tuesday of every month, however, the Edison transforms into "1920s Berlin," when arts and culture were the beating heart of the Weimar Republic. Care of a group of kooky performers, the night, called Radio Room, is pure fantasy from costumed actors interacting with the crowd (careful of the gentleman with the real snake around his neck) to the re-creation of that era's food: meat balls preserved in lemon and capers, house made veal and pork sausages, German potato pancakes. Culinary arts integrated into a variety show? Brilliant.

Alexandra Le Tellier is Bars & Clubs editor for Metromix Los Angeles.