(Credit: Julian Wells)
The MJ Higgins gallery recently moved from its original HQ at 4th and Main streets. Though the new location is still under renovation, it's open for business and gets paaaacked when there's an art walk in the area—perhaps because there's a speakeasy bar in the back. Shh, don’t tell!
For those who don't care to consume contemporary art and free booze—you might consider seeking some kind of help—there's Charlie O's next door. Swing by on a Friday or Saturday night and you'll be treated to one of L.A.'s finest pieces of live theater: Point Break Live!, where the part of Keanu Reeves is played by one lucky audience member picked from the crowd.
Charlie O's also hosts a handful of parties that draw an edgy crowd, from mustached men on Mustache Mondays to Echo Park scenesters in neon high-tops. Couples tend to get cozy in the big red booths, while the unattached congregate around the two pool tables behind the DJ. Once everyone is sufficiently boozed up, they take on the checkerboard dance floor. And you’ll usually see someone standing on a stool making adjustments to the extension cords hanging from the ceiling that fuel the makeshift DJ booth. (The owner tells us Charlie O's is getting renovated, but she's been saying that for months.) How to spot the newbies? They’re the ones losing their quarters in the pinball machine.
You could almost forget that this is a dive bar if it weren’t for the sheets of plywood crudely tacked up on one wall, or the crumbling concrete cylinders that are improbably holding up the ceiling. Whatever the case, the new Downtown crowd doesn’t seem to mind, and neither should you.
UPDATE: Mustache Mondays has moved to Club 740.
