The Strokes Listening Party + A Good Dark Shadows Movie and the Best Ice Blended
Reality Awaits, the new album from The Strokes, comes out this Friday, July 24, and you can listen to the whole album with us at Club Underground that night. It’s time for another Strokes Nite at Underground and, this time, it’s a Reality Awaits listening party too. Doors are at 9:30 p.m. and album play starts at 9:45 p.m. Both rooms of Grand Star Jazz Club will be open, with Larry G. and I on the decks. Tickets are available now on Eventbrite and Dice. (And if you want to see my set list from last week’s edition of Underground, check it out here.)
I have more clubs, concerts and movie screening recommendations for L.A. too. If you want to check them out, head over to Beatique.
This Is the Dark Shadows Movie You Need to See
Next week, House of Dark Shadows is playing at the NoHo 7. It’s also streaming on YouTube. The movie is the first of two Dark Shadows feature films that were released in the 1970s and I highly recommend watching it if you’re into 1960s/70s gothic horror.
For a theatrical release, the Dark Shadows team could push the envelope in ways that they couldn’t on daytime television. Still, they don’t push it that far, even by 1970s standards. There’s definitely more gore, but it’s fairly tame. While House of Dark Shadows is nowhere near as horny as a Jean Rollin film, or even some of the Hammer Horror entries of this era, sex is implied a bit more than in the television show. (Dark Shadows is actually pretty chaste for a soap, but, then again, most of my knowledge of the genre is from the 1980s onward.)
What Dark Shadows has in common with European horror of the era is a super moth (that’s mod + goth for those of you unfamiliar with Y2K L.A. subcultures) atmosphere with Barnabas as the Keith Moon of vampires, running amok in a manor where opulence and decadence collide. The costumes are fantastic. It made me long for the days when you could actually find something like Carolyn Stoddard’s glittering Romeo & Juliet gown or Maggie’s lime green minidress in a thrift store.
The Best Ice Blended in L.A.
The ice blended cappuccino at Placita Cafe is the best brainfreeze-inducing drink I have ever sipped. It’s a caffeinated dessert, with a rolled wafer cookie popping out of the mountain of cinnamon-dusted whipped cream that tops it. Crucially, it’s properly blended, so you get the appropriate balance of textures and flavors all the way down to the bottom of the plastic cup.
I’ve tried a lot of ice blendeds, including the made-for-the-algorithm variety that influencers and self-proclaimed foodies seem to love. What I’ve learned, though, is that the prettier an ice blended is, the worse it tastes. In fact, a few of those more photogenic ice blendeds haves given me COVID anosmia flashbacks. Why is this so blah? I’ve wondered before realizing that all the flavor was in the first slurp, y’know, the one that influencers take as they mug for the camera, right before they push the drink aside and reach for the next freebie. With the Placita Cafe ice blended, though, the cinnamon hits my nose before I put the straw up to my mouth. With each sip, I feel the icy, creamy and liquid textures intermingle and taste the milk and espresso base.
Maybe you’ve had the ice blended cappuccino at Placita Cafe too. I’m going to bet, though, that most people have never even heard of the place. It’s a tiny restaurant right behind that notoriously expensive gas station on Cesar Chavez and Alameda that MAGA bots like to cite as the reason why California sucks. The place is always busy, but it also seats, maybe, eight people comfortably. Placita Cafe has a heaving menu, affordable prices, incredibly nice staff and some solid Yelp reviews, but not much in the way of mouth-watering videos, which seems to be all that matters in the 2020s. If you’re in the vicinity of Union Station, check it out. If you’re not, though, don’t worry about it. There’s probably a place by you that makes a damn good ice blended something or other.
This isn’t really a post about the best ice blended in Los Angeles, but I think that is a useful analogy for how the attention economy has changed the way we see the world.
That’s it for this week. If you need some tunes, listen to this month’s mix, or maybe stop by Underground on Friday night. Have a good weekend and hope to see you on the dance floor.
Liz O.