When Kyle Wilkerson was gutting the inside of the brand new Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena, he discovered reminders of the lady who first made it lovely 100 years in the past.
“Lucile Lloyd was a outstanding [Works Progress Administration] muralist; she did work all among the many faculties on this space,” stated live performance promoter Wilkerson. “There are photographs of her in menswear smoking up within the rafters again within the Nineteen Thirties. She had a tragic life, and ended up committing suicide. We thought the entire panels she did right here had been gone.”
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“However then proper earlier than Christmas,” he continued, “one of many ceiling panels had began cracking. I regarded up and I used to be like, ‘They’re nonetheless there.’ The sunshine was nonetheless shining in.”
Just a few attractive floral stencils, small sculptures and a stained glass window stay from Lloyd’s work within the auditorium of the previous South Pasadena elementary faculty, which closed to college students in 1979. However she was a muse for the staff at Sid the Cat, an impartial live performance promoter which has placed on exhibits throughout L.A. for over a decade. It’ll lastly have the rambling, meticulously restored historic venue of its goals opening this fall.
Lower than a 12 months after the Eaton hearth destroyed Altadena, a close-by neighborhood beloved by generations of musicians, the 500-capacity venue is an indication of latest life returning to the realm’s arts scene.
“The very first thing we considered when the fires occurred was ‘What can we do to assist?’ The second was ‘I want we had been open already, as a result of we may have performed meals drives and exhibits to lift funds,’” Wilkerson stated. “It’s a really fragile little ecosystem that we’re part of right here.”
Sid the Cat promoters Brandon Gonzalez, from left, Sean Newman and Kyle Wilkerson onstage on the Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Occasions)
Earlier than the pandemic, Sid the Cat — a staff of promoters together with Wilkerson, Brandon Gonzalez and Sean Newman — thought they’d discovered their dwelling venue on the Bootleg Theater on the southern fringe of Echo Park and Historic Filipinotown. That nightclub was beloved by locals, however closed in 2021 through the apocalypse that COVID-19 wreaked on impartial venues. (The area is now 2220 Arts + Archives).
“We beloved the Bootleg, but it surely was DIY from the start,” Gonzalez stated. “We did the very best we may with the instruments and the sources we had.”
They stored a packed calendar of one-off exhibits at venues just like the Highland Park Ebell Membership, Zebulon and even the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. Acts like Khruangbin, Shiny Eyes, Moist Leg, Jackson Browne and Fiona Apple have performed their live shows, but it surely was exhausting managing and rebuilding new live performance setups night time after night time. “Typically I felt like an ice cream store proprietor,” Wilkerson stated. “I’d go to the artist and be like, ‘What taste would you like? You need a seated venue? You need this aspect of city?’ We beloved having choices, however we actually needed a beautiful-sounding room of our personal.”
In 2022, after they scouted an estimated 150 rooms from the deep Westside to the San Gabriel Valley, they discovered the South Pasadena Elementary College, which was deliberate for adaptive reuse right into a eating and nightlife vacation spot in downtown South Pasadena. (Sid’s neighbors within the area will embrace Villa’s Tacos, District Brewing Co. and coffeeshop the Boy and the Bear).
Simply steps from the A Line, and boasting a breezeway entrance with a indifferent bar, ample loos and a big out of doors patio and parking zone, the area was distinctive for its facilities and historical past, proper within the middle of a San Gabriel Valley neighborhood already adored by working artists (Phoebe Bridgers, who performed a lot of her early exhibits for Sid the Cat, grew up close by).
The bodily construction of a former faculty turned out to be distinctly helpful for a venue — artists and street crew will thrill to a washer and dryer within the inexperienced room and a truck-loading dock that connects on to the rear of the stage.
The pathway resulting in the Sid the Cat Auditorium from the bar area of the venue in South Pasadena.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Occasions)
“It has such nice bones that we will sort of step away and let it do its factor,” Wilkerson stated. “It brings out a unique stage of artistry to place acts in a novel setting that has character and historical past. In the event you do that for so long as us, you hear the horror tales on the street, and an area like this stands out in your tour. It has the whole lot you want in a really walkable neighborhood.”
The staff stated they didn’t tackle any traders or accomplice promoters to fund the venue, and paid for the lease and the development themselves from a mixture of ticketing contracts, financial savings from present income and a GoFundMe.
“There’s no monetary backers. We’re not belief fund youngsters and we don’t have a bunch of actual property properties making a living that means,” Wilkerson stated. “It’s actually each dime we’ve ever labored for, and that’s scary.”
The nerve to threat all of it on restoring a historic — and all-ages — venue impressed Shannon Lay, an L.A. singer-songwriter whose tasks have frequented Sid the Cat venues over time.
“Promoters have a very distinctive function within the music scene. They’re the curators, the trusted supply,” Lay stated. “I discovered the opposite night time that the venue is fully self-funded and it sort of blew my thoughts. I figured there needed to be an investor of some variety, but it surely’s these unbelievable folks and the group coming collectively to make it occur.”
“It’s necessary for folks to contemplate that exhibits are sacred, particularly within the U.S. the place monetary help is scarce,” she added. “It’s a labor of affection. We develop into our personal security web, and we make it work as a result of we want it.”
A dusty glass panel with “Sid the Cat” wording and a scribble of a cat on the South Pasadena music venue.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Occasions)
For musicians and everybody in northeast L.A., the necessity for a group security web grew to become terrifyingly clear through the Eaton hearth in January. That catastrophe, together with the Palisades hearth, displaced two distinct communities with deep roots within the music trade.
Whereas high-profile fundraisers like FireAid and teams like MusiCares have steered hundreds of thousands to affected communities, all of the bigger financial forces which might be crushing native artists are nonetheless compounding. And as violent ICE raids and a battering ram of tense political information put on down many Angelenos, the musicians and audiences that maintain a neighborhood cultural scene vibrant are questioning if there’s a future for them in L.A.
“It’s arduous to persuade folks to come back out of their home and purchase a ticket,” Wilkerson stated. “Live performance tickets have gone up in worth, like the whole lot else. We’ve constructed a group that folks belief, however there are nights that bomb, and we surprise why however more often than not it has nothing do with the artwork. There are different issues taking place on the planet, or the economic system’s tanking. It’s a troublesome query to reply.”
Having a brand new, superbly restored venue to carry out and congregate in may sway followers’ and artists’ choices only a bit.
“With the present administration, the fires after which the ICE raids, generally I simply need to coil up in a ball and simply be away,” Gonzalez stated. “However we’ve realized a variety of our group need to be collectively. We posted in regards to the ICE raids and other people had been like, ‘How will you nonetheless do exhibits?’ Properly, we actually imagine that folks will be impressed to make change by the artists that come by the rooms. There’s a variety of energy in that and it offers us the desire to maneuver ahead although it’s a troublesome time.”
A sculpture by American artist Lucile Lloyd is at one nook of the Sid the Cat stage.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Occasions)
Whereas Sid the Cat Auditorium hasn’t set its actual opening date, nor booked its lineup of exhibits, the staff estimates building is about 85% completed. With the blessing of South Pasadena metropolis authorities and native neighbors, they’re hopeful they’ll keep away from last-minute allow snags or delays, at the same time as prices for building and labor for a historic constructing have skyrocketed post-fires and post-tariffs. South Pasadena Mayor Janet Braun stated she’s “very excited” in regards to the new venue, calling it “a superbly renovated historic area with a twenty first century sound system and facilities.”
Discovering these misplaced panels from Lloyd was proof sufficient to imagine that, even after tragedy and years of rebuilding, there’s nonetheless magnificence value sifting by the ashes for.
“Folks got here out after the fires to our exhibits and informed us, ‘I’m so pleased to be out and neglect slightly bit about what simply occurred to our metropolis,’” Wilkerson stated. “We’re that escape for lots of people, they usually have these 4 hours the place they will get away from all that, benefit from the music and lower unfastened. It’s such a privilege and we don’t take it with no consideration.”
