Earlier this month the LAPD shut down the Echo Curio in the middle of a room full of people singing “Happy Birthday” over a cake full of candles. This happened because Echo Curio didn’t have something called a “café entertainment license.”
I’ve never been to the Echo Curio, only ridden past on my bicycle, but as someone who was trying to harangue me into writing a letter of protest to the city council with a profoundly cogent argument in spite of his apparent high-level of drunkenness put it: “We need to support the kind of DIY venues that provide a space for people to share whatever it is that they are doing in a supportive environment, whether or not it is something that we are directly participating in.” Well… I hope all goes well for the space. Let the letter writing commence…. And I mean seriously, “café entertainment license”? What is this, fucking New York?
Speaking of Echo Park institutions, I have become addicted to the Brite Spot. I don’t know why. I mean, I do know why… it’s conveniently located, and open pretty late (or at least, used to be — they’ve changed their closing time from 4 am to 2:30 except for Friday’s and Saturdays. Sigh). But of course, what is it that brings me back? Dessert. Specifically, these peanut butter M&M cookies that I have like, I don’t know, 3 or 4 times a week. Plus the fruit pies are pretty great. The cherry apple pie they have all the time (except when I want it most they seem to inexplicably be out of it) is pretty solid, but what really makes me go in way too frequently is the hope that they’ll have a special fruit pie — the peach, apricot and honey pie, of which I had only one amazing slice — and now I go in several times a week, hoping against hope for a second.