John S.
Yelp
I saw Regina Spektor perform here amid all kinds of familial nostalgia, some of which wasn't even my own nostalgia but which I knew, somehow, was nostalgic, so when I brought it up with my dad afterward, he remembered a radio jingle from the 1940s that he probably hadn't thought about since the 1950s, at the very latest.
But back to the concert. This was really the makeup concert for when I saw Regina Spektor perform at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley in April 2017 amid a downpour. The weather that night worsened as the show progressed, and it got so windy that they decided to end the concert rather than risk the performers' safety. Regina was on board with that decision, but she felt rather bad about ending the concert abruptly, so she came out and performed a couple of songs solo, kind of a closure-inspiring pseudo-encore. I have always liked Regina, but that night really made me love her in three of the four Greek ways. She's a true mensch, and although she didn't technically owe me a concert, I felt like I technically owed myself a concert. Sadly but actually happily, the next time she came around was on a day I would be out of town, but it also fell on my mom's birthday and a few weeks after my sister's, so I got them tickets to see her in Anaheim.
But back to the concert. Finally! Getting to reward myself for my patience. I came with my sis, who is a true concert-going companion and has been to me since I was a freshman in college and she took me to all these shows! She's like the sister in the Juliana Hatfield Three song "My Sister," except that whereas the younger sibling in that song has a love-hate relationship with her older sister, I only love my sister, even when she's being difficult, because (a) that's very rare and (b) my being-difficult ratio to hers is about 127:1.
But back to the concert. What a lovely venue! It's a restored movie palace, and I don't use that archaic term lightly or just because I'm some seventh grader who learned how to use a thesaurus. No, Ace Hotel's theater was one of those (then) lavish theaters where Hollywood blockbusters premiered back in the day. L.A.'s Broadway was never quite like New York's, but it was the site of lots of vaudeville acts and musical performances, but all of that ended a really long time ago, although my dad remembers seeing some acts on Broadway in the 1950s, when things had already gone quite a bit downhill.
But back to the concert. The lobby is really spectacular, and while its size and grandeur are kind of anticlimactic when compared with the theater itself, they've done a really good job of restoring all those ridiculous details from the original crazy craftsmanship. It's a pretty small theater, so even though we were sitting in one of the last rows, we had a perfect view. Regina was her normal playful and engaging self, and it was really neat that her set was pretty different from the interrupted one I had seen in Berkeley and even from the one my sister had seen just a bit before in Anaheim. It was one of those concerts that leaves you in a happy daze, and you might forget the walk back to your car, although I didn't because we almost got run over by an idiot who wasn't paying attention while we were in the crosswalk.
Back to the nostalgia. So when my sister and I were eating nearby on Broadway, I spied this really old-looking neon sign atop a building. I couldn't quite make out what it said, so I took a picture of it and zoomed in. Eastern Columbia. Hm. That sounded like some old film company that no longer existed. Why was its sign lit up? When I showed it to my dad, his eyes gleamed, and he instantly sang, in a very 1940s sing-songy way, "Eastern-Columbia, Broadway and 9th!" My dad is a big-time storyteller, so I've heard everything from his childhood at least 50 times, but he went on to talk about how that used to be the site of Eastern-Columbia Department Store, and they used to advertise on the radio with that jingle all the time.
Wow. Just wow. Thank you, The Theatre at Ace Hotel, for helping me enjoy some serious family time, even with someone who wasn't at the concert.