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On a game night in Los Angeles, the 10-year-old Boomtown Brewery in the Arts District can host 500 fans just five minutes away from the Dodger Stadium Shuttle at Union Station.
With the Dodgers hosting the San Francisco Giants for the tournament over the weekend, you might expect a spongy brew hall with a massive projection screen to be packed with drinks.
However, the only long line since Tuesday was a stretch of unused parking meters that formed a boundary around the brewery.
That’s because the 8pm to 6am doors imposed on downtown Los Angeles after several days of immigration enforcement turned the nightlife hub into a practical ghost town.
Now, instead of customers who blow their favorite songs off at karaoke on Friday, the facility is closed while city officials prepare on Saturday for widespread protests against Trump administration policies.
The curfew covers locations where Chinatown, Skid Row and Fashion and Arts District merge from 5 expressways to 110 and 5 expressways to 10 expressways.
In addition to area bars and restaurants, civic institutions and arts organizations are also influenced. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Soul Festival cancelled its final performance on Tuesday, while the Mark Taper Forum cancelled its Hamlet production on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Chris Dombos, left, Sarah Carmeen enjoys a bit of beer and solitude at Boomtown Brewery in the Arts District on Wednesday. The brewery is located within a curfew zone established by the city of Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The Center Theater Group released an update on Wednesday that it was exempt from the mayor’s office. Saturdays will not be counted and will not be closed for demonstrations of the so-called “king.”
The iconic Angels Flight is a sexual cable car that was over 100 years old and travels its final service from 10pm to 8pm until the curfew ends.
Inside Boomtown, marketing manager Nick Gingold was pleased to see a gathering of about 20 regulars that stopped by 6pm on Wednesday.
The brewery noticed a curfew via social media and a televised announcement by the Bus Mayor
“As far as I know, I don’t think we actually received official notices from the city,” Gingold said.
The mayor’s office did not answer questions about whether it provided curfew notices.
The brewery has revised its closing time to 7:30pm. That means we closed for two and a half hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. The same early closure bell cut the brewery’s operational time in half on Thursday, leaving only half the half of the 11-hour period scheduled for business on Friday.
Gingold said the closure would stab Boomtown, but he didn’t want to speculate about the loss of revenue.
Boomtown doesn’t just change the time.
Angel City Brewery, located in the Arts District, has revised its schedule for the usual 4pm to midnight weekday nights. The brewery opened at 1pm on Thursdays but closed at 7pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Chinatown’s Melody Lounge went a step further, and announced on Instagram that it was temporarily closing its doors during the curfew period.
“For Los Angeles, there’s been a pandemic, a closure, a film industry strike, and now this has been roughly spent,” Gingold said. “Let me be clear, we’re supporting the Latino community during this time and standing with them.”
Boomtown posted on Instagram on Tuesday. This promised to remain open as long as it is “safe” to serve as a place for community gatherings.
“We celebrate diversity, reject divisiveness, celebrate immigration, reject hate, support our neighbors,” one post said.
Chris Dombos, a special effects artist who lives in the Arts District, thanked the brewery for solidarity and found his way to Boomtown.
“This is an era of rising fascism, where cities like Los Angeles, built by immigrants, are under attack and need allies,” said Dombos, 44, who observed some of the protests.
The 44-year-old Dombos described the curfew as a political stunt and called on the mayor’s office to investigate “brutal tactics” by Los Angeles police officers. He said the constant overpasses by authorities “fear” the neighborhood.
Having enjoyed a light draft in Boomtown, Sarah Calmeen lamented the lack of hints and time from industrial workers.
“These are people who really lose out on curfews,” she said. “They rely on that money to pay their bills.”
Chef Genevieve Gergis, owner of Bestia and Bavel, acclaimed restaurants in the Arts District, criticised the city’s leaders, calling the curfew a “broad and vague overreach.”
She said neither restaurant was anything but protests, and only heard of curfews from television.
“The lack of guidance for small businesses and people working in the area is missing from this blanket policy,” she wrote in an email. “This sudden, unknown behavior feels like it was enacted without attention or consideration.”
Mina Park, co-owner and chef of Baroo, Los Angeles Times 2024 Restaurant of the Year, said it closed modern-day Korean eateries on Wednesday in the wake of a curfew and is still trying to plan what to do.
“There are a lot of cancellations and concerns due to protests and curfews,” she said. “It’s difficult to run a business with this uncertainty.”
Park said she probably needed to throw away her fresh food, but she didn’t feel like she could even complain about it.
“The fact that you have to close for a few days isn’t a comparison to what so many families are experiencing,” she said of the ice attack. “It’s really hard to see what’s going on in the community.”
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