Weekend Update

The first Saturday of each month there is an open house at the Artists District in downtown Santa Ana, and I've made it a point to go as often as possible over the last year and a half or so. There are galleries filling nearly every space -- galleries that open up to the fountain in the central plaza, galleries underground hidden around corners, galleries in apartments and up firescapes. Not all the art is good, but that hardly matters when there's so much of it to see. There are always plenty of people, mostly yuppies in blazers and art kids trying to look bohemian, and generally it's not hard to find plenty of free snacks and wine, too. I have a lot of great memories of ripping the night open with all sorts of old friends, many who either don't live here any more or don't plan to live here much longer.
But last night I didn't feel much like running around and soaking up as many galleries as possible. The galleries all change, but I already know which ones hip, which are banal, which are provocative, so some of the mystery is gone. I decided to scope out the outlying area instead. Santa Ana is something of a cultural war zone as the only urban center in Orange County -- there are Mexican street vendors, dozens of quincenera shops, and lots of rundown low-income housing, plus big glass government buildings, plus "cultural centers," plus new trendy artist-friendly apartments, ultra-modern, high-concept architecture firms, and all sorts of people trying to claim a piece of downtown real estate. Half the storefronts seem to be in transition -- just as many are closed down as are opening up.
After wandering a bit and ponderin' stuff, I bought a burrito and returned to the Village. Then these things happened:
-Hung out at The Abbey with people from Canvas, scoped the new show by Jay Summers which focuses mostly on found art with some ceramics and silkscreens of blues musicians thrown in for good measure. There was live blues music, too, which was raaaad.
-Went with Amy to see a free jazz concert down at the The Episcopal Church of the Messiah on Bush St, where we'd gone for Ash Wednesday. It's a cool old church, and I dig it a lot. Got there in time to see the final song and grab some of the last remaining refreshments. Amy said none of the musicians looked very happy to be there, but I imagine that this is because playing free jazz can be difficult. (Or something?) I asked them to play one more song, which they did, even though there were only about half a dozen people in the audience left at that point. I felt important!
-There was a big party going down at the Amoreviejo Art Gallery, which is in the old deco-gothic courthouse building, so we scoped that out. It was hip chaos. I wasn't sure what was going on, which obviously made it that much hipper. Lots of crowded hallways, and a good deejay. Left pretty quickly, but also grabbed a flyer for an upcoming exhibition that will feature signs made by beggars. Sounds cool. Too bad there's not really any examples of the signs themselves on the website.
-Went to Bill & Kathy's new apartment for cake + hangouts. They just moved into a complex across the street from the main plaza which seems to be partially under renovations and is laid out kind of unusually. Bill & Kathy are an older couple who moved to California about a year ago and have been trying to find a permanent place to stay for just as long. It was good to see them getting happily settled, and Kathy makes a good cake.

Because I am an old man, we went home around 10:30 p.m.