Cinespace: The Ultimate Hybrid Entertainment Venue
The future of entertainment reveals itself in a mesh of dining, viewing, listening, dancing, drinking, and more.
In our 21st century, it is only appropriate that, like our hybridized cars, cell phones and computers, restaurants, bars, and film houses would eventually mutate and meld. Hybrid entertainment venues are popping up in art capitals of the world where food, drink, celluloid, video, photography, art and all that is in-between becomes one. London has The Electric. New York has the Screening Room. San Francisco has Foreign Cinema. And more recently, Los Angeles, film capital of the world, has most recently joined the scene with the introduction of Cinespace.
Located on Hollywood Blvd, between Cahuenga and Ivar, Cinespace perches atop a thriving street-lighted L.A. However, decay and dilapidation are not a part of this newly renovated historic Hollywood building and its surrounding sidewalks. Here it is marbled, white, clean, sleek and reminiscent of the regal crossroads of downtown San Francisco or uptown New York City—a memory of the early glory of “new cosmopolitania”—the city of promise birthed from the southern Pacific Ocean.
Ascending one flight of stairs, the walls open up to an ultramodern and modular space, where interior design marries 1964 with 2000. Three main interlocking spaces comprise Cinespace. One is a patio/lounge with broad open windows that look out on Hollywood Blvd. through the second story greenery of mature city trees. The middle module is a long, low and spacious bar/lounge that breeds intimacy while warding off claustrophobia. The final space is the largest, housing the early evening hour restaurant and film venue.
We sit at an intimate table for two on what will become the raised dance floor for the late-hour band and DJ scene to come. The empty white screen waits beyond a hardwood-floored stage, seeming to anticipate our arrival. Tables are spaciously set apart. Conversations brew at tables far enough apart not to be overheard, though close enough to breed camaraderie and the sense of a shared and almost secret event.
Moulin Rouge is the viewing fare tonight, which we imbibe as the waiter retrieves our order, crisp and clean. He does not distract from the film that rises and splashes behind him. As the surround-sound system booms, he becomes a part of the show, just as we are part of the show. There is a reason for this. Film has joined our lives. It feels like multitasking without the frantic pace. Zen multitasking. A perfect hybridization that creates something unique unto itself.
This is the place to go for people who want to talk through their films, who want to sing along, who want to satisfy their palates on more than too-buttery popcorn, Starbursts, and pail-sized Diet Cokes. The broad low space, the flickering of candles on dimly lit tables, the exhibitionistic screen celebrating itself with its lavish and pervading sound, speak to us that “all is good.” This flick “is for you – and all that you do.”
Through the film, some tables cry, some laugh, some sing, some observe silently, still perhaps tied to a United Artists 22 cinema etiquette. Eye contact between tables and cross-conversation is natural and available. “And I will love you,” sings Ewan McGregor, “until your dying day…Yes, I will love you…”
There is a hustle and bustle after the film crescendos and the end credits roll. Tables and linens are swept aside. One can feel there is a crowd mounting in module number two. The second stage of Cinespace will begin. And—low and behold—you realize that because you are a film diner that you have the best seat in the house for the staged bands—Crowne City Rockers and Jazzy Jeff (of Fresh Prince fame) tonight. When you walk back to the once empty bar/lounge and further into the patio/lounge, you realize that you have been swept into an eclectic L.A. scene.
The clientele is educated and upscale, rift with an inviting collection of foreigners, professors, artists, and accessible LAites. This is not another false and pretentious L.A. scene. This is a private clubhouse, almost Cheers-like in its openness. Everyone is a friend. What we have come to know as the typical L.A. snobbery does not abound. It almost makes you wish you lived closer.
Cinespace is the perfect road trip from humble semi-sleepy Claremont…surprisingly only 45 minutes away, offering an evening that brings you home feeling as if you just disembarked from some romantic “city-scene of the future” abroad.