California Gold: The Wiltern Theatre

Text and photos by Jason McKenney

October in LA means plenty of options for Halloween-themed parties and concerts to get dressed up for, and few rock bands bring out the devil inside our youth better than the Swedish outfit referred to as Ghost. The group is known for their eccentric on-stage presence consisting of colorful lights, devil-worshiping campiness, face-concealing costumes, and a lead singer who wears a prosthetic mask with skull face paint. The lead vocalist calls himself Papa Emeritus, and the musicians are referred to only as Nameless Ghouls and remind me of extras from the secret party scene in Eyes Wide Shut.

I attended the show at the Wiltern Theatre with a long-time friend of mine named Max and enjoyed every minute of it. The lobby was filled with concert-goers decked out in their best Goth outfits. Dudes wore black on black. Ladies wore short leather skirts with knee-high boots. Their hair was long and their tops were low. The concert itself ran nearly two hours with the group playing most of the songs from their three studio albums. This was the second show on as many nights for Ghost and both shows were sellouts.

The Wiltern Theatre (located at the corner of Western Ave and Wilshire Blvd in the Koreatown neighborhood of LA) sits at the base of the 12-story Pellissier Building. The building, beckoning the halcyon days of old Los Angeles, is an Art Deco masterpiece covered with blue-green terra-cotta tile and is situated diagonal to the street corner.

Built in 1931, the Wiltern Theatre was originally designed to be a vaudeville theater and was called the Warner Brothers Western Theater. It was renamed to Wiltern just a few years later. Today, the venue hosts a variety of stage acts from metal bands to talented violinists like Damien Escobar to Japanese idol groups like Momoiro Clover Z.

Once the show was over and I had taken out my ear plugs, Max and I walked up a block on Western to grab a late supper at a relatively new gastropub called Beer Belly. Being Koreatown it did not feel out of place to find Beer Belly tucked between the Horse's Mouth oyster bar and I Love Boba.

PCC Cheeseburger

Beer Belly specializes in craft beer and serving meat fried in delicious duck fat. I ordered the signature Pork Cheek Chili Cheeseburger ($15.50) which consists of pork cheek chili and a waffle-battered onion ring on top a generous patty (add a fried egg for $1.50). Our appetizer were pork belly chips (also fried in duck fat) and flavored with sweet onion sugar. Healthy? No way. Delicious? Beyond belief.