Entertainment
DTLA’s once-famed nightlife is flailing. Can this cozy DJ bar bring crowds back?
On a Saturday night, just an hour after the Dodgers won the World Series, Bar Franca started heating up. The freshly revamped, DJ-driven lounge in downtown’s historic core filled out with loft-dwelling locals still getting mileage from their Halloween costumes, while incoming Dodger fans hooted and revved their engines out on Main Street. The bar’s owner, concert promoter Rolando Alvarez, was off tending to another event, but Bar Franca’s two DJ’s for the night, Maddy Maia and Tottie of Sisters of Sound, wound up the ebullient crowd under a soft pink, hand-painted barrel roof.
If you squinted, you could have sworn it was 2019 again, back when downtown L.A.was the heart of the city’s nightlife before the pandemic knocked it sideways.
“Downtown needs an injection. It still feels like it’s been a struggle bouncing back in that area since COVID,” Maia said between sets. “I think it’s so important to invest in areas that have suffered and have been somewhat forgotten about. I’m so grateful that Bar Franca is bringing life back to that part of the city.”
“Downtown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,” said Bar Franca’s Rolando Alvarez.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
This year has seen unrelenting bad news for L.A. nightlife — the impacts of the wildfires, the continued Hollywood strike fallout, the cost-of-living crisis and ICE raids and protests that temporarily squelched downtown’s after-dark industry. That all came on top of a miserable post-pandemic environment for a vulnerable downtown neighborhood hit harder and longer than most.
Bar Franca, a passion project from one of the city’s elite dance music promoters, is a little sliver of re-growth in a neighborhood that desperately needs one.
“Downtown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,” Alvarez said. “We’re doing our best to have people back on the streets, from all corners and all sensibilities, coming and being like, ‘I want to hang out in downtown.’ But how do we take care of it? How do we get there?”
After two decades of hopeful growth and global cachet as a nightlife destination, downtown L.A. has suffered tremendously post-pandemic. While its resident population has stabilized and grown, a citywide shift to working from home, the ongoing tragedy of homelessness and recent political turmoil have added to the challenges for local restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Many beloved nightspots have closed, or worry they will soon.
Cole’s, which survived the Great Depression and two world wars but couldn’t withstand the current economy, will shutter Dec. 31, though the venue is currently up for sale. Concert hall the Mayan, which opened in 1927, closed after 35 years in its current incarnation. In the summer, after a lawsuit from a former employee, the sprawling queer bar Precinct said on Instagram that “We’re a couple of slow weekends away from having to close our doors. Like many small businesses, we’ve taken hit after hit — from COVID shutdowns and ICE raids to citywide curfews and the ongoing decline of nightlife.”
Patrons in Halloween costumes enjoy drinks at a table at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
From glamorous flagships like the Ace Hotel to locals-only dives like Hank’s, downtown has lost a lot of the places that made it such a compelling place to live and party. While some new spots like the Level 8 complex, Issa Rae’s bar Lost and the delightfully divey Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse have opened, even a booster group like the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles admitted in its September “Revive DTLA” report that “Downtown faces existential challenges. The pandemic, homelessness, ongoing immigration raids, and other crises have hit DTLA harder than other communities….The last five years have clearly demonstrated how a lack of representation and focused support can shift the trajectory of a neighborhood.”
“Every downtown in the country has experienced challenges since the pandemic, but what had been a virtuous cycle of growth is now a vicious cycle,” said Nella McOsker, the president and chief executive of the Central City Assn. “There’s huge potential for nightlife to succeed in downtown because the residential base is there. But when the street level experience or the perception of downtown is so fragile, we have to get it right for a safe and welcoming environment.”
Alvarez knows that as well as anyone. The founder of Midnight Lovers — a decade-old independent concert promoter focused on dance music, one much-acclaimed in its scene — lives just a few blocks from Bar Franca.
Franca first opened in 2018 as an alluringly feminine cocktail spot next door to the Regent Theater. With hand-painted Art Deco flourishes and an ear for great tunes (the bar used to house the electronic music record store Stellar Remnant in the back), Franca had a couple of exuberant pre-pandemic years before the surrounding area, just a block from Skid Row, began to backslide.
When Alvarez, a regular, heard the owners were thinking of selling this year, he leapt to invest in a permanent address for Midnight Lovers in the heart of downtown. Although Alvarez already leased a larger event space just over the L.A. River for his concerts, Franca was the kind of spot he’d be pained to lose in his neighborhood.
“If you live downtown, you know there’s only like a handful of places that have a nice atmosphere when it comes to music,” Alvarez said. “Someone brought me here a long time ago, and something about it felt so cozy. Sometimes we feel like going to the warehouse, sometimes we feel like the club, sometimes we feel like a nice little cocktail. I still feel like smaller, more intimate places is where the magic is.”
Franca’s physical interior hasn’t changed too much since the handoff in October (though the cocktail menu, from Broken Shaker’s Gabriel Orta and Jonny Child, now leans a little more seasonal and N/A friendly). What’s different is its aspirations to join the small list of bars — like Highland Park’s Gold Line and Lincoln Heights’ Zizou — that work as the front porch for L.A.’s club scene.
“I love playing and going to late night parties, but that’s not for everyone, and there aren’t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound,” said DJ Tottie. “Having a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca’s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.”
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
His typical shows are larger (and post-pandemic, younger-skewing) sets of house, techno and disco. But “it’s always been a dream to have something small,” Alvarez said.
As the street scene in downtown has gotten more erratic, and the costs and hassle of trekking to far-flung venues has escalated, he acknowledged that “friends have hinted that it’d be nice to have something low key, like if you’re on a date or have people from out of town that didn’t feel like going to a warehouse. We’re always morphing and developing, and at this moment, that’s where I want to be.”
The first thing Alvarez did was truck in a new hi-fi system and put Franca’s busy slate of DJ programming quite literally front and center behind the bar. For wizened millennials who might not have the juice to stay out until 6 a.m. at a warehouse party, or for young artists and promoters looking for a small room to re-cultivate local music scenes lost to the pandemic, these DJ-driven bars have become incredibly important.
“Being from the U.K., we grew up with so many drinking holes, which offer a sense of community — not just a rave,” DJ Tottie said on a break from her set. “I love playing and going to late night parties, but that’s not for everyone, and there aren’t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound. So having a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca’s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.”
Franca keeping its lights on is just as important for downtowners, who have had reason to wonder if their neighborhood will remain a vital place to go out at night. With so many generations-old venues closing, a sense of doom can become self-fulfilling.
“Living in downtown after 2020, it was back to back to back on different things that weren’t great for us,” Alvarez said. “But I still live downtown, and every time there’s a new business or something cool opening, I get happy, because there’s nothing more heartbreaking than to do my morning walk and see more for-lease signs up. If you see one or two, it’s fine, but if you start to see more it gets in your head, like, ‘What’s really happening?’ ”
Nicole Williams makes drinks at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
McOsker said that street-level nightlife is a bellwether for the broader downtown economy, and the community’s social health. “It matters a lot. What does it mean that a century-old institution like Cole’s closes in 2025 when it survived two world wars?” she said. “I hear people lament what kinds of social fabric were eroded in the pandemic. But I’m bullish on the nighttime economy as an anchor of downtown’s appeal, which is all more reason to keep reinvesting in it. It’s an ecosystem you can’t get anywhere else.”
Even amid the overlapping crises of homelessness, fires, economic travails, righteously disruptive protests, downtown has too much appeal to stay down forever. Franca alone doesn’t herald a revival, but it might get music fans back in the habit of cutting loose on Main.
“The architecture is still great here, there are still amazing places and you’re central to everything,” Alvarez said. “Midnight Lovers has always been driven by this little area. I have high hopes because downtown is so great and a lot of creatives still live in these buildings, even if some don’t want to go out because things aren’t the way they used to be from 2015-19. I think it’s going to take effort from all of us.”
The sixth outing in the director’s chair for filmmaker Kirk Jones, I Swear dramatizes the real-life story of touretter John Davidson (played by Robert Aramayo). Tourette’s Syndrome, for those unfamiliar with the condition, is a nervous system disorder that causes various tics, the most prolific being erratic and explicit language. However, as I Swear expertly showcases, the syndrome is far more than ill-timed outbursts of curse words. Davidson’s story is one of societal frustration, finding your people (both with and without the condition), and using your voice to help others rise. The subject and subject matter are handled with absolute care and understanding under Kirk’s measured vision and Robert Aramayo’s BAFTA-winning performance.
The film kicks off with the greatest exclamation to democracy ever uttered (*%#! the Queen!), as a nervous John Davidson prepares himself before entering an awards ceremony hosted by Britain’s royal family. Right away, the film tells us what it is: a triumph over adversity that blends humor and human drama with education. It’s an important setup, as the film flashes back to Davidson’s 1980s youth, where we see his time as a star soccer recruit flatline as his condition takes hold. Davidson’s life spirals from there. Some aspects, like school bullying and accidental run-ins with authority figures, are expected but important to empathizing with young Davidson’s (young version, played with heart by Scott Ellis Watson) new everyday life. The more tragic, a complete meltdown of his family system, is unsettling if quick. His father (Steven Cree) is never given enough screen time to explore his alcohol coping tendencies. However, his mother Heather’s descent into easy fixes and blaming is crushing and convincing. Harry Potter series actress Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) gives a layered performance as Heather. Someone who loves her son, but also feels cursed by him as the entire family exits the picture. It’s bitter, she’s tired, and fills each conversation with ‘only medication and your mother can save you’ energy.
From there, the viewer and Davidson find refuge in a host of characters. Maxine Peake plays Dottie, the mother of a childhood friend and a retired mental health nurse. Screen vet Peter Mullan plays maintenance man Tommy Trotter. Together, they help Davidson build a life and an understanding of himself that carries the film forward into its second half. After that, the film is primarily a 3-actor show as director Kirk fills the screen with these tour-de-force performances. Peake and Mullan are great vessels to get the film’s main message across: patience, love, and a shared responsibility between the diagnosed and those who understand their struggle can help change the path for people quickly left behind by a normative world. Together, they are the soul of the movie, with the filmmakers clearly hoping the audience will follow their lead after they exit the theater (in my case, the beautiful Oriental Theater for the Milwaukee Film Festival). Both performances are perfectly warm and reflective and shouldn’t be left out in discussions of I Swear.
I say this because the movie is anchored by The Rings of Power actor Robert Aramayo, who leaves Elrond’s elf ears behind to bring an acute naturalism to his performance of main character John Davidson. Aramayo’s physicality and timing of the fitful Tourettes Syndrome never feel out of place or overplayed. In fact, the movie as a whole does an amazing job of never veering into sentimentality. While many moviegoers left with tissues dabbing their eyes, the filmmaking never felt like it was forcing that reaction out of audiences. It straddles the line between feel-good and reality with every story beat and lands squarely on the side of letting the real inform our feelings. Anyone with an ounce of empathy will grasp the film’s message and hopefully take it with them into life.
I Swear continues at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Tuesday, April 21st, and releases nationwide April 24th, 2026, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Several private equity firms and Hollywood power players, including United Talent Agency and longtime agent Patrick Whitesell, have expressed interest in buying parts of Casey Wasserman’s music and sports management firm after it abruptly went up for sale.
Wasserman became ensnared in controversy earlier this year after his salacious decades-old emails to Ghislaine Maxwell, an accomplice of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, were released as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s trove of Epstein files.
The agency auction is in the early stages, according to three people close to the process but not authorized to comment.
Earlier this week, several interested parties submitted proposals to meet a preliminary deadline in the auction, two of the sources said.
The company, which changed its name to the Team last month, is expected to be valued at around $3 billion.
Providence Equity Partners holds the majority stake. The private equity firm has discussed selling the entire company or carving off Wasserman’s minority interest. Providence also has considered selling the bulk of the firm and staying on as a minority investor, one of the sources said. Another scenario could involve separating, then selling the individual business units that make up the Team.
Wasserman and Providence’s company boasts an enviable roster of music artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. Its sports marketing practice is viewed as particularly lucrative and has potential to grow in value as big dollars flow into sports that draw large crowds.
Wasserman, who declined to comment, has a veto right over any sale of the company that he has spent a quarter of a century building.
UTA, which also declined to comment, is among the most aggressive suitors, the sources said. The Team’s sports marketing and music representation divisions would dramatically boost the Beverly Hills agency’s profile and client roster.
Whitesell, former executive chairman of Endeavor, separately has been motivated to make investments in sports, media and entertainment since last year when he left the talent agency that he and Ari Emanuel built. Whitesell launched a new firm with seed money from private equity firm Silver Lake, and last spring he started WIN Sports Group to represent professional football players.
Whitesell wasn’t immediately available for comment.
European investment firm Permira also has expressed interest, according to a knowledgeable source. Permira declined to comment.
The New York Times first reported that Permira, UTA and Whitesell had expressed interest.
The sales process is expected to stretch into summer, the knowledgeable people said. The auction could become complicated particularly if Providence decides to unwind the business.
For example, UTA could not buy the entire company because of the Brillstein television unit. The agency is bound by an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that prevents it from owning television production.
Investment bank Moelis & Company is managing the sale. A representative of the firm declined comment.
Wasserman also is the chairman of LA28, the nonprofit group that will be staging the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in two years.
Following revelations of Wasserman’s 2003 emails with Maxwell, several musicians and athletes — led by pop artist Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach — said that, to stay true to their values, they would leave the agency then known as Wasserman.
Wasserman apologized to his staff for “past personal mistakes” and said he would sell the agency.
He had limited dealings with Epstein, flying on the financier’s jet along with former President Clinton for a September 2002 humanitarian trip through Africa.
Wasserman, a prolific Clinton fundraiser whose legendary grandfather, Hollywood titan Lew Wasserman, helped the Democrat win the 1992 presidential election, was joined on Epstein’s jet by his then-wife, Laura, actor Kevin Spacey, Epstein, Maxwell — who was convicted of sexual abuse in 2021 — and others, including security agents.
The LA28 board’s executive committee unanimously voted to keep Wasserman as chairman, citing his “strong leadership” of the Games.
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
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