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.”

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)

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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.”