Hello Justin, Goodbye Lava Lounge

Swung by Justin’s place, as he’s now back in town. The two of us were planning to hit Lava Lounge, as this was to be their last day. I had no idea, but found out that it had been sold… and all the current staff fired. Totally sucks. Justin goes here a lot more than me, but even I’ve seen what happens to bars when new owners kick in… the new bar rarely resembles what it used to be.

Nebula who, on seeing me, quickly jumped to the top of the scratching post.

I wonder if I’ve somehow done some terrible Pavlovian thing, and now she expects dope everytime she sees me?

Justin, showing off a little west coast stylee.

At Lava Lounge, we found out that tonight wasn’t the last night – next Monday is. But there was still a good crowd, and it was “Covers” night. Some really, really great songs were played (including the Joey Ramone cover of “What a Wondeful World” that I have on the audioplayer, over on the right). Had some good talks with Justin, and got to chat a bit with Tracy as well.

This is a picture of Joe, who I striked up a converastion with due to his shirt. Turns out, there were several neat coincidences that I noticed. First – he was Tracy’s old neighbor from a while back. And the shirt he’s wearing had the logo for Foundation Gallery, which I visited a few weeks back.

In addition to that, he runs Secret Handshake, a local tshirt company. They were here at Lava Lounge at the Bail Magazine party and, unfortunately, I failed to get any pics of their wares at the time.

A cool series of intersections. I had an interesting talk with him about what it was like running a company like that, where to advertise, his thoughts on threadless. Cool stuff.

Around 1 AM, I end up taking off. Before I left, Tracy yelled out at me and made it a point to say goodbye – which was awfully nice of her. I found out from Justin later on that our tab for the night, all told, was $5. How awesome is Tracy?