BloomfestLA

A sweet community fest parties in the heart of industrial LA.

The blinking electro map is a common science fiction film device.

Picture it: A character will hold an electronic map and see dots of blinking red on it, indicating, well, anything. That's where the treasure is or that's where the hero is and so forth.

We've imagined a blinking red dot over the Downtown Arts District for years now; it is a font of interesting energy and creative forward motion, after all. And artists do indeed live there, giving the industrial-y corner of downtown a flavorful jolt. Restaurants and shops have sprung up, too, good ones.

And that blinking red dot will be blinking harder -- beep beep beep -- on Saturday, July 21 during BloomfestLA. It's a "music + arts + food + crafts" street party that is clustered around the intersection of 3rd and Traction. Food trucks, tasty beers, and a few stages full of indie people making music the way they want to is party of the free-to-attend festival, which rolls all afternoon and evening.

Highlights? Superhumanoids will play the Traction Stage at 9:30 p.m. or so. Angel City Brewery will be beering it and Wurstküche will be sausaging it during the proceedings. And the Kool Kid Zone will feature an opera performance from a 13-year-old star. That's not your typical kid zone stuff, right? Pretty fancy pants, in the best sense. Get those young'uns up on the arias early, we say.

If you're wondering why something set in an especially industrial urban area is named BloomfestLA, here's the nice story: It is in honor of a community friend and champion who once called the 52-block slice of arty goodness home. His name? Joel Bloom. Of course, the word has a very "life springs eternal" meaning too, of course. We do love the flower growing out of a building logo, too.

Blinking red dot blinking over the sci-fi map of the Downtown Arts District, we are quite sure you'll be blinking something fierce for years to come.

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