The Alley Project

Harvelle’s is the oldest music venue in Santa Monica, open since 1931. It’s likely that the crowd has stayed perpetually young, most of them now unable to conceive of the 1930’s when dinosaurs waked the earth and music was played on a harpsicord. 
 
I met up with a friend here for a quick drink before beginning [...]

Some interesting things are going on at Catalyst Cocktails. New wavey music and parties and DJs, oh my! Tucked away on Harriet St. across from the imposing Hall of Justice on Bryant Street, Catalyst seems to have a lot of potential that it has yet to realize. I mean, the 300 lb. longshoreman (below) is [...]

 
Around the corner from the famous Tosca Cafe, where it’s not unlikely to spot Francis Ford Coppola doing espresso shot after espresso shot, is a little old bar called Specs. Specs is the kind of place where you’re unlikely to see anyone of note, ever. Specs is cluttered with crap from beat generations past and [...]

If I’d been faster, this lead picture would have been of the guy pissing between cars rather than the eerie smokestacks that loom over Jessie St. Mezzanine is a club that sits in the middle of the alley, just south of where it T’s off at the back of the old Mint building.
 In line to [...]

[I'm going to make "tucked away" the official starting phrase of every post from now until eternity.]
Tucked away in an alley called Camac Street (our first palindromic alley!) in downtown Philadelphia lies an artificially old-looking Inn that is actually simply a nice old-fashioned gay bar called The Venture Inn. Despite the artificiality of some of [...]

Tucked away off 4th Street just south of South St. lives a night club called Fluid and every Sunday they have a little shindig called Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.
It was fast (I was only there for an hour), the drinks were cheap (if you get the lager & whiskey shot combo) but it [...]

Walking around with Emily after checking out some footie (Fulham kicked ass), we found ourselves in the Hoxton area. I couldn’t resist snapping this shot of Bacchus Walk, a mini-alley. It seems to be named for the adjoining restaurant (with some notoriety) which you can spy a corner of at frame left.
Not far away [...]

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese has one of those names that only a Brit could say without having a mixed metaphor pop into their heads. The interior is an amazing maze of small rooms and interlocking bars. The stairwell to the loo is built for midgets, but the cottage pie and mashed peas is excellent. Waking [...]

 
There are so many alleys in London and of such variety that it makes an alley-lover like myself re-assess what it is that he, she, or it loves about these spaces. See above for examples of what I’m not looking for.
As attractive as these little lanes are, there’s no intrigue. Like the new-ish pub we [...]

 
Freemans is a restaurant at the far end of Freeman Alley. After an intense Korean BBQ experience near our hotel, we made it here just in time for last call. Mark ordered us two Manhattans… and they say irony is dead. The people around us who were finishing their meals all seemed happy and none [...]