What a sweet street lovely little Fairfax Ave. is. More famously known as the home of Canter’s Deli, just one of several Jewish businesses that used to line this street a couple decades back. But there’s more to this strip than a good pastrami sandwich!

One of our favorite spots in the city consistently showing awesome films is The Cinefamily’s Silent Movie Theatre which is conveniently located on Fairfax. Somehow they manage to collect the coolest, rarest, strangest, and craziest footage from around the world and have regularly scheduled screening nights like their Silent Wednesdays on the first Wednesday of the month (with live organ accompaniment!), Double-Feature Fridays, Comedy Death Ray every first Sunday of the month, and Jerry Beck’s Animation Tuesdays. And of course their incredible monthly themes like February’s HOLYFUCKINGSHIT: 2009 late Saturdays screenings, and early Saturdays titled Czech Your Head featuring Czech cinema of course. There really is something for everyone at this theater, one of the reason why it’s stuck around for so long. It used to be the only operating silent movie theater and has now had a bit of a makeover to allow for sound yet keep it’s original theater form from the 40’s! It’s also fun because the seating is first come first serve and there are couches! So snuggle up and watch some crazy ass movie with your loved one!

The Melrose Trading Post is another famed stop along the path, taking place every Sunday from 9am-5pm in the parking lot of Fairfax High School. The young and old gather for a mix of antiques, used records and books, refinished vanity sets, up and coming designers with their stationary sets or jewelry, food stands, and more. I love coming here to buy gifts for friends birthday’s.. or for me. The used books and old letters/postcards/pictures are awesome. Wait and as I’m writing this, I was trying to find an old entry from our archives about this market and holy shit it looks like we haven’t written about it??!! Weird. This place is awesome. BoredLA just lost major points. ANYWAY… $2 gets you into the flea market and you may find great deals, you may find that things are overpriced. That’s just how it goes down on Fairfax Ave. But you definitely won’t spend more than you would at Fred Segal down the street, that’s for sure!

Family is one of those places that everyone to kill to work at, or maybe just be best friends with those who run it. Not only do they sell a ton of records, but they offer indie books, magazines, dvds, clothing, posters AND do live events. The selection is incredible and you can easily lose an afternoon once stepping foot in this place. I actually really need to get over here and by some late Christmas presents for friends! You won’t find DVDs like The Proposal here, it’s more like Live at the Smell, or Cinemad: the 2009 Short Film Almanac, stuff you probably won’t find at Target. Their next live event is a double-reading by Trinie Dalton and Aimee Bender from their books, Sweet Tomb and The Third Elevator, respectively. It’s going down on Thursday the 28th at 7:30pm. They even have live music some nights, which is crazy to me because the place is pretty tiny– but I guess it adds the atmosphere and totally makes you feel like everyone’s your family!

So now for some nightlife? Food maybe? Well we all know Animal is on Fairfax. But I don’t feel right reviewing it before I get to taste it’s sweet meaty goodness, so we will save that for genara for [hopefully] next week! There is Genghis Cohen that’s half restaurant, half music venue. And what do you know? Our artist of the week, Aijia Lise, played there just a few weeks ago! The venue is great, the food is meh, kinda like white-washed Chinese food. But it really is all about the music here. There’s a lot of singer-songwriter stuff which is the best to lounge around to. The dining room is in a separate area so if you aren’t into the music, you won’t have to sit through your meal listening to it! But I doubt you’ll be disappointed, they usually get some great up and coming artists to play. Then there’s the Kibitz Room. Sounds like it’s got that old-school Jewish charm to me. I’m not Jewish what the hell am I talking about? Ok, here’s another venue with a full bar and a deli. That’s right. There’s no cover, and the cocktails are strong. That’s really all you need to know, the music won’t matter after a few drinks anyway. This place is definitely on the grungier side, so get prepared for long hair and rock n’ roll.

So if you honestly haven’t discovered the wonders of Fairfax Ave. yet, you need to get on that ASAP because it is one sweet street!

Want to suggest a sweet street? E-mail us!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Sweet Streets, calendar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.