Downtown Still Rocks: A Field Report From the Regent, 1720, and the Teragram

For a stretch of the 2010s, the story people told about Downtown L.A. was condos, cocktails, and the death of the mosh pit. Somebody forgot to tell the venues. On any given week, a triangle of DTLA rooms — the Regent, 1720, and the Teragram — keeps the neighborhood as loud as it's ever been, and this month makes the point cleanly.

Start at The Regent Theater, the restored 1914 movie palace at 448 S Main St that anchors Downtown's live-music map. It's the other jewel of Mitchell Frank's Spaceland empire — the bigger sibling to Echo Park's Echo — a standing-room theater with the rare amenity of a good slice attached, since Prufrock's Pizzeria shares the lobby. When a touring act outgrows the Echo but isn't ready for a shed, the Regent is where L.A. catches it. It's the room that made "grab a slice before the set" a genuine Downtown ritual.

A few blocks east, in the Arts District, 1720 is the neighborhood's necessary antidote to polish. A working warehouse that programs hardcore, punk, techno, and experimental noise, it's a reminder that Downtown was a rave-and-mosh town long before it was a lifestyle brand. No seats, no sightline guarantees, no apologies — just a big concrete box and a booking sensibility that treats a hardcore matinee and a 2 a.m. techno set as two halves of the same idea.

And on the western edge, the Teragram Ballroom does the grown-up-club version of the same mission. Opened in 2015 by Bowery Ballroom co-founder Michael Swier, the 600-capacity room has spent a decade being the band's-eye favorite Downtown — good sound, honest sightlines, no gouging. This week alone it runs Yard Act, the Old 97's, and a Saturday of rising guitar bands, which is about as neat a summary of its range as you could ask for.

What ties these three together isn't a genre or even an owner — it's a bet that Downtown's audience wants more than a rooftop DJ. The Regent takes the touring mid-card, 1720 takes the underground, the Teragram takes the discerning middle, and between them they cover most of what a music city needs. Add the fact that all three are walkable-ish from a Metro line, and you have the closest thing L.A. has to a true downtown venue district — the kind of thing New York and Chicago take for granted and Los Angeles was told it could never have.

The knock on Downtown was always that its nightlife would gentrify itself into beige. Instead, the rooms dug in. The Regent kept the marquee lit, 1720 kept the floor sticky, and the Teragram kept the sound honest. On the Eastside we like to claim the whole live-music franchise runs from Echo Park to Highland Park — but the truth is the line keeps going, straight down into Downtown, where the volume never actually left.

Take the train. Grab the slice. Downtown's still standing, and it's still loud.

Sources: The Regent Theater DTLA — Calendar; 1720; Teragram Ballroom is Another Step in Downtown's Rock Revival — LA Downtown News