Blog

The Lido Theater Temporarily Closing for a Refresh
08.30.19
The iconic Lido Theater in Newport Beach will be temporarily closing for interior upgrades and will reopen in Spring 2020. The Lido Theater, which marked its 80th-anniversary last year, will close after its last screening on Monday, September 2.
The Lido Theater will keep the integrity of the original theater. Improvements will include state-of-the-art-sound and projection, new paint, carpet, and seating, as well as modern touches such as air conditioning and heating.
The annual Bill Medley concert to benefit Lupus research and education, held in honor of Linda and Bobby Hatfield, is slated to return in May 2020. Next year will be the tenth year that Medley has done the concert to honor his late musical partner in the Righteous Brothers, Hatfield and his wife Linda, who lost her battle with lupus in 2010.
In addition to its art deco architectural details, the Lido Theater features vintage movie poster cases, the original box office, and a magnificent red velvet waterfall curtain on an elevated stage.
The theater also has some of its original Catalina tilework, revered at the time for its colorful hand-painted beauty, and rarely seen in Southern California today. Harkening back to the golden age of Hollywood, the Lido Theater also has a balcony, which is not seen in modern theaters.
The Newport Beach landmark opened in 1938 with the Oscar-winning movie “Jezebel”, starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. A resident of nearby Corona del Mar, Miss Davis is said to have traveled by the site daily while the theater was under construction, and requested a sitting parlor in the ladies’ room, which was built and remains today.
The Lido Theater is in Via Lido Plaza at 3459 Via Lido, off Newport Boulevard, on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach.
Blog

COAST Open Streets of Santa Monica
08.30.19
Santa Monica’s free open streets celebration, COAST, returns on Sunday, September 15 featuring people-powered transportation, art, and imagination. Two miles of Santa Monica’s streets will be closed to cars and filled with a pageant of crowd-sourced creativity in addition to live music, food, art, and hands-on activities. COAST invites people of all ages and abilities to bike, skate, scoot, run, walk and roll along the event route.
Santa Monica’s streets, sidewalks, and iconic landmarks will pop with the color and sounds of musicians, dancers, and artists including Sol e Mar, Venice Beats, Mariachi Linda Mexicanas, Cuñao and the California Feet Warmers. Other activities include helmet decorating, a kid’s bike skills rodeo, a giant puppet parade, and salad-making at the community garden.
This year, attendees are t invited to create or decorate your favorite (real or imaginary) car-free way to get around and then show it off during this carnival of wheels, rigs, wings, and feet. DIY or join one of over a dozen free artist-led workshops that will be held pre-COAST from August 29 until September 14.
The workshops will provide inspiration and materials to create costumes, walking pieces, or wheeled art to strut on the event day. From family-focused events to happy-hour workshops, resources will be available for all to generate human-powered transportation art. Contemporary visual artist Marianne Sadowski, puppeteer Beth Peterson, and cardboard sculptor Kiel Johnson are a few of the artists that will guide participants in transforming their ideas into a costume, hat or helmet, giant puppet or wheeled conveyance, or anything else they can imagine. There will also be day-of workshops for people to join in the fun and pageantry.
Attendees can enter the COAST contest to win prizes in six entry categories around innovation, creativity, teamwork, and how people-powered it is.
COAST will be held on two miles of city streets closed to car traffic, including Ocean Avenue from Wilshire Boulevard to Colorado, Colorado from 5th Street to Ocean Avenue, as well as Main Street from Colorado to Pier Avenue.
For more information about COAST visit santamonica.gov/coast.
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