Here’s the deal, I’ve just been super fucking busy the last couple of days. I mean, I rose at 430am today, drove half an hour and then worked for 13 hours straight doing things I can’t even begin to explain. And so, I haven’t posted the photos from either show. I will get all of Karen’s incredible photos from both nights online for you soon. In the meantime, my written reviews after the jump.

BoHo v1 had a rather tumultuous ride as Arclight’s neighbor for a year and a half. First, a GM, or 2, was fired. Then the starting free spirited chef left because he couldn’t do whatever it is that he wanted to do. Through it all, BoHo carried on with its gastropubby fare which almost everyone seemed to have enjoyed, to a certain degree. No matter the food, no matter the chef swappage, everyone could always count on BoHo’s 2 dozen rotating craft beers, one of the first (of the second wave in LA) to have such a well-curated list.

No one quite believed BoHo would re-open after the planned October 2010 closure, but it managed to stay remain open, with its bottomless mimosa weekend brunches and all, all the way til Feb of 2011. With an obvious will to survive, it was no surprise BoHo returned to biz at its new digs only after a month of closure.

Except the new location is… wait for it… Hollywood & Highland! Commence collective groan… now. That’s right, BoHo went from being one movie theater’s neighbor to another, except the new one’s in an Egyptian themed mall in the middle of Hollywood. Go ahead, groan again, BoHo’s restauranteur Adolfo Surya doesn’t mind. He brought on a new chef, kept the same excellent beer menu, and hopes tourists (as well as local yokels) will appreciate affordable small batch brewed beer in a cozy environ.

Wesley Pumphrey, the new chef, has worked at Craft and Bazaar, 2 perennial LA faves. Here at BoHo, he’s using Wolfgang Puck designed/built wood-fired pizza to toss out some fantastic pizza/flatbreads. While the menu isn’t exactly the same as OG BoHo, the essence of its fare remains. The fantastic onion soup has disappeared, but a Hawaiian-esque tuna tartare, fully evocative of poke, has subbed in nicely. Moules frites here is solid as well, and offered with both grilled toast along with frites, making the broth all the more dunkable (not a word). Out of the pizzas, there is no doubt the Spaniard, with the sweet roasted piquillo peppers and sweet onion marmalade countering the properly salty manchego and chorizo, will be amongst the greatest hits here. From the mains, the salmon is rather well executed, though it sang the same sweet tune as several other dishes in the mains and apps.

Happy hour of $5 drafts and food bites is already back at BoHo, making it the best craft beer pub, dollar for dollar. On weekends, bottomless mimosas & bloody marys are back as well; now we just need to await the return of the brunch menu.

BoHo 2.0
4th Floor, next to The Grill
6801 Hollywood Blvd #411
Hollywood, CA 90028
(323)465-8500
Validated Parking $2 for 4 hours

HOLLYWOOD, CA :: David Liebe Hart (aka David Unger Hart; aka David King Liebe Hart; aka David Nkrumah Liebe Unger Hart) will again open and/or close more than 70% of all shows at the legendary Hollywood Bowl this 2010 season. The Bowl’s summer ’10 season is slated to begin June 18, with David Hart reprising his role as Doug the Dog outside the gates free of charge (donations encouraged).

Some of the featured artists Hart, a recurring cast member of Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! television program will open for, free of charge outside the gates (donations encouraged) this 2010 season include Femi Kuti, Peter Gabriel, Goldfrapp, Bugs Bunny, Joshua Bell, Earth, Wind and Fire, Smokey Robinson, John Williams, Gustav Dudamel and Harry Connick, Jr. Hart’s full tentative summer schedule is now available at hollywoodbowl.com.

Subscription sales for David Liebe Hart are unnecessary; subscription sales for all events inside the actual gates begin January 28 (today).

» http://www.hollywoodbowl.com/

Minor chuckle out of this Hollywood.com bite:

KEVIN BACON’s actress wife KYRA SEDGWICK is unhappy with the placement of the power couple’s stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

She explains, “They put us right next to each other in this shady area. It’s right outside of this nightclub… Isn’t it wonderful when people stumble out at three in the morning they’re going to throw up on both of our stars?”

That unnamed nightclub at 6356 Hollywood Blvd would be Cinespace. While curbside vomiting might be a regular occurrence around there (Steve Aoki’s birthday party was there last night, after all) but anyone calling that area “shady” only serves to reveal the bubble from reality in which they must live.

Forty years ago, Jack Nicholson and a bunch of dudes who would go on to do Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces co-wrote their first avant-garde, marijuana-laced cinematic masterpiece. It’s purpose: to bring a pre-fab boy band called the Monkees out of the teenie bopper magazines and into the hearts of hippies. It succeeded at the former, but not so much at the latter–no amount of fourth-wall breaking could shatter their image as an artificial construct to the crowd of rockers now keepin’ it real with fourteen minute guitar solos at the Monterey Pop Festival.

In hindsight, however, the Monkees’ movie Head (the idea was that the next film’s ad could say “From the People Who Gave You Head!“) is a lot less goofy than it seemed at the time. Appearances by Dennis Hopper, Sonny Liston, Frank Zappa, and Toni Basil, shocking visual references to violence both real and cartoonish, and satires of the sappy pop cultural milieu of the time, themselves included, make this feel like a movie that’s saying something, even if nobody quite knows what that something is. »continue reading Head: Monkees Movie Comes Home Again