'The closest thing to church': How Unusual Tuesday became L.A.'s home for misfit artists
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It is not just any Tuesday.It is 9 p.m.on a dreary night in Shadow Hills, just miles away from the lush foothills of the Verdugo Mountains.
The delicate pitter-patter of a drum’s cymbal is the only sound to break through the thick brick wall of the obscure performance venue, Sun Space, and reach the wide, desolate Sunland Boulevard.There is no sign outside, but follow the noise inside to find the Host arrive on stage from a door hidden behind a hypnotic dayglow projector visual.He’s wearing a gold sequin jacket over a fresh-pressed polka-dot shirt, fuchsia bell-bottoms and yellow trucker’s hat with an Appalachian-style beard.The Host is just one of a strange cast of characters to escape the loose folds of Noel Rhodes’ mind and make it on-time to the circus.
Rhodes, 63, founded Sun Space in 2017 as a performance art venue for wayward artists who don’t properly fit the rigid mold of the Los Angeles club and bar circuit.The space is “not quite open mic,” Rhodes says, but all lovers of experimental ambient music, free-form jazz, observational comedy, paleontology and asteroseismology lectures or just plain old rock ‘n’ roll are welcome on the schedule, nearly every day of the week.
Tuesdays, however, are somehow more unusual.The crowd drowns in the second-long tension as they sit below teardrop-shaped papier-mâché stalactite hanging from handmade alien geodes on the ceiling.
A 2-foot-tall, human-goat lovechild mask rests on the stage.Demographics for Unusual Tuesday range from late teens to septuagenarians, mingling and meandering as they await the start of the show.“Let’s all together, as one great rising cluster, try, together, to accomplish one thing,” says the Host.
“Let’s figure out what this whole thing is!”The house band drums intensify, a violin cries and guitar chords growl.“It’s Un-usual Tuesday,” the congregation replies in song.�...