Getting ready to start our show at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room inside the historic Lafayette Hotel in San Diego! This place is absolutely incredible. The hotel was built in 1946, and they did a restoration on it that is one of the best I’ve ever seen, if not the best. I’m assuming that a lot of it is new, but whoever did the restoration flawlessly blended the old stuff with the new stuff. It seems like they spared no expense. Custom light fixtures, their own wallpaper, everything about this place is total vintage luxury done completely over the top.
There is a 24-hour diner inside the place, a really fancy restaurant, several bars, a pool designed by Johnny Weissmuller of Tarzan fame (he was an Olympic swimmer), a two-lane bowling alley, and Lou Lou’s, which might be the coolest nightclub room I’ve ever played in. The clamshell design behind the stage is original to 1946 and made of poured concrete! They’ve had concerts here throughout the decades. I’m not sure who all played here, but they have posters that show that John Coltrane played here in the 1960s, and Bo Diddley and the Cramps played here in the 1980s and 1990s. Amazing!
Yes, the place is crawling with hipsters, and yes, it’s really expensive. But I gotta say, compared to all the other beige and gray boring-as-hell “luxury” hotels I’ve been in, this place is the coolest I’ve ever seen, no detail left unattended, and no expense spared in bringing their vision into reality.
Bonus trivia: the Lafayette Hotel is where Tommy Duncan, the lead singer of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, passed away in 1967. We are going to do “San Antonio Rose” tonight in his honor. Thanks to Tim Mays for booking us the gig here!
