The First Exhibition at Little Italy’s Modmatter

Whether you’ll be hanging out in Hall H all weekend or joining the crowds outside the convention center for all the free activations during Comic-Con, once the sun goes down, it’s all about the after-parties. Going on from July 24-28, here are the 11 can’t-miss after-parties for those aged 18 and up during Comic-Con 2024 to attend, no badge required.

Ready Party One: Legends of Fantasy

July 24 | Parq Nightclub

Don’t worry, your 80’s film-inspired cosplay outfit begging to be worn just found its ticket to a fantasy dreamland. Ready Party One: Legends of Fantasy, XLE’s signature SDCC kick-off after party, returns on July 24 at Parq Nightclub. With tickets beginning at $52, journey through classics like Labyrinth, Princess Bride, and Lord of the Rings. This is your portal to mythical adventures, dancing in enchanted forests and castle ruins, with live performances by The Flux Capacitors and DJ Elliot. VIPs get extra perks with the Villains VIP Lair. Seriously, don’t miss out on a chance to see Frodo Baggins in a nightclub. Must be 21+.

615 Broadway St, Gaslamp Quarter

Paramount+’s The Lodge

July 24 | Happy Does Bar

Ever dreamed of exploring SpongeBob Squarepants’ Bikini Bottom while sipping a drink from a Tulsa King–themed saloon? Paramount+’s The Lodge is making its comeback to the Gaslamp District for its 2024 tour stop. From July 24 to 28 at Happy Does, immerse yourself in everything unique to the world of Paramount+. Step onto a Star Trek starship, fuel up for the night at the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts energon station, and hit the Paramount+ pub. While admission is free with a reservation, a standby line is also available daily. All ages welcome; guests 18 and under must be accompanied by a parent/ guardian.

340 Fifth Ave, Gaslamp Quarter

Fandom Party Presented by Dragon Age: The Veilguard 

July 25 | Hard Rock Hotel’s Float

Fandom is back in San Diego for its seventh annual fan-first immersive party. From 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Float rooftop bar, this event, sponsored by gaming publisher EA, features previews of BioWare and EA’s upcoming role-playing game and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, along with activations from Z2 Comics and Pinfinity. Enjoy food, drinks, and endless entertainment, including a themed scavenger hunt, custom photo booths, giveaways, and a Z2 graphic novel exhibition. Being a part of a fandom is not for the weak …you deserve to feel like your favorite character on a 360-degree red carpet. Must be 21+.

207 5th Ave, Gaslamp Quarter

Hosnian Prom: The Bash

July 25 | Wicked West

In a galaxy far, far away (also known as Wicked West in San Diego), Hosnian Prom promises a night of ultra-galactic prom looks and otherworldly dance moves. Enjoy guests like Mesmerizing Cantina Hour Crooning by Jeremy Russell, Interstellar Beats and Cosmic Melodies by DJ RUE and more. Tickets start at $103 with proceeds benefiting the Starlight Children’s Foundation and include an open bar, gourmet bites, and swag. May the force be with you (and your galactic drinks). Must be 18+.

1735 National Ave, Barrio Logan

Anti-Hero After Party

July 25 | Parq Nightclub

If you’re looking to find the Joker to your Harley Quinn, or vice versa, the Anti-Hero After Party at Parq Nightclub might just be what you need. Inspired by Deadpool, Harley Quinn, and The Boys, the evening celebrates the unconventional with gritty music, dynamic performances, and epic cosplay. The night includes sets by For the Girls, DJ Elliot’s beats, and the exclusive Villains VIP Lair with burlesque shows. GA tickets start at $40, VIP tickets are priced at $162 and include separate entry, a Hallmark gift, a commemorative acrylic VIP badge, and access to the Villains VIP Lair. Get your face paint ready and embrace the chaos. Must be 21+.

615 Broadway St, Gaslamp Quarter

Geeki Tiki at False Idol

July 26 | False Idol

Enjoy Geeki Tiki’s annual False Idol event on Friday, July 26 this year. Channel your inner god-like spirit and sip on special WhistlePig Whiskey and Planetary Rum cocktails with three seating options: 4:30-6:30 p.m., 7-9 p.m., and 9:30-11:30 p.m. For $65, you get two drinks that double as raffle tickets, plus a swag bag worth over $50. Tickets are available via Instagram and Open Table. Must be 21+.

675 W Beech Street, Little Italy

IGN and Zenless Zone Zero Party

July 26 | Hard Rock Hotel’s Float

On July 20, San Diego Bayfest will return to the Waterfront Park with SoCal’s own Sublime headlining the event. The Bayfest lineup also includes Atmosphere, Goldfinger, Barrington Levy, Makua Rothman and Kyle Smith. Throughout the day, local food vendors will be serving up some of the city’s best fare while local bartenders will be offering craft cocktails and beers.

Tickets are currently on sale with both GA and VIP options available. Here’s your quick guide to San Diego Bayfest 2024:

When and where is San Diego Bayfest 2024?

San Diego Bayfest takes place on Saturday July 20, 2024 at the Waterfront Park.

Are there still tickets available?

General admission tickets are still available online for $85, VIP tickets are $340, and Platinum VIPs can purchase a pass for $3,400.  

What do VIP tickets offer?

There are two levels of VIP tickets on offer. VIP passes include extra seating, quick festival entry, and discounted tacos, among several other perks. Platinum VIP tickets are topped off with premier viewing locations, behind-the-scenes access, and exclusive dining and drinking experiences.

How can I get to San Diego Bayfest?

Waterfront Park is located at 1600 Pacific Hwy which is accessible via, car, trolley or bus. Public parking is available along Pacific Highway, though it is limited. Ride share or public transportation is suggested, with both the Blue Line and 8 bus routes servicing stops near the park. 

Is there food at San Diego Bayfest?

Food and drinks from local vendors will be available inside the festival for purchase. Because of the sale of craft beers and cocktails at this event, San Diego Bayfest will be a 21+ event. No outside food or beverages are allowed.

Who’s playing?

Sublime featuring Jakob Nowell will headline the fest. Atmosphere, Goldfinger, Barrington Levy, Makua Rothman, and Kyle Smith round-out the lineup.

San Diego Bayfest Tips and Tricks

Stay Updated

San Diego Bayfest will be posting their set times, as well as other upcoming information, on their social media pages. Give them a follow for more news on Instagram, Facebook, and X at @bayfestsd.

Explore the Grounds

Waterfront Park is a space large enough to house plenty of sick local vendors for food and drinks, so take the time to see what’s popping at each booth. Utilize that space between sets to grab some grub and merch.

Stay Off the Road

With a less-than-savory combo of large crowds and complicated parking situations, getting to San Diego Bayfest by car is probably not your best choice. Consider public transportation for ease of travel and avoidance of the inevitable mood killing traffic. Factor in time for parking and/or walking from the trolley to the event.

Get Comfy

Festivals last a while, so get ready to be on your feet and outside for most of the day. Show up in something comfortable and don’t forget sunscreen!

In Little Italy, the city’s primo restaurants are packed tighter and more intimately than Pringles in that proprietary joy silo. In the crowded scene, restaurants must peacock for survival. It is a street of photo finishes, each Italian trattoria or ersatz brunch cabaret trying to stretch its neck a tad further than its neighbor. Competition’s fierce, so channel your Streisand and be the inescapable show, the hitheriest come-hither.

That’s what makes Lala’s setup so strange or appealing or both. You hear the buzz about this pretty new thing and set out to find it. You pass the al fresco dining Guernica that is Piazza della Famiglia. Pass the stately brass-and-walnut, building-as-Ayn Rand-book cover, Born and Raised. You nearly get pulled into the influencer-swan dining orgy of Barbusa. And then you run smack-dab into the rarest of ugly-beautiful gems, a parking lot on India Street that somehow hasn’t yet been turned into a negroni farm.

You nearly stop, feeling catfished by your GPS. But in the way-back of this lot, you spot a woman standing in the dark portal of a tiny structure. She is wearing business-martini attire, holding a clipboard. There is a velvet rope. This is Lala, which appears to be a speakeasy for ACE Parking.

First, the power of the clipboard must be acknowledged, a small but essential detail. No matter how ornate or neon-bedazzled, a hostess stand doesn’t convey the gatekeeper lure of a good old-fashioned clippy. The clipboard suggests the night’s list of invited people has been made, the list is small enough to fit on a single sheet, and this woman controls it and the fate of all who approach.

As she takes your name and scans for its presence, you will feel that same nervous pre-shame from your days of trying to get into the nightclub of the moment, where a serious person in a fitted suit performed once-overs of every person in line, making snap judgments of your social merit and value to humanity. You wonder if your jeans are casting the right cachet to make it into the club, or if you should have pleathered.

Plus, that velvet rope. At 5pm when we arrive, it seems a tad ridiculous, a cheeky throwback to the highly selective era of “bespoke” debauch. But then you consider Lala was built as an ornate spillover space for the always-bustling Barbusa (both are from the next-gen of San Diego’s first family of Italian, the Busalacchis). And you get a peek inside Lala, and realize this place is an architectural hiccup, barely enough space to park a couple Rivians. So there will be a line at Lala, and the Busalacchis are not the kind of people to deprive their line-people that Mann’s-Chinese-Theater magic of a velvet rope.

The Busalacchis brought unselfconscious and unrepentant sexy back to Little Italy. Their social media is a sultry parade of pasta, Aperol, and pheromones. Their clientele is not short on eyelashes or watches. Everything they do is glammed and sensualized. And though my heart is made of black t-shirts, Chuck Taylors, and wardrobe apathy… though I usually eye a dolled-up social scene as espresso-martini cosplay that lacks the casualness of a life lived in the real… I admit to being seduced by it.

Because after the last few years I’m running overstock on verité, and craving escapes that Apple or Meta have no say in. Also because in chronically casual San Diego, where our fashion shrugs can vacuum the flirtatiousness from any space, a roomful of urban pageantry feels like a true night out.

To create the cozy magic of Lala, the outside world has been smartly shut out (it is, after all, a parking lot). It is secrets-dark. A small lounge to the left is adorned with plant life and wicker chairs. On the right, an ornate bar with stool and bench seating below a curved wall-to-ceiling situation. The drinks are all libido- and scandal-named (Stiletto, Mistress, Sidepiece, Forbidden Fruit, etc.). There is marble and tassels and more velvet and Venetian plaster and Renaissance nudes.

On one wall, an art installation of stilettos, all of which seem to have lost their counterparts. They’ve replaced the standard kitchen-door window with stained glass, so God is here somewhere. In the restroom, there are various countryside oil paintings that folk music–loving parents from the 1970s adored; except, look closer, and you’ll see the sign for iconic San Diego strip club Les Girls near a bucolic barn. In another, a peaceful snowy river is populated by a bikini model in a party innertube.

Lala’s food was designed to be Italian snacks-plus. A spicy Caesar salad with Calabrian chiles plays to San Diego’s desire for capsaicin on everything, and it’s good. Instead of a seafood tower, they have an antipasto tower with prosciutto, salamini, mortadella, cheeses, marinated artichokes, olives, eggplant Parmigiano. A high-rise of gourmet Italian deli snacks.

Their bacon-and-date skewers are something straight out of the 1980s playbook, the leg warmers of appetizers. But they’re almost impossible to dislike in a gorgonzola sauce whose funk keeps the dates’ sweetness from over-acting. The best bite we have are the chargrilled oysters—butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, Parmigiano, pecorino, and Sriracha caviar.

Start every night here with the oat milk espresso martini, which has become the official hydration of the Busalacchi world (so popular they launched their own bottled version of it, called Busa). The bar is the major focus at Lala. A heavy but not overwhelming array of amaros add bitter charms to drinks, rather than being the entire idea. The delicious Sidepiece has no Italian at all (reposado tequila, lime, grapefruit, ginger root, mint).

They also barrel-age a couple of cocktails: a house-made negroni tweaked with peach bitters, and an Italian old fashioned that swaps the traditional bourbon for red wine from the mother country (Montepulciano). The drinks shine, but it’s the food here that puts that velvet rope to work.

The “loaded” potato gnocchi is a swooner. Chef Nino Zizzo (also a Busalacchi) could make killer fresh pasta while operating a motor vehicle or binge-watching Montalbano, and gnocchi is always a good test. Should always be like potato clouds, not potato density, and his are puffy white cumulus. It’s a riff on the baked potato, and his cream sauce shames traditional sour cream into hiding.

However, if you’re gonna call it “loaded” (a fun idea), I want to see a very American amount of surplus. A rock quarry of crispy-tender pancetta, a lawn-clippings pile of chives, cheddar cheese just wildly loitering on the plate. And ours is mostly just the cream sauce. Tastes just about perfect, misses the creative brief.

We try the cioppino, and it’s a bit of a miss, the broth so deeply stewed that it overwhelms the dainty charms of the seafood. So, sure, Lala joins the long line of us failing to swish every shot we take. But they make up for it with enough hits, a killer bar, and a parking lot speakeasy that, in the loud-voices party that is Little Italy, chose to be the one who just did something quietly interesting off in the corner until we all couldn’t help but gather ’round.

---

The Perfect Order from Lala

Chargrilled Oysters | Loaded Gnocchi | Espresso Martini

Chic and cozy: that’s the name of the game at Little Italy’s brand new Lala.

“We opened up Barbusa almost seven years ago,” says PJ Buslacchi, a managing partner of the Busalacchi restaurant empire which includes Barbusa, Nonna, and Zucchero, will soon welcome Lala to the family. “We realized that its kitchen couldn’t handle another 60 seats, and that’s what we needed [to keep up with demand]. So, Lala was born.”

Lala used to be a pet supply and grooming shop, now a 1,000-square-foot restaurant and cocktail bar designed by Taylor Shaffer, formerly a principal partner at Open Gym, which also designed the forthcoming Wildflour Delicatessen and White Rice.

Busalacchi explains that though it was born from its predecessor, Barbusa, Lala’s focus will be much different. “Barbusa is a more Sicilian-focused restaurant, so when we were thinking of what this could be, we wanted to make sure it was a concept we knew. We don’t want to do anything that we don’t know well.”

Culinarily, focus will be on Italian-style cocktails (think amari and other aperitivi) and small, shareable, almost home-cooked style plates, like a hunk of baked ziti and other pastas. There are bigger plates, too, like a steak that’s sliced in the kitchen.

Design-wise, it’s “vibey, sexy, and intimate.” There’s a brand-new kitchen and a covered patio. Custom light fixtures accent gold-leaf painted Venetian-style plaster; “lots of marble,” Busalacchi says; floor lamps on the patio; hardwood floors; walnut paneling; leather and velvet-everything; sepia, coral, sage, and olive tones throughout; and modern re-interpretations of Renaissance-era art by painter William Etty. Like hanging in your rich friend’s living room.

The cocktail list is of special note. Created by barkeep Antonio Gonzales, who comes to Lala from behind the stick at Barbusa, it’s intended to show San Diegans the versatility and range of Italian spirits in an approachable way.

“Since we’re such a small place, I had to make sure that instead of just having every amari that I love to drink back there to sip on, that I included some of my favorites and also ones that were easily introduced to customers that may not know what they prefer when it comes to sweet versus bitter effects,” Gonzales says.

So, instead of just having a straight amaro section, he says that he created a cocktail list with various amari in them to give their bitterness more complexity. For example, he’s got a drink with bourbon, passionfruit, and Amaro Montenegro, the latter of which has a drying effect and also notes of cucumber, mint, and fennel that balance the sweetness of the former two.

Also of note is its barrel-aged program. Unlike others that are more bourbon-based, Gonzales’ is solera-style, which means he sourced used sherry barrels from Spain. A variety of drinks have already been aged for a year in this style.

All-in-all, it’s intended to be a casual, good time, but with style. “Someone said Lala’s maximalist, and, yeah, sure…” Busalacchi said before trailing off. “But, really, it’s just elegant and cohesive. You’re not going to feel overstimulated. It’s more intimate and homey.” Sounds like just the place to sit back, relax, and dig into a chunk of carbs while clinking glasses.

Lala will open its doors to the public on Monday, February 5, 2024.

Bringing together the design motifs of two cultures, Little Italy’s Modmatter, curated by Louise Girling (pictured), will host its first exhibition, Span: From Mexico to Portland, featuring architectural firm Manada and ceramist Lilith Rockett. The show incorporates innovative home décor and furniture pieces from Manada, led by Katerina Alatzia and Alejandro Tapia, including the Wirt, a multi-purpose carry-all, and the award-winning 42 Bed, a solid wood daybed that doubles as a desk. Also on display are Rockett’s minimalist and utilitarian-style porcelain bowls, cups, and plates. The pieces—all of which are for sale—will be on view through the end of May, by appointment. 2064 Kettner Boulevard, Little Italy