Reveling in Pure Pleasure : It’s a place that serves up good food and music. But mostly, it’s where folks are just glad to see you.

The Pure Pleasure Lounge on Manchester Boulevard and Western Avenue is true to its name. This neighborhood joint swings sweet and low every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, when Bobby Phillips and the Joy Sticks cry the blues to their friends and neighbors in Central L.A., and to anyone else who might love music and fraternity enough to come on down.

Everyone is on a first-name basis here. Didi might very well give you a hug as you walk in. Frank might buy you a drink, and the way he greets you, you’d think he owned the place--but he doesn’t. He just loves it, and wants you to love it too.

Lewis is tending bar this night, although it isn’t clear that he works here, and he, too, is proud enough to be the owner. “There’s never been a fight here in almost 20 years. It’s a safe place for a woman to come alone. We never have any trouble,” Lewis says.

Joe Griffin, an engineer with the city of Los Angeles, opened the lounge in 1976 as a hobby and is still tending bar nearly 20 years later. Open only on weekends, the lounge is often used for parties and fund-raisers, all of which are open to the public. Every other Friday there’s a fish fry, and Sundays, the only time there’s a cover charge, the house is packed for the weekly jam session when anyone who likes can stand up and take his chances.

Bobby Phillips and the Joy Sticks have been in residence every Friday and Saturday night for two years, playing solid blues laced with funk. During the rest of the week, this band, which could put most of the headliners at the House of Blues to shame, isn’t above playing the occasional back-yard barbecue. “We’ll play in your bedroom, your back yard, on your roof, whatever you want to hear,” Phillips says. “Blues, Top 40, jazz. Hell, we’ll even play polker if that’s what you want.”

Things get started about 11 o’clock as Phillips warms up the audience by calling out, “How many of you here are from Louisiana? Texas? Arkansas? How many of you from Los Angeles? Well, you’re still from the south.

“She’s my TV mama,” Phillips sings, bucking his hips, “got that big old wide screen.”

There isn’t room on the stage for the whole band, but Phillips seems happiest roaming the floor with his mike, mingling with the crowd. At one point he gets right up close to a slow-dancing couple, horning in on their embrace, singing, “Lady, please don’t walk away . . . .”

When Phillips takes a break, Black Speed, the keyboardist, assumes the vocals with a singing style that’s harder, more urgent and just as astonishing.

Anyone visiting here for the first time is likely to feel they’ve struck gold, but more exciting still is the realization that this level of artistry at a neighborhood joint is a part of the everyday life of this community. Central Avenue may be gone, but everything it stood for is right here, right now.

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Where: Pure Pleasure Lounge, 1520 Manchester Blvd.; (213) 750-2493.

When: Friday and Saturday, 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.; Sunday jam session, 6 to 11 p.m.

Cost: Sunday cover charge is $3; beer and wine $2.