The good life, night life -- new life

IT’S another weekend night, and Jennica Hampson, Megan McGrath and a crew of twentysomethings have braved the throngs to make their way into a hip restaurant-bar. Rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia hangs everywhere, and celebrities’ signatures are scrawled on the walls.

The manager, dressed in hipster black with dark shirt and beanie, is recommending a Jagermeister concoction called My Own Worst Enemy -- named after a hit song co-written by one of the place’s owners, Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff. A DJ spins alternative rock over the venue’s sound system.

Hello -- Hollywood? No.

Santa Monica? Not quite. And not Long Beach or Pasadena, either.

This is Fullerton, after dark. With nearly 40 bars and restaurants that sprang up seemingly overnight in a string of about five blocks along Harbor Boulevard, Fullerton -- yeah, Fullerton -- has a newly acquired taste for rock bands, jazz, cool saloons and upscale eateries. This Orange County district, also home to an assortment of art galleries and designer boutiques, is fast becoming a destination for patrons young and old, with venues catering to virtually every taste, whether fine dining or quick bites, exotic drinks or beer on tap, strummy guitar music or thrashy punk rock.

“Everything is so close here, and that’s part of the attraction,” says Hampson, 21, a Cal State Fullerton theater arts major, who is surveying the scene at the Slidebar Cafe.

Insiders know to arrive early, because on Friday nights it’s elbow to elbow. “People stand in line to come in here, it’s packed,” says McGrath, 22.

The Slidebar -- think Hard Rock Cafe with a definite O.C. twist -- debuted in March without so much as an advertisement. The venue, on Commonwealth Avenue, merely erected a page on the social networking website MySpace.com, and word got out.

It’s a venture of Sean Francis, owner of the cocktail lounge the Continental Room around the corner, and Popoff. With No Doubt’s drum set hanging from the ceiling and celebs like Dennis Rodman and hot rodder Boyd Coddington adding their signatures to the wall, the Slidebar has spiked the party quotient in an area that was already adding up to a fun time.

For evidence of a boom, look no farther than your parking spot -- if you can find one.

McGrath and friends may have been sipping beers at the Slidebar tonight, but on another night they might hit the Rail, which has karaoke and the Top 40 band Push Play. They’re part of a crowd from Cal State Fullerton and nearby Fullerton College that packs places like the Slidebar, the Rail, the Tuscany Club and the Rockin’ Taco Cantina. And the surge has all but erased downtown Fullerton’s pawn-shop image.

A battery of new establishments, like the rustic Mexican restaurant Revolucion on Harbor Boulevard, has sprung up as older shops close or, like the venerable Florentine’s -- run by Joe Florentine and his father Anthony at the corner of Harbor and Commonwealth for decades -- renovate to keep in step with the times.

“As Fullerton becomes young and louder, we changed our booths to be more friendly,” says Joe Florentine, 41, who also owns the Tuscany Club. “We did away with the formal tablecloths and dishes. The downtown corner is no longer a place to dine.”

People say the new downtown has become more like Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, but without the newness. Old Pasadena comes to mind, but Joe Florentine argues at that comparison.

“It’s a young Pasadena, definitely in the renovating stage,” he says. “Once you get here you can walk, pub crawl, and [go to] a number of bars and restaurants, each with different themes, music and food.”

IT’S not all party animals -- families dig the place.

The fun starts Thursday evenings with a farmers market that features food booths, a petting zoo for the children, a beer garden for mom and dad and a live band.

Next to the open market is the Fullerton Museum Center, a place that Dannielle Mauk, its director, describes as more pop culture shrine than museum.

In fact, one of the popular exhibits pays homage to the area’s rock roots with photos saluting the Fullerton native and electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender.

Across Harbor Boulevard near the farmers market is Cafe Hidalgo, which serves up Spanish and Southwestern cuisine inside a candlelit courtyard of the city’s old California Hotel. On Thursday nights, and now on weekends, owner Mike Oates, 37, hires Patti and Ladd, singers with acoustic guitars who play alternative country music.

James and Laura Campbell, in their 30s with two children, have known Oates for years. On a recent balmy night, the Campbells’ children played in the courtyard while they hobnobbed with friends.

“For us, Cafe Hidalgo allows us to enjoy a night out with the kids,” James Campbell says, enjoying a glass of merlot. “Fullerton’s great. If we want to go to the Slidebar or the Continental Room, we just get a baby-sitter.”

But the sun has nearly set. The moon is rising and the families are paying their tabs and herding children into minivans for the drive home.

Even some of the scream-o rockers headed to the Alley are getting antsy. Recent bookings at the all-ages music venue have been spotty, and Eroik Estrada, 18, from Downey, wants to make sure the club’s open. “Are you sure it’s open? We want to get in tonight, but sometimes the place is closed,” says Estrada, who plays guitar in the band Beneath the Hands of Betrayal.

For teenagers like Terry Stinson, a 17-year-old Fullerton High student, the city’s nightlife is an iffy proposition. Recently the Alley was closed, then reopened for live bands, but now it prohibits dancing. And a second venue a few blocks away was shut down for a mix of violations, including curfew, fire code and permitting.

“It’s hard to party anywhere anymore,” Stinson says.

As 10 p.m. rolls around, the Tuscany Club at Harbor and Commonwealth begins to stir with people lining up to get in.

“After 10, it’s the college students,” says Patrick Sullivan, the Tuscany’s manager. “That’s when we change our tunes to Green Day and play industrial. And the beers switch to shots of Jager Bombs.”

For the uninitiated, Jager Bombs are a mix of Jagermeister and Red Bull. “It goes down smooth,” advises a local who goes by just “Barney.” “But if you have three or four, better watch it and let the designated driver take over.”

Sullivan has been with the restaurant two years, and in that time he’s seen at least eight new bars open. The club’s flier says it all, advertising promotions including a reggaeton night, the live band El Manifesto, rock, karaoke and DJs.

To underscore the city’s new appetite for entertainment: When a used-clothing store next door closed, Florentine gobbled it up, knocked the wall down and turned it into a poolroom for patrons. When the owner of an old comic book shop called it quits, they bought that and turned it into a dining area for Florentine’s. An old VCR repair shop? Gone -- it’s getting a makeover to become the Palapa Grill, a third restaurant for Florentine, all within feet of one another.

“When it’s done, I’ll be the only restaurateur in town to have three venues serving different food,” Florentine said.

FROM its rustic beginnings in the 1880s, when Southern California’s land boom was sparked, in part, by promotions for the railroads, Fullerton has enjoyed a kind of suburban anonymity that befalls most communities in the shadow of L.A.

But lately, the downtown area has morphed into a place to be seen. There’s more than one Hummer waiting for valet parking, and now velvet ropes at the hippest clubs block doorways flanked with giant bouncers.

Oddly, the railroad again plays a role. The city’s Fullerton Transportation Center, with Amtrak and Metrolink tracks, has become a bustling commuter station.

Though the last Metrolink pulls in at 6:40 p.m., service every 30 minutes until 11 p.m. is planned. For L.A. denizens, Amtrak is an option, with the last train headed north to Union Station at 11:30 p.m. on weekends.

A transit-oriented village is springing up too, to be followed soon by a large redevelopment project spanning 35 acres that will add to the downtown’s revitalization and pedestrian scale.

Unlike in much of Orange County, planners and city officials didn’t rely on creating massive entertainment and retail malls to stimulate nightlife. They let downtown, with its historic charm, percolate.

A short walk along Commonwealth near Harbor Boulevard and up to Chapman is where visitors can find at least 10 historic buildings, including the Williams Building, housing the famous Imperial Ballroom, where dressed-up couples come from miles around to strut to the tango, swing and salsa.

“This is a well-known dance venue,” said Carl Yamaguchi, a San Diego dentist who visits the ballroom as part of Southern California’s dance circuit. “I’d rate it very high. It’s got wonderful atmosphere and good music.”

A block or two up on Wilshire is the Chapman Building, the county’s tallest structure when it was built in 1923. Its five floors are occupied by a bank, financial investment offices, doctors and attorneys.

The city embraced this mix of old and new for the new downtown. Soon, modest high-rises will occupy the area with business space on the bottom for retail stores and apartments and lofts upstairs for work-where-you-live entrepreneurs.

It’s “reurbanization,” said Robert Fishman, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He argues that as the fourth migration to suburbia is now ebbing, a back-to-the-cities movement he calls the “Fifth Wave” is beginning.

“I think people want a different lifestyle that gives them an opportunity for pedestrian-based interaction,” he said. “It gives them an attraction. The American small city used to have a wonderful pedestrian-based life around the old Main Street.

“With Orange County’s interurban rail line, you have kind of built into the structure a pedestrian-based world. What we thought was obsolete is now a part of the future.”

It’s an image that contrasts sharply with the strip-mall mentality of ‘60s Orange County.

The new townies buying in represent an ethnic mix. There are town homes in the $500,000s for two-income families, pricier Craftsman homes for the thirtysomethings and $1-million estates up in the rolling hills.

With the new nightlife and residents, the city’s downtown will get an even shinier gloss.

But this isn’t the downtown that redevelopment built. Talk to the business owners and they’ll confide that they shied away from redevelopment bucks because it had strings attached.

“This whole area was driven by the market,” said Chris Norby, the former mayor and now a county supervisor, as he sat nursing a Chivas over rocks at the Continental Room. “No bulldozing. No eminent domain. This is what free enterprise developed.”

Norby should know. On a recent night he chatted up the owners and managers at Heroes Bar & Grill, the Continental Club, Slidebar and Steamers as if they were long lost buddies.

At Steamers, he took a breather to hear singer Judy Wexler, a regular at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Friday night jazz series and the Vic in Santa Monica. Owner Terence M. Love started Steamers a dozen years ago, and it is now considered one of the county’s premier jazz spots. When he started, his was the only new place in what locals call the south of Commonwealth, or SoCo, area. Steamers is now surrounded by Heroes, Roscoe’s Deli (which has a rock guitarist on weekends), Table Ten (Italian) and the Continental.

Such a selection is part of the attraction for patrons such as Fullerton residents Rick and Beth Woodard, who sat in on a recent set that featured Canadian keyboardist Carol Welsman.

“There’s jazz, rock, and even at Stubrick’s [Steakhouse] ... they play blues there,” says Woodard, 35.

AS the clock nears midnight at the Rockin’ Taco Cantina, the place is jumping. Manager Eric Carter is busy holding down the fort.

Carter’s family took over an old dive bar two years ago and renovated it. Several nights a week they have dueling pianos, with Jeff Vance, Steve Haas, Patty Lund and drummer Steve Lynch playing Top 40 and some Spanish tunes. Every now and then, Cielito Lindo, a mariachi crooner, performs.

On a recent night, Carter was pushing his Flair bar, where bartenders like Duane Gilbert, whom Carter hired from the Shadow Bar in Las Vegas, juggle bottles of booze a la Tom Cruise in the movie “Cocktail.”

A few doors down, Albert Ochoa, whose family owns the bar Revolucion on Harbor, says that every night every bar gets full. He serves up Mexican food for the first wave of families, and then he prepares for the night crawlers at 10:30 p.m.

“We fill up pretty quickly,” Ochoa said. “It’s just exploded down here. Fullerton has become a destination now. People don’t say let’s go to the Spectrum or North Hollywood to visit clubs or bars.

“They say let’s go to Fullerton.”

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Fullerton’s fare

A sampling of what’s available in downtown Fullerton:

1. McClain’s, 817 N. Harbor, (714) 525-5282. Coffeehouse popular with teens.

2. The Olde Ship, 709 N. Harbor, (714) 871-7447. English pub.

3. Angelo’s & Vinci’s Cafe Ristorante, 550 N. Harbor, (714) 879-4022. Italian in a festive atmosphere.

4. The Big Slice, 523 N. Harbor, (714) 680-9123. Pizza, pasta, outdoor dining.

5. Cellar Cuisine Francaise, 305 N. Harbor, No. 214, (714) 525-5682. French cuisine, extensive wine list.

6. Cafe Hidalgo, 305 N. Harbor, No. 111, (714) 447-3202. Mexican, Mediterranean and Latin dining.

7. Stadium Tavern, 305 N. Harbor, No. 128, (714) 447-4200. Restaurant-pub with locally brewed beer.

8. Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona, (714) 738-6545.

9. Mulberry Street Ristorante, 114 W. Wilshire, (714) 525-1056. New York-style Italian, seafood and bar.

10. Back Alley Bar & Grill, 116 1/2 W. Wilshire, C, (714) 526-3032. Sandwiches, pasta and drinks.

11. Fierro’s, 211 N. Harbor, (714) 680-3663. Chicago food and drinks, large bar, live music.

12. The Alley, 139 W. Amerige, (714) 738-6934. All-ages rock.

13. Revolucion, 205 N. Harbor, (714) 871-6861. Stylish Mexican eatery with late-night karaoke.

14. The Rockin’ Taco Cantina, 111 N. Harbor, (714) 525-8226. Baja-style grill, bar.

15. Florentine’s Downtown Grill, 102 N. Harbor, (714) 879-7570. Gourmet food and bar, pool tables.

16. Tuscany Club, 100 N. Harbor, (714) 451-0017. Cosmopolitan bar and restaurant.

17. Steamers, 138 W. Commonwealth, (714) 871-8800. Jazz, sandwiches, beer and wine.

18. Stubrick’s Steakhouse, 118 E. Commonwealth, (714) 871-1290. Steaks and live jazz and blues.

19. The Slidebar Cafe, 122 E. Commonwealth (714) 871-2233. Rock-oriented restaurant/bar.

20. Heroes Bar & Grill, 125 W. Santa Fe, (714) 738-4365. Neighborhood bar and grill.

21. Continental Room, 115 W. Santa Fe, (714) 526-4529. Martini bar with unique decor.

22. Fullerton Transportation Center, 120 E. Santa Fe.