February has quite a few holidays for everyone– there’s Valentine’s Day, which was last week, and Mardi Gras, which was earlier this week, and now we’re in the midst of the celebrations ushering in the Year of the Pig, thanks to the Lunar New Year. While we’ve never really adequately celebrated Mardi Gras the way it should be, and we’ll probably have a nice Chinese meal to celebrate pigging out, we always do Valentine’s Day (and yes, for the record, it was largely a holiday I’ve had mixed feelings about. Someone needs to invent Lonelyheart’s Day, quick).

But this year, we decided to do something different. We both had to work, since it was a Wednesday, and on top of that, we received an offer we couldn’t refuse. So we did our dinner and mushy evening on the weekend, when we could properly enjoy the moment, and instead on February 14, we went to an evening of burlesque and Mexican wrestling.

A good friend of ours raved about the evening, and painted such a vivid picture that we plunked down some serious money for ringside tickets, but boy, we weren’t disappointed. The show, Lucha VaVoom, played at the old Mayan Theatre in downtown L.A. The Mayan was once one of the many spectacular movie houses in downtown Los Angeles (most of which were on Broadway, a couple of blocks over). It was built in 1927, and has survived to the present day. Like many theaters, the Mayan went through several incarnations, including a period where it was an adult film joint. Today, it’s a club, and has been restored to a large extent. It’s the kind of place that I wish was still showing movies. Instead, we get to watch motion pictures not in grand and glorious venues, but in dinky storage warehouse-sized halls with no unique or identifying features. If Hollywood really wanted to boost its profits, it should encourage the revival of single-screen palaces.

But I digress… I rushed downtown from work to meet my eternal date and our friends, and stood in line waiting to get inside. I wasn’t able to get a good shot (it was night, for one thing!) of the exterior, but here’s what the Mayan looks like from outside. Inside was an absolute treasure. If you go to the link by clicking on “Mayan Theatre” above, you’ll see some great pictures of the interior. I took a few, but they don’t really do justice to the old theatre. Still, I’ll put up a couple anyway, so you can sort of get an idea.

That’s a picture of the ceiling– if I go back again, I’ll try to remember to bring the camera with me and take a picture during the intermission, or at a time when more of the lights are on. It was kinda dark and the floor lights were on, so taking a picture of the walls or ceiling was a bit of a challenge. Here’s a picture of one of the wall decorations in one of the hallways (which accounts for the better quality of the photo!) — it was all in a general Aztec/Mayan theme.

It’s almost like a movie set, which is why I love the old movie houses of yore. It’s definitely a cool place to hang out!

During the pre-show, two large screens on either side of the stage showed old-style Mexican wrestling movies, which I suspect were actual films that were edited to include some of the wrestlers we’d be seeing. Then again, I could be wrong– it could be that they were actual movies. We were on the floor, in folding chairs, in the “ringside” section, while a large number of people were behind us, standing by the bar, and quite a few paid a lesser price to sit in the balcony section, and cheer on the action from the loge.

Soon the lights dimmed, and the evening started. We were treated first to what I called the “Tiger Girls”– it’s possible these were the “Glamazons” mentioned on the Lucha VaVoom homepage. But in any event, they were curvy, real women– not the stick figures you see in movies and magazines, and they were running wild! We were treated to a mild strip show (no full nudity at any point in the evening– these ladies and gents were performing in the true spirit of burlesque), and then it was on to the main event. Here’s a pic of these luscious ladies, who did a great job of getting us all in the mood of the evening!

For the rest of the evening, we saw wrestling matches between beefy Mexican wrestlers in loud, colorful costumes– the wrestling style was similar to WWF wrestling, only this was far more entertaining, and quite a few of the wrestlers put on mini-shows of their own either before, after, or even sometimes during their time in the ring. Strutting, prancing, shouting, gesturing– the wrestlers were a veritable show in themselves.

These guys on the left are Los Gallineros, and they definitely added a degree of spice and weirdness to the evening, as they gobbled (or *tried* to gobble) up their competition in the ring. The fella in the white outfit entering the ring was both hilarious and disgusting, for he brought more than his share of scatological humor into his performance.

Later in the evening, after the intermission, we saw the wrestlers close up. From time to time, a wrestler would be thrown out of the ring, or tumble outside the ropes, to be quickly followed by his opponent, who would then bang him up in a close-up for the benefit of the ringside audience. We weren’t spared the scuffling, for two wrestlers knocked down our chairs and “wrestled” right in front of us.

The guy on the floor seems to be Blue Demon Jr. I’m not sure what they call his attacker– I kept thinking of Dino from the old “Flintstones” show, but suffice it to say, his costume was one of the more interesting (and somewhat garish!) outfits of the evening. [Since I wrote this entry, I’ve discovered our purple friend is none other than El Chupacabra]

After each round, we were treated to dancing, acrobatics, and partial stripshows, all in the tradition of old-time burlesque. Here’s an example of a gorgeous dancer. There was nothing airbrushed or fake about these women. A few of them clearly had cellulite, and they had curves in all the right places, but they were sexy as hell, let me tell you!

While the show was definitely not for minors (and minors weren’t allowed in, anyway), there was nothing gauche about it– just a bit of raunch, a lot of garishness, a bit of cheese here and there, and overall, just a very entertaining evening.

We’ll no doubt have our evenings of moonlight and roses on the Valentine’s Days to come, but this was definitely a February 14 we’ll always remember. Besides, as I told my walking partner, “Every day is Valentine’s Day with you.”