Former Village Voice columnist Tricia Romano has a piece in Thursday's New York Times profiling the phenomenon created by Ryan Heffington, a "choreographer, performance artist and designer" who has created something called "Sweaty Sundays," a weekly aerobics, errr, dance class held in a performance space in the heart of LA's very own Williamsburg.

Here, members of this creative class - artists, photographers, fashion designers and screenwriters - dance off the previous night's excesses to a soundtrack of indie rock, techno, and 1980s new wave hits. And they do it while looking fabulous in Jane Fonda leg warmers and belted leotards.

"It's kind of an American Apparel ad come to life," said Terence McFarland, 40, the executive director of the Los Angeles Stage Alliance, who is a regular.

On a recent Sunday, Christopher Kreiling, a 33-year-old visual artist, was among the first to arrive. It was his first time, but he already had the look down: a pair of very short white corduroy shorts, a pink-and-white striped tank top and the all-important headband.

"I just had 10 cigarettes and a coffee," he said. "I'm like, ‘O.K., let's go.' "

Heffington says that the class has become so popular with the local idiots that he's added a second Sunday class as well as a weeknight one called "Wet Wednesdays." And don't fret over not being able to participate in the fun yourself if you don't happen to live in the LA area, because there's a DVD coming soon. Yippee!

Now, the real question the article about this hideous trend brings up is what will the Williamsburg hipsters do to top it? Sorry Williamsburg, but your little kickball and tetherball retro-fitness trends don't stand up against this. You all need to step it the hell up! Surely it's the lack of availability of things such as "Sweaty Sundays" that stokes Tricia Romano's smoldering hatred of New York. Win back her dark, jaded heart! Do it for New York!

As an ex-New Yorker who is brand spanking new to L.A., the concept of downtown being a dead zone is quite strange. And having only driven through late at night (going the wrong way, on a one-way street, natch) I was curious to see what an L.A. downtown art walk would be like (held every second Thursday of the month from 12 to 9). Art Walks in Seattle’s Pioneer Square were fun, but were too often filled with "Look ma, I has knitted you a rainbow hat!"—a/k/a bad hippie art. And the Chelsea Art Walks in NYC were impenetrable and thick with snobbery and unintentional comedy: rich people wearing all black, posing seriously in front of pictures with their heads cocked just so to the sides. L.A.’s version proved to be far more pleasant and interesting—exhilarating even. Won't you join along as I take you on a photographic tour?

A fellow recently-imported New Yorker joined me via the red line subway, which she reported “was clean and pleasant, with no rats, and not too many people,” and arrived unscathed at our meeting place on Fifth and Main at the Spring Arts Collective Gallery, where the highlight (for me anyway), was a Cabbage Patch doll’s decapitated head in a cage by Kim Ye, and a series of twisted paintings where all the twee-looking subjects appeared to be peeing at the adjacent Clair Obscur Gallery.

That artist, Mari Araki, was part of an exhibit called Storybook Paintings. Also in that collection, were a series of extremely well done Tim Burton-esque fantasy paintings by Dany Paragouteva that seemed like they should be in a strange children’s book.

Around the corner, there was a room with eerie red lighting; and string of drawings formed a narrow hallway, which led to… a guy playing a harp. There were a cluster of beat up TVs, improbably, old toy Gizmos.

Said a guy sitting nearby, “Come back at 8:30, it’ll all come together.” We found out later this was the Soul or System. (Get it? Solar system! Or Soul system! Gah.)

Down the street we found a few huge photo realistic paintings. One was a close up of a hand being scorched by a lighter. The color was dark and rich and very carefully done. Then we noticed a man sitting in a rusty chair next to the paintings; he looked like he was part of the exhibit. It turned out to be the artist himself, Josh Talbott, who explained that he had done all the large painting in a studio in New York when he was hobbled with a broken leg, and then had to ship the monsters out to L.A.

The best collection was the LA Art Girl’s at the Phantom Gallery. For one thing, there was a unicorn.

There was also a giant gas mask.

And there was this piece (we couldn't figure out who did it.)

There was also a fundraising 'garage sale' called Selling In by Felis Stella (of which the proceeds went to Alzheimer's Association and the Cancer Research Institute). For sale: "Grandma's sewing machine."

This female-centric show was miles better than the one titled, "Where The Girls Are," featuring tiles of overexposed Dita Von Teese and a "performance art" piece by Tiffany Trenda called "Death of an Icon," in which she dances to Madonna's "Open Your Heart" video and then gets shot. The piece ends when a curator puts a card next to the bleeding artist and calls it a work of art. Just, no.

We made our way around to the other street, and found a clusterfuck of people on the sidewalks. It was after 7 by now, and the area was starting to fill up. There was a guy playing the sax next to a giant skull; a few feet away, a guy and his friend got to work redecorating a sofa with spraypaint and markers.

We were lured into one place with the promise that spoken word poetry by people from Greenwich Village would be on offer; instead, it seemed to be a community meeting about the overabundance of police in Skid Row. Next door, an exhibition of homeless art was mostly bad, except for a few pieces, including those of Darlene Altemeier.

Off the beaten path, a sidewalk sign with an arrow led us to Crewest, a pretty fab all-things-graffiti subculture shop. They had a minimalist funk band jamming the back room; someone doing screenprints; and a smorgasbord of interesting, politicized anti-police art, including the biting piece of commentary above and at right.

Last, but not least, the store Pussy & Pooch had an exhibition in its back room of cool animal paintings—like this pug.

But that, it turned out, was not the piece de resistance. That turned out to be cuts of fake lawn that you can buy from Petapotty.com, in case you don't have a yard. They can come complete with a hydrant.

Here's a Petapotty in action.

And with that image, I bid you adieu!

Hi. I'm Tricia Romano. I moved to Los Angeles four months ago from New York, a city I famously loathed, where I spent 8 years in the trenches at the Village Voice. I wrote the nightlife column, "Fly Life", for five of those years, and have the damaged liver to prove it. I also wrote features and cover stories for the paper, one of which won an award. I grew up in Las Vegas (no, we didn’t have slot machines in our classrooms), and lived in Seattle when it was trendy (i.e. after Nirvana broke) where I wrote for both the Stranger and the Seattle Weekly, and was an unabashed raver, before moving to New York. Since I am brand, spanking new to L.A., I have not yet soured on this whole spending-hours-of-your-life-in-traffic thing, and am excited to have summer all year long, and concur with Randy Newman: I love L.A.! I am currently living by the beach, and scraping up a living by penning articles for Radar, the Advocate, and MTV, among others. You can also find me hooking on Main Street.

And with that, please give Tricia a warm and rousing welcome!

[Photo Credit: Nikola Taminzdic]