Arts DEVO

Three things to know about Chico

Hello new (and returning) students—Arts DEVO welcomes you to Chico. Now open your geography books (by which I mean Google Maps) and look up Chico. Do you see it? It’s kind of northeast of Bayliss … you know, south of Inskip. That’s it. Right there, that dot more than an hour away from anything you might want to drive to. Take it from this old dude, there really is nowhere to go but here. So, you might as well know your way around. How’s the saying go? Is it good things (bad things?) that come in threes? Well, by some cosmic triangular convergence, it turns out that everything you might need to know about enjoying Chico is arranged in easy-to-remember trifectas:

•Three all-ages venues for music lovers: Monstros Pizza (punk/indie); Café Culture (Latin, reggae, folk); Café Coda (rock, indie, metal, folk).

•Three all-ages venues that serve coffee with live music, poetry and art: Empire Coffee; Has Beans; Café Flo.

•Three 21-over venues for drinking and talking during the live music: LaSalles; Lost on Main; Nick’s Night Club.

•Three places to see big shows featuring world-class performers: Sierra Nevada Big Room; Laxson Auditorium at Chico State (Chico Performances); Chico Women’s Club (North Valley Productions).

•Three places to see big shows featuring touring bands that someone under 30 might want to hear: El Rey Theatre (J-Max Productions); Senator Theatre (also J-Max); BMU Auditorium, Chico State (A.S. Presents).

•Three providers of music and arts programming at Chico State: Chico Performances (visiting world-class speakers, dancers, actors, plus top blues, world, jazz, bluegrass and country musicians); School of the Arts (music, theater and art produced by students and faculty); A.S. Presents (hip music, etc., presented by Associated Students).

•Three wild community theater experiences: Chico Cabaret (musicals, farces and leaders in “underpants theater”—Rocky Horror starts Oct. 1); Blue Room Theatre (heart of Chico’s theater scene with diverse selections and irreverent late-night fare); Rogue Theatre (sometimes serious, sometimes offbeat, always challenging company putting on shows at 1078 Gallery).

•Three less-wild but still excellent ways to experience theater: Chico State’s Theater Department (actually, the student productions are pretty wild—first up: The Great American Trailer Park, Sept. 30-Oct. 4); Butte College Theatre Department (with amazing new facility and same terrific instructors, this is the group to keep an eye on this year); Chico Theater Co. (Broadway classics).

•Three wild cards: Paradise Lost (DVD store that hosts occasional epic metal shows); Studio 46 (artists on the edge of town hosting occasional epic punk/indie-rock dance parties); Tion (artists on the other edge of town possibly still hosting epic electronic, indie and performance-art happenings).

•Three options for enjoying spoken words: Has Beans Coffee’s Open Mikefull series (normally Thursdays, 7 p.m.—during remodeling, series moved to Café Culture on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. starting Sept. 2); Chico Poetry Slam (every two weeks at Café Culture beginning Aug. 27); Café Flo (irregular but frequent open-mic and poetry nights).

•Three options for enjoying the written word … spoken: Lyon Books (author readings at downtown shop); 1078 Gallery (seasonal writing series featuring multiple genres); Chico State’s Writers’ Voice series.

•Three that do it all: Café Culture (lively selection of music, dance, spoken word and food); 1078 Gallery (all art all the time—painting, sculpture, multimedia, film, music, theater, literature and more); Chikoko (fashion collective putting on the best cross-discipline art, performance, fashion parties in town).

•Three on-campus galleries: University Art Gallery at Chico State; Humanities Gallery at Chico State; Coyote Gallery at Butte College.

•Three (great) off-campus galleries: 1078 Gallery; Chico Art Center; Avenue 9 Gallery.

•Three, and only three, options for cinema: The Pageant Theatre (Chico’s art house); University Film Series (eclectic films every Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., in Ayres on the Chico State campus); Tinseltown: Cinemark 14 multiplex.