LA Comic Con ’23: Between The Cons — Rainbows, Vampires, Raw Fish, And Grappling

Conventions are a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, convention adjacent activities are equally important as anything that happens on the floor.  These con weekends are some of the only times that I get to hang out with many of my favorite people, and those social interactions are meaningful. 

I also try to get an extra day on the front or back side of each of my trips, to check out the local flavor. When I’m in Colorado for Denver Pop Culture Con (now FanExpo Denver), I make sure to eat once at The Buckhorn Exchange and take the Molly Brown House tour. In Kansas City, I want to eat some terrible Mexican food and drink a bag of margarita.

While planning my days and nights for Los Angeles Comic Con, I checked some of my entertainment apps to see if there was a show or an experience that I could work in. On the third or fourth page, I found the one. Sumo+Sushi. 

I have always been fascinated by sumo, and I had never had real sushi. My level of experience with Japanese food is the premade California rolls from Costco. I pitched the idea to our Editor-in-Chief Erik Amaya, and one of our favorite PR reps, Melissa Meszaros. They both decided it was easiest to humor me and go to the show. 

We opted to grab a decent sized late lunch prior to the sumo show, because we didn’t really know how much food they’d actually be serving. Like, what is one sushi? Is that a plate? A few pieces? A whole brick? I definitely didn’t want to be watching Japan’s national sport on an empty stomach. 

Melissa recommended the iconic Rainbow Bar & Grill for pre-sushi. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and in Southern California for almost two decades. I’ve been to Sunset Boulevard dozens of times. I parked on the top floor of Kaiser Sunset’s parking structure for years before finally noticing you could see the Hollywood sign from that vantage. Literally straight out the windshield, there it is. Almost a decade, that took. In all those visits, it never even occurred to me to drive a couple blocks to see the historic Rainbow. 

So, anyway, cool. Rainbow. Lemmy Kilmister. Slash. Ritchie Blackmore. Led Zeppelin. I’m in. 

Erik and I got there first and requested the Slash table. No dice. Someone was already seated. We got the Zeppelin table instead. Fair, though, because the vantage point made me king of the entire Rainbow Room. I could see every corner of the first floor, the door, the bar… Best seat in the house. We got some drinks, ordered a hippie chicken pizza, and started talking about the rest of the weekend, Melissa’s book getting optioned into a movie, and then Melissa mentioned something about an exclusive upstairs hangout at the Rainbow. Something about vampires. 

Hold up. What? 

I guess there was a club called The Hollywood Vampires that used to hang out at the Rainbow. Led by President Alice Cooper, other members included VP Keith Moon, Treasurer Bob Brown, and, here’s where it gets wild, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nillson, and, get this, Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. 

By this point, I was obsessed. I had to see this Lair of the Hollywood Vampires. So I asked, and our waitress Dani said yes, she would be happy to take us upstairs to look around. 

After she wrapped up one of her other tables, Dani led us up the stairs into another complete bar setup behind the restrooms. At the back of this second bar was a painted sign on the wall listing the officers and founding members of The Hollywood Vampires. Next to that was a set of stairs leading into the tiniest room I’ve ever seen, with a couple small tables with benches. The Hollywood Vampires must’ve all been Lilliputian in stature. I’m tall, but not huge, and I had to duck for most of the doors and ceilings. It was like a cool adult treehouse. I want one.

Before we left, we made sure to say hey to Lemmy on the patio where he used to hang out. A slightly larger than life-sized bronze statue of the Motörhead front man now stands on the patio for fans to pay tribute and pose with. We also met Lili, another one of the beautiful people who keep the Rainbow awesome, who told us to make sure to look out for her on the show floor on Saturday, where she would be cosplaying.

And then we took off to get over to the venue for Sumo+Sushi. We had talked about recording a video at the Rainbow to put up on the Comicon YouTube, but we were missing a mic cord, and the music playing on the speakers would have jammed us up with YouTube rules. We did try to record something on the car ride across town, but I have no idea how that went. I had had a few whiskeys neat by this point. That recording could be golden or it could be absolute shit. We’ll likely never know. 

The Barker Hangar is an actual 41,000 square foot airplane hangar that’s been modified into a highly customizable show venue. It is not much to look at from the outside. Gravel lot, huge steel building, weird blood red lighting outside. Inside was a totally different story. Behind a huge set of curtains, there was an elevated sumo ring, a couple sets of bleachers, and long tables for the folks that had purchased sushi meals with their tickets. Very classy. 

Konishiki, the first gaijin to reach ōzeki, the second-highest possible sumo rank, emceed an incredibly educational and entertaining night of grappling and raw fish. 

This sushi was much better than that Costco crap. The wrestling itself was broken into three sessions. In the first, they explained the rules and demonstrated different holds and techniques. Then the sumotori demonstrated the absolutely bonkers level of flexibility and strength it takes to participate in sumo at the highest levels. Have you ever seen a 400+ lb. man do a perfect split? Because I have. It’s a thing of beauty. In the last block, the lads absolutely destroyed each other in the dohyō in a series of intense matches.

And that was Friday. Pizza and Vampires at the Rainbow. Sumo and Sushi at the Barker Hangar. A lost recording about…? I don’t remember. Here’s a pic of Rainbow Room Lili in full cosplay at the LA Convention Center on Saturday.