NEW HAVEN FOR A MUSIC COMMUNITY

After the Eaton fire, the upcoming Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena may help revive the area's scene

- BY AUGUST BROWN

WHEN KYLE WILKERSON was gutting the interior of the new Sid the Cat Auditorium in South Pasadena, he found reminders of the woman who first made it beautiful a hundred years ago.

“Lucile Lloyd was a prominent [Works Progress Administration] muralist; she did work all among the schools in this area,” said concert promoter Wilkerson. “There are photos of her in menswear smoking up in the rafters back in the 1930s. She had a tragic life, and ended up committing suicide. We thought all of the panels she did here were gone.” “But then right before Christmas,” he continued, “one of the ceiling panels had started cracking. I looked up and I was like, ‘They're still there.’ The light was still shining in.”

A few gorgeous floral stencils, small sculptures and a stained glass window remain from Lloyd’s work in the auditorium of the former South Pasadena elementary school, which closed to students in 1979. But she was a muse for the team at Sid the Cat, an independent concert promoter that has put on shows across L.A. for over a decade. It'll finally have the rambling, meticulously restored historic venue of its dreams opening this fall.

Less than a year after the Eaton fire destroyed Altadena, a nearby neighborhood beloved by generations of musicians, the 500-capacity venue is a sign of new life returning to the area’s arts scene.

“The first thing we thought of when the fires happened was ‘What can we do to help?’ The second was ‘I wish we were open already, because we could have done food drives and shows to raise funds,’ ” Wilkerson said. “It’s a very fragile little ecosystem that we're a part of here.”