My wife said that only I could turn hanging out in bars into an art form.

I've been taking more black-and-white pictures of the bars downtown and making them into a gallery on my site.

You can see an article about the technique and a link to the gallery here: http://www.markholmesphoto.com/news/103-film-noir-photography.html

Three of the bars in the gallery are very new.

Quality Social in the Gaslamp seems a pretty strange name for a bar to me. I visited on a quiet Saturday afternoon. The bar seems set up to cater for the young weekend crowd as it has large open areas where standing crowds can mingle.

Prosper is the new restaurant in the Park at the Park. The theme is vaguely British and the food is quite good. I tried the shepherds pie, which I am glad to say was made with lamb. If you make it with beef, then it should be called a cottage pie. Anyway, I was not totally impressed with it, having been brought up on my Grandmother's shepherds pie. Next time I intend to try the fish and chips, which is the real test!

Prosper has a rooftop bar, somewhat lacking in shade, which is accessed through a corridor and stairway at the back of the main downstairs bar.

The other new bar I went to is El Camino in Little Italy. It's where the Airport Lounge used to be on India near the freeway overpass. The bar has a DJ playing at weekends and cheap mimosas on Sundays. Last Sunday it was packed out with young women taking advantage of the drinks specials. It has a Day of the Dead theme and seems to attract the Pacific Beach type crowd.

I am seeing my friend Patsy today, but will be careful not to post any compromising pictures here that might attract further comment!

www.markholmesphoto.com