{"id":5201,"date":"2011-04-26T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/a-personal-example-of-blair-cohn-s-try-anything-approach\/"},"modified":"2011-04-26T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T21:15:00","slug":"a-personal-example-of-blair-cohn-s-try-anything-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/a-personal-example-of-blair-cohn-s-try-anything-approach","title":{"rendered":"A Personal Example of Blair Cohn’s ‘Try Anything’ Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/span>
Blair Cohn, left, and Greggory Moore at the April First Fridays event in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood.<\/em>
 <\/span>
 <\/span>6:01pm |<\/strong><\/span> You may have heard (<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/span>here<\/a>, for example) of Blair Cohn, executive director of the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, he of First Fridays and the general resurgence Bixby Knolls has enjoyed in recent times.<\/font><\/p>\n

Any visit to Bixby Knolls’ main drag of Atlantic Avenue on the first Friday of the month might clue you in to the fact that part of Cohn’s credo is a willingness to try anything. The man simply does not blink at the notion of mixing disparate elements. Pirates and a guy on stilts. Straight-ahead jazz combos and hula dancing. Live painting and a poetry box. The Big Red Bus and the Knolls Ranger. Horses and karaoke. DJs in hair salons. He’s tossing a community salad with whatever ingredients are handy, and people are eating it up.<\/font><\/p>\n

So when I finished <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/span>my novel<\/a> and started looking to line up a series of readings, Cohn was somebody I was damn sure going to talk to.<\/font><\/p>\n

In the span of about 10 minutes when we sat down a couple of weeks ago, Cohn rattled off several ideas. (The man never lacks for ideas.) These included the following, which I paraphrase: “Our Spring Fling Dance Party at the Petroleum Club is coming up. How about we set you up in a room there and you do a reading, then everybody can come out and dance?”<\/font><\/p>\n

A novel reading in the middle of a dance party? Well, why not? So that’s exactly what we’re doing. This Friday, April 29, the Spring Fling Dance Party starts at 8 p.m. At 8:30 p.m., from a room deep within the Petroleum Club, I will be reading selected sections from <\/font>The Use of Regret<\/em> for about 45 minutes or so, then dancing the rest of the night away to the tunes being spun by DJ Bill Child.<\/font><\/p>\n

Depending on how you look at it, this is a story about Blair Cohn’s willingness to experiment, or a piece of shameless self-promotion on my part, or yet another fine example of Long Beach’s creative connectivity, or I don’t know what. Try anything. If you don’t like it, ignore it.<\/font><\/p>\n

Otherwise, see you there?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Long Beach Petroleum Club<\/a><\/em> is located at 3636 Linden Ave. The Bixby Knolls Spring Fling Dance Party begins at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 29 (reading at 8:30 p.m.). For more information, here’s <\/font>a fab Facebook event page<\/a> for ya.<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have heard of Blair Cohn, executive director of the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, he of First Fridays and the general resurgence Bixby Knolls has enjoyed in recent times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":70033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}