Let the soft lights flicker and the laughter blend with the sweet smell of cloves and wine. But do not despair; despite the low lights and the stares from the other patrons, this is not your ordinary art scene.

Welcome the Everett Station, a place where the true impact of the arts is vivid and alive. A place where the lines between artistic risk and expression blend easily with an older neighborhood that is on the edge of gentrification.

Everett Station is a modern day, urban artist colony located on the western edge of Old Town. If you were to walk across the street you would enter the Tony neighborhood of The Pearl, a place where greed and avarice are still revered as trophies of social achievement.

What a difference a few feet makes; the attitude and vibe of the Old Town art scene is both invigorating and complex. Small installations from young people hang one door down from nationally renowned artists. The average gallery only offers a couple hundred square feet of display space and generally serves as an intimate setting for the dissemination of art that leans towards the esoteric.

The block of underground artist galleries with the occasional sprinkling of a retail establishment or transient hotel is on its face a lone outpost in the netherworld of outlaw artistic expression. Woe to the brave soul who chooses to engage the crowds of young and rowdy denizens.

To enter this area can be disconcerting for the casual observer, but like an exotic restaurant, the hardest thing is walking in. Once you do, you will be treated to the arts in a way that is seldom found in this part of the world. The artists are accomplished, but approachable. The art itself is on the vanguard of the art scene, a variety of mixed media and raw talent that reveals itself in a variety of different images and presentations.

But alas that is only the very thin veneer which paradoxically masks the true genius and genuine avant garde styles and expressions that are regularly displayed within the walls of these boutique galleries. This is certainly an outpost of the true art community in the North West; this place is a beach head for the vanguard of new artistic movements. This place is in a word: cool.

Many of the artists who live in the lofts upstairs will display at the block’s galleries and they give the visitor a rare chance to engage a truly talented person in a comfortable and modest space. The galleries are not the showcases here, as some of the better known and august repudiated spaces in town. Instead they offer their walls as an extended canvas for the mastery and the talent of the artist to show through.

So next time you make it out to First Thursday, put down your walking map, and put on your walking shoes. Come on downtown to where real art is evolving and incubating. Come to our side of the tracks and see the genius and deep talent that is only found in the outer realm of the art scene.