Star Junction sells the night back to itself.

Star Junction completed its seasonal transformation Friday night from crowded commercial district to crowded commercial district photographed from below. Twelve venues claimed openings, reopenings or private previews within six blocks.

The largest line belonged to the Majestic, where a restored crime melodrama drew an audience divided between people who remembered the original and people dressed as if they had financed it. The restoration added six minutes, removed three scratches and preserved every cigarette.

Across the avenue, a restaurant without a sign served a menu without prices to guests whose names appeared on a list without explanation. Cloe Parker arrived after midnight, stayed for seventeen minutes and generated forty-two minutes of sidewalk discussion about whether she had been inside at all.

The district's smaller rooms offered the stronger work. A Bohan photographer filled a former ticket office with long exposures of the elevated line. Two blocks south, a Dukes theater collective staged a comedy about municipal procurement that ended before its funding did.

City crews closed one lane for crowd control and two more for equipment storage. Drivers responded with the traditional Liberty City review: sustained horns, open windows and a vocabulary omitted from the arts calendar.

By 2 a.m., the marquees remained bright, the sidewalks remained full and every publicist had declared the weekend historic. The historic district sanitation shift began at 3:15.