The moon rose high above Burbank on Friday and, like obedient werewolves, devotees of esoteric perfume house Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab came out to play.

Costumed as sinister witches or swashbuckling pirates, customers from all over Los Angeles gathered at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, or BPAL, to indulge and sample the hundreds of scents that are available only online except on nights of the full moon.

Once a month, BPAL's chief alchemist, Elizabeth Barrial, and her fellow potion peddlers offer their hand-crafted blends and brews at the horror shop Dark Delicacies. At this month's event, the store swelled with darkly-clad BPAL customers stirring with Halloween-season excitement and ready for the olfactory experience before them.

Amy Ratcliffe, 29, was first drawn to BPAL for its Shakespeare line and has been coming to the full moon will-calls for four years.

"I'm addicted," Ratcliffe said. "I've seen people quadrant off their arms and write all the scents they've tried. It gets very serious."

But there's plenty of whimsy. A long-locked Frankenstein shoved scented bath powder in front of noses.

"Doesn't this smell like feet?" he laughed. The Frankenstein was Ted Barrial, Elizabeth's husband and head of BPAL's Trading Post, which has a collection of items that pay homage to the lab.

"I kind of like it," said the assaulted customer, Bailey Dukes, 26.

The general sentiment of BPAL's creators and followers is that it's less about smelling divine than it is about a sniff of perfume transforming who you are. Experimentation reigns. Several full moon event-goers searched the steel-crafted showcase stacked with hundreds of vials for a scent to match their Halloween characters.

The black-lipsticked Elizabeth Barrial was up to the task, bobbing up and down the store and pulling out scented products grotesque or lovely. Her own Halloween memories are bottled and named after the cities where she spent them. As she sends customers away with a signature Halloween scent, they're also leaving with memories that can be conjured up again and again.

The next full moon Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab will-call event is scheduled for Nov. 21 at Dark Delicacies, 3512 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank.

-- Sophia Kercher

Photo: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's chief potion-maker Elizabeth Barrial helps find a possibly magical scent for a customer. Credit: Sophia Kercher

On Saturday the Los Angeles Convention Center will swell with teenagers clad in skinny jeans and neon T-shirts ready to battle. This is not your typical uniform for a fight, and the “battle” doesn't involve fists but rather the fancy footwork of jerkin' crews flaunting their skills and fresh street style.

Forty dance crews will be competing for the title of NJA (National Jerkin’ Assn.) L.A. Champion.

Culver City's Royal/T cafe and art space has a reputation for bringing a world of whimsy to Los Angeles. Not only for the space’s signature Japanese tearoom with servers dressed as fetish-ized maids, but for its bizzaro pop culture-infused art and fashion events.

Thursday night was no different as gallery-goers were invited to “fall down the rabbit hole” and peruse Susan Hancock’s lowbrow art collection and a pop-up shop curated by local designer Jared Gold. A hodgepodge of top hats and petty coats nibbled on “Eat Me” cupcakes and sipped absinthe-infused spirits in the "Alice in Wonderland"-themed affair.

We stepped into the fairytale setting of Royal/T's pop-up shop, and from the collection of teapots and mushrooms, up sprang designer Jared Gold. In a bow tie and paisley shirt, Gold looked like he just stepped out of the pages of a storybook.

The shop featured Wonderland-esque hand bags, dark sheaths, leggings trimmed with fringe and charming miniature gardens, among other items. Arguably the most exciting of Gold’s featured designs were his fanciful accessories.

The founder of My Mom, the Style Icon, a blog that’s dedicated to retro fashions and the everyday women wearing them, recently signed on with Chronicle Books. The book is slated to be published in 2011.

Aaron Small and Jessica Rosenberg, collaborators on the eyebrow-raising hipsteristhenewhomeless.com, describe themselves as "cultural anthropologists with an eye for plaid." The website recently went live, and is quickly garnering reactions like "Totes epic" and "Quit your day job,"  from a growing band of followers.