It was a warm Friday evening. All I wanted for dinner was a burger and a beer to launch the weekend.

Not pizza and beer. Not wine and burger. My gustatory sweet spot demanded cow in a bun and a full-bodied brew.

That’s how I came to be sitting on a tall stool at Taylor’s Refresher. While Cheryl snacked on her fish tacos, I attacked my burger and quaffed a pint of Napa Smith wheat.

On the other side of Taylor’s plate glass windows, the recently invented Oxbow District hummed.

Across McKinstry Street, silhouetted bodies could be seen socializing in two new wine tasting rooms.

People wine taste at this hour? Yes they do.

Across First Street at Filippi’s, dinner tables lined the sidewalk. The pizza crowd was starting to pour in.

At Taylor’s, the joint was already jumping. To my right, a booth was filled with three dads and a gaggle of boys. The dads were sampling from four bottles of wine. I counted again. I was right the first time.

How Napa Valley. Where else do soccer dads — or were they martial-arts dads? — break open ultra-fine wines while their kids stick French fries up their noses?

Eavesdropping, I learned that one of the dads was in the wine biz. Premium wine was his life. It all figured.

And suddenly the Oxbow District figured, too. Once a vague concept, a wasteland that awaited Napa Valley Wine Train and Copia to boldly plant the first tourism flags, the Oxbow now pulsates with life.

The people chomping down on garlic fries and burgers at Taylor’s appeared mostly to be local. Those in the tasting rooms across the way were certainly tourists. Busloads of dressed-up folks streamed by for Copia. More tourists.

We and they were happily coexisting. The Oxbow District as peaceable kingdom.

For adventure, we decided to walk down McKinstry — dark, dark, McKinstry, with a long stretch lacking street lights — and check out the new Westin Verasa hotel.

Going, we passed a guy loading three cases of wine into his trunk. Returning, a gent passed us holding a bottle of wine in each hand. Such wine craziness. Who knew?

Despite being dressed like rubes, we strolled through the Westin lobby — crisp, subdued, lightly populated — and out through the pool area to the river walk.

Within a few years, this path will lead as far north as Trancas Street and south to Kennedy Park. For now it’s a stub of a path shared with the River Terrace Inn next door. We walked the stub, engulfed in the quietude of the river at night.

Except that music could be heard in the distance. The rock beat washed over the Oxbow District. Someone nearby was having a good time.

An event at the Expo? The direction was all wrong.

Then it hit me. We were hearing high-decibel Friday night entertainment at the new Veteran’s Memorial Park on Main Street.

We went over and checked it out. Several hundred people were splayed out on the grassy amphitheater on a balmy evening free of river chill. During band changes, belly dancers were shaking and shimmying. Tumblers came out and did flips. A woman walked across the stage on stilts.

It was surreal. It was magical. An improvised Friday night festival for us locals. (Entertainment has now ended until next summer.)

As someone who typically huddles at home with a video on Friday nights, all this downtown-Oxbow action was mind-boggling.

A burger at Taylor’s, a concert at Vets park. An evening walkabout on the new bridges where the Victorian-style lights  reflected romantically off the river. Lots of sidewalk hustle.

Was this the new downtown that city leaders talk about? The 24/7 downtown that works for tourists and locals? This wasn’t just a line of bull?

It all felt pretty good. Cheryl and I were as energized as if we’d strolled through San Francisco’s North Beach.

But how to cap this evening? Jazz at Uva’s? Dessert at the Bounty Hunter?

Possibly. But this was Friday night. In the autumn of the year. Wasn’t there a football game at Memorial Stadium?

We got there just before half-time. It was perfect timing for a band family. We got to see the tubas.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com