When we arrived at Veterans Memorial Park a week ago Friday, the sun had set, but there was plenty of light in the sky. Hundreds of people were spread out on the terraces overlooking the Napa River.

In the plaza at the river’s edge, a sextet of youngsters stood under professionally-arranged stage lights, flanked by black amplifiers, pumping out Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and other classic rock standards.

Some people danced in front of the stage. A skinny dude raced along the walkway, throwing glow sticks up into the crowd.

This was not the infamously dead downtown Napa, the place without a there there, the downtown center that slips in comparison to Sonoma and its historic square surrounded by buzzing restaurants, or even Petaluma, with its mixture of revitalized arts spaces and classic old buildings leased to restaurants serving up cioppino or frozen martinis.

Downtown Napa was jumping — with locals — on a Friday night. Who’da thunk it?

Register reporter Kevin Courtney and his wife, Cheryl, were planted on the concrete edge of the terrace below us. Kevin was scribbling notes for what turned out to be his column today. Cheryl was watching for her son, Jonathan, the bassman to take the stage and help deliver a little Motley Crue to the people.

Register pressman Dana Rogerson and some of his younger relatives were camped one terrace behind us, near an all-girl gaggle of teens that was not interacting in any way, shape or form with a nearby all-boy gaggle of teens.

While nearby visitors had no doubt trekked from afar to visit Ubuntu restaurant two blocks this way, and though mighty TV chef Emeril Lagasse had recently been spotted at Celadon a couple of blocks that way, this was a local crowd.

The imminent arrival of the new downtown Napa has been a topic since I joined this newspaper six years ago and — based on my perusal of 20 years of Kevin Courtney’s Napa Journal columns — long before that.

As an editor, I am skeptical of many people and things, including downtown rebirth, reporters, publishers, publicists, developers, elected officials, town hall meetings, tea parties, $15 glasses of wine, even the motivation of my wife’s hound when she decides to give me a perfectly pleasant lick and wag right around dinner time.

But there was nothing to be skeptical about while watching a band play as the Napa River and Mount George faded to ever darker shades and an appreciative crowd took in the night air and downtown Napa scene.