Come Together, Ambassador Sells Out, Camp Casey L.A.,
It's Lieu!, Mom & Pops, Unite!

[Hurricane Relief]

Come Together

They say no good deed goes unpunished, but, really – doesn't hurricane relief create special circumstances? Evidently not for the owners of Shenanigans Gentlemen's Club, where four porn actresses-turned-bikini-clad “brawlers” tried to drum up donations for Gulf Coast disaster victims.

Their act is called the Bikini Brawl and it's nothing new – one was staged at Arcadia's Spearmint Rhino on August 6, and by all accounts (at least those provided by the actresses who performed in it and their manager, a guy who goes by the name raVen), went off without a stitch, err, hitch.

But managers at Shenanigans, an all-nude dance club tucked away in central Van Nuys where ominous-looking guards wear black sunglasses, black uniforms, and openly carry guns and handcuffs, were having none of it, saying the Bikini Brawl amounted to a live sex show. Touching is simply not allowed at Shenanigans. “This is not a sexual encounters establishment. So if there are sexual encounters, it violates our license. All you have to do is comply with the municipal code, and this [show] does not,” said the club's Jahad Trammell. The group's insistence on filming the show for DVD sales and its website was apparently another big bone of contention for Shenanigans.

The Bikini Brawlers tried to downplay the actual sexual encounters that occurred during a performance, but a visit to BikiniBrawl.net shows that Trammell has a point. There is plenty of nudity, and lots of intimate contact, much of it done with hands and mouths on exposed breasts and other sensitive areas.

The performers, however, were disappointed that they couldn't do something to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. “We have a lot of compassion for people who have lost everything and have to start their lives over again,” said Alana Evans, who has appeared in a number of porn movies and is one of the stars of the Bikini Brawl show. Evans said she volunteered time last week at the Dream Center, the former Queen of Angels Hospital in Echo Park that is now serving as an evacuation center for disaster victims.

“It's, like, this is what we can do. I still feel helpless,” chimed in fellow porn star and Bikini Brawler Trina Michaels.

“This is the first time we could come together for a good cause,” said Evans.

Trammell said the club still planned to donate the evening's proceeds to the Red Cross Relief Fund, which is where Bikini Brawl wanted its contributions to go. “This is their own hustle,” Trammell said. “But we could lose our license just because someone wanted to make a couple hundred dollars.”

–Kevin Uhrich

[L.A. History]

Ambassador Sells Out

Not too many auctions get this kind of buzz. The crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, helicopters circling overhead as TV news teams jostled for position. Photographers snapped away. Hundreds of people had come to bid on the remnants of the historic Ambassador Hotel and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, now the property of the L.A. Unified School District and soon to be demolished to make way for a new school complex.

The crowd was an unlikely mix of millionaires and hippies, filmmakers and historians, hipsters in big sunglasses and seniors in high pants, united by a common nostalgia for L.A.'s glamorous past. “This is the last hoorah,” said Milton Burrow, a retired sound editor who has worked on Burt Reynolds movies. “I went to the Cocoanut Grove as a kid back in 1939, 1940. It was gorgeous … you had Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, the best. You used to have to save up for two months to take a girl to this place.”

As the last hoorah for a locale that hosted every celebrity from Charlie Chaplin to Richard Nixon, and several Oscar ceremonies, it was a pretty unglamorous scene. After Donald Trump bought it in the 1980s, the hotel stood vacant for more than two decades and was stripped of doorknobs, silverware, and most everything else worth taking. Saturday's auction looked to be made up of what was either too heavy (an enormous and beautiful antique safe) or too crappy (ugly '70s lamps with water damage) to have been carried off before. But it didn't seem to matter much to the people bidding, who paid top-dollar for nearly everything there.

Margaret Burk, who was a manager at the hotel for more than 25 years, was there signing copies of a book she wrote about the place. “I loved every minute of it,” she said of her time there, grinning.

By the end of the day, $80,000 had been raised for the school district, the building was empty, and the Ambassador was poised to fade into history.

–Jeremy Freed

[Iraq War]

Camp Casey L.A.

“You don't speak for me Cindy!” yelled one driver as he rolled past war protester Cindy Sheehan, who was holding a press conference outside Henry Waxman's office in Los Angeles on Friday, September 9. Later, the same man returned to protest from across the street, waving a Colonial-era American flag with 13 stars, and began shouting his support for the war in Iraq.

Sheehan was in California as part of a 42-state bus tour to lobby members of Congress, and speak at antiwar rallies. In Los Angeles, she urged President Bush to adopt a timeline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, but since he had refused to meet with her at Camp Casey, across the street from his Crawford, Texas ranch, she had turned her attention to Congress.

As Sheehan continued to speak, more scattered boos and cries of “God bless America!” were flung from passing cars. If Sheehan noticed, she never showed any sign of it. Surrounded by a growing crowd of supporters holding pictures of wounded Iraqi children, she continued to speak, plainly and firmly, as if she had become so used to the cameras and crowds surrounding her that she didn't even notice them any longer.

Senator Barbara Boxer, she said, was “on board” with introducing timetable legislation. Sheehan also met with the staff of Senator Dianne Feinstein, whom she said had presented “false barriers” as to why she would not support a withdrawal.

Although Waxman's staff, like Feinstein's, told Sheehan that he was not endorsing a plan to withdraw troops at this time, Sheehan did not mention it at the press conference. Sheehan only said she had a “good meeting” with Waxman's staff. He is not supporting House Resolution 55, introduced by a group of congressmen that includes Dennis Kucinich, which would require Bush to name a definitive date for the initiation of a full-scale withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The resolution requires that the date be no later than October 1, 2006.

The man across the four-lane road turned out to be a former soldier, who did not serve in Iraq. When asked about U.S. soldiers speaking out against the war, he claimed he “was not aware of any,” and declined an invitation to speak with Jeff Kay, a member of the Veterans for Peace group that has been protesting the war.

So he stayed on his side of the street, and the Sheehan supporters stayed on theirs.

–Dan Abendschein

[Election]

It's Lieu!

In a special election held Tuesday to fill the vacant Assembly seat in the 53rd District, Democratic Torrance City Councilman Ted Lieu has won by a (still unofficial) landslide of 59.89 percent. He was the former campaign manager for Mike Gordon, the just-elected assemblyman from that district who died suddenly in June of a brain tumor. Turnout was light, at 16.9 percent.

[Big Box]

Mom & Pops, Unite!

Residents lined up in front of the deserted building as early as 7 a.m. Families, store owners, and even two elderly ladies in electric scooters were there to wave their brightly colored signs. One woman driving by, enjoying her last day of summer vacation, stopped to join. “We're going against the big Goliath,” said resident Joe Barrett, 46.

On Wednesday, September 7, the No Home Depot Campaign (NHDC) of Sunland-Tujunga led a 12-hour sidewalk picket demonstration to keep the notorious do-it-yourself company with the bright orange buildings from moving in on the property that was formerly an old Kmart.

Led by Barrett, the NHDC chairman, as many as 50 people showed up to protest the retail chain and support local mom-and-pop-owned stores. The battle against the big-box giants has become familiar in L.A. County, where activists in both Inglewood and Rosemead have waged aggressive campaigns to keep Wal-Marts out of their local business districts.

After Kmart went bankrupt, the Foothill Boulevard building was one of 28 in the area bought out by Home Depot. Five months later in March, inspired by a letter written by Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, Barrett sat down and started a website to vent his anger about Home Depot moving in. “I started getting e-mails, and suddenly we had a full-fledged movement,” Barrett said.

Several Home Depot stores already operate within a few minutes' drive, and the community predicts the demise of its independent mom-and-pop stores. “We're not even sure this town can survive a Home Depot,” Barrett said, contending that several hardware stores and a small contracting business in the area could not compete with Home Depot's discounted prices.

John Song opened his Foothill True Value Hardware two years ago in the Sunland-Tujunga area. “I closed my previous hardware store in L.A. because of the Home Depot building, that's why I moved here,” Song said.

Moreover, there are few local stores for general merchandise like clothes or home furnishings, so residents already have to drive to Burbank or Glendale to shop. Barrett said that this means local dollars are rapidly leaving town.

Families are also concerned about the traffic. The one main road that runs through town passes in front of the proposed site. Behind the land is a school and on another side is a mobile home park for senior citizens. Families don't want to hear delivery trucks in the middle of the night, or compete with construction trucks while they are dropping their children off at school. Barrett pointed out that most Home Depots are built in industrial areas, such as the one that exists only seven minutes away from Sunland.

Greuel met with representatives of Home Depot on Thursday, September 8, behind closed doors. “I reiterated my position in opposition to the project because we feel it is the wrong use for this site and could have a serious negative impact on local businesses,” she said. She recommended that the Home Depot representatives continue to meet with the community and discuss further options.

In the meantime, the NHDC will continue to fight. “I've got so many good people that are so into this and dedicated to making life up here better,” Barrett said. “Once you start something like this, you can't stop it until it's done.”