Short Arm of the Law
By Ron Garmon
No Laughing, Pissants: The crowd of rockers got a bit bigger and friendlier with every ding of the City Hall elevator, as a fresh load of freaks piled into the corridor in front of the 10th-floor hearing room. The Knitting Factory was due to answer this mid-morning to bureaucratically precise yet materially vague charges of being 1) a “nuisance” and 2) not an upscale restaurant. Presiding over this hallucination was City Zoning Administrator Lourdes Green, who allowed she’d let some of the unanimously pro-Knit crowd speak after testimony was taken, provided they didn’t repeat themselves. Inspector James Hickman recapitulated the report notes I’d seen last week, itemizing a slew of rumors and drawing a big laugh from spectators with the bit about punk rockers and wearers of black clothes frequenting the place. I’d brayed loudly, so Ms. Green stared directly at me as she went rigid with anger and announced she’d clear the room if anyone laughed again. This did little for her dignity while reminding us that all local government aspires to the condition of a crabby third-grade substitute teacher. This view was reinforced by Paul Woolsey of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, whose tart comments about municipal employees writing their cultural delusions into law were almost as welcome as news the club wouldn’t be shutting down after all. “I think what happened is that the city, after having approved a lot of nightclubs, now has to tighten up for political purposes,” he elaborated when I phoned him later. “They do have to get a handle on this since Councilman Garcetti’s motion to really tighten up on compliance by restaurants, bars, and clubs in Los Angeles. He’s got a motion making its way through City Council offices right now; basically what they call a ‘padlock law’ in other cities. If you violate your conditions in any way, you’re shut down, that’s it.” The uneasy idea Ms. Green might be positioning herself as Scourge of Clubland was further advanced by the Downtown News last week, reporting an otherwise non-story that the zoning czarina was pondering the fate of Crash Mansion, a downtown rock/hip-hop citadel whose parking lot hosted an after-hours homicide back in January. The paper dutifully quotes the usual dull noise from J.Q. Law about crime and community issues, as if cops and the city would impartially react the same way if such incidents had occurred at Staples Center or some other big-money stockyard. Cops expect Ms. Green to rule against the Mansion sometime this summer and I doubt the Knit’s woes will be the last we hear this summer of the criminality inherent in live music.
Old Home at the Whisky: Few women clean up as beautifully as Meghan Quinn, CityBeat’s fussbudget production manager. A sullen, deadly efficient beauty, she’s lately taken to materializing in my office at odd intervals to bid me attend her on evenings out, like last Saturday’s tonal schwagbag at The Whisky. This time-crusted hall hosts bands of widely variable quality, but retains permanent interest as part of the ongoing rock ’n’ roll kabuki of the Strip, as gaping tourists mix with punky kids and geezer rockers parade the latest in miniskirted blondes. None of the latter amounted to much next to Meghan, a twentysomething gothbaby tigress in Betty Page-bob and a ripped tee reading “Amore.” Turns out, her latest girlish crush is The Dreaming, raven-haired cutie-boys who did look rather pretty setting up their own equipment and plugging in after we’d endured two sets of plangent indie-pop horror from bands I’ll mercifully not name. Meghan’s sweeties went at it with brio and a will, their sound an amalgam of every clutch of metalhead droogs as ever played The Dragonfly or The Garage back in the glory days earlier this decade. The band galvanized the room in exactly the same way, drawing customers to the lip of the stage and bobbing heads like the squalling seed of Ozzy they (and we) are.
Glum at GLOW: Meghan (sensibly) decided Bar Sinister was the place to go after that, but I (dutifully) tottered off to the Santa Monica Pier for the last hours of the all-night GLOW festival. I missed connecting with Dance Commander, but her many hours there led to the same conclusions my 60-minute tour did – whatever awesome effects organizers planned were overwhelmed by great stumbling hordes of drunk-ass tourists looking for the party. Not for the first time am I thankful Burning Man is held in a hot and dusty Nevada waste, far from sausage vendors, panhandlers and the Santa Monica Police Department.
Published: 07/23/2008
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