ABC Agents Hit Streets to Put Bad Bars on Ice

The neon signs along Van Nuys Boulevard were beginning to glow last Saturday when seven men and a woman met at the state office building in Van Nuys to prepare for the long night ahead. They drank coffee, in anticipation of the effects of the beers they’d be drinking later.

As the undercover agents from the Alcohol Beverage Control Department waited for their night to begin, they swapped bar stories. They talked about the meanest truck stop in Castaic and joked about a nightclub where half the people on the dance floor were arrested for lewd conduct.

And they groaned about some of their occupational hazards. The night before, a couple of agents checking possible violations at a topless bar had squirmed as they watched two dancers, one weighing 300 pounds and the other sporting thighs the size of tree trunks. What’s more, it had rained, which had fogged up the windshield of two agents trying to watch a 7-Eleven store suspected of selling beer to minors.

The chatter ended when ABC supervisor Jerry Jolly gathered the eight, dressed in an assortment of cowboy boots, sneakers and blue jeans, and gave out the evening’s assignments. They’d be hitting bars catering to gays, bikers, truckers, country music lovers and voyeurs.

“It’s a real smorgasbord tonight,” one agent observed. Then everyone scattered into the night.

The ABC’s weekend forays into the boozy side of San Fernando Valley night life have produced a lot more than anecdotes.

Undercover ABC agents during the past fiscal year cited 314 bars, restaurants, liquor stores and convenience stores for liquor-law violations. No other ABC district in the state came close to matching that. The Hollywood office came nearest, with 232 cases.

“We’re the busiest,” bragged Robert Bristol, the administrator at the ABC’s Van Nuys office. And with the pace showing no signs of slackening, he predicted, “It looks like another 300 year.”

The violations ABC agents uncover range from the exotic to the mundane. Agents once arrested a bottomless dancer for obscenity. (What she did cannot be described in a newspaper.) They have cited bars for allowing drugs and prostitution to flourish and they have broken up barroom brawls, confiscating countless knives and chains.

Contaminated Liquor

Investigators also routinely save customers from drinking dirty liquor. They have confiscated bottles contaminated with such extra ingredients as cockroaches, flies, cigarette butts, ballpoint pens, dirt and ball bearings.

They also spend time waiting for drunks to fall off their bar stools in order to cite bars for serving intoxicated customers. The majority of violations, in fact, stem from establishments selling liquor to minors or drunks.

Most of their work goes unnoticed, but the ABC agents are heroes to residents who share neighborhoods with rowdy or dangerous bars. Last year, the ABC closed four Valley-area bars, placed 11 on probation and temporarily shut down 52.

Still, the odds of a bar getting in trouble with the ABC are slim. Roughly 3,500 establishments in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys sell liquor. Two agents and one supervisor try to keep tabs on them.

Those regularly entrusted with keeping liquor establishments honest are Donald Rowden, an 11-year ABC veteran and a former bartender, and Steven Ernst, who dresses more like a preppie than a lounge lizard. Their boss is Jim Smith, a ruddy-faced, barrel-chested man who looks as though he could easily intimidate the toughest nightclub bouncer.

Operations Cut Back

Before the tax-slashing Proposition 13 was approved in 1978, the Valley investigative force was twice as large and agents would hit the bars almost every night. Now they limit their undercover operations to every other weekend and rely upon complaints and law enforcement referrals, focusing only on establishments where there are likely to be problems.

But several times a year the Van Nuys team gets help from an ABC task force that was formed to help overworked district offices. Last Saturday, the six-member task force worked in the Valley with Rowden and Ernst.

What is it like to get paid for drinking on the job? To find out, a reporter accompanied two task force members, Jerry Jolly, a supervisor from the Cerritos office, and Ilene Chase, an investigator from Long Beach, on their Saturday night excursion to Valley bars.

6:30 p.m.: Jolly and Chase decide to ease into their work day with a simple case. After stopping at a Crocker Bank automatic teller machine to get money for the evening, the agents drive to the Moulin Rouge, an Iranian family restaurant in Sherman Oaks. A tipster had told the Van Nuys office that liquor is being served even though the restaurant is only licensed to sell beer and wine.

The agents’ strategy is simple. They will request a menu and order mixed drinks. If they are served, investigators will cite the owner and he will face fines ranging from $350 to $2,000.

But there is a hitch: The bar is not open yet. So the two just pull out their badges. What they find is a language barrier and lots of liquor bottles.

The owner, who does not understand English, apparently does not understand the state’s liquor laws, either.

“This isn’t going as smooth as silk,” Jolly says as he tries to reassure the frightened owner, through an interpreter, that he is not going to jail.

A restaurant worker explains why the owner was so edgy. “He’s lucky he didn’t sell this in his country,” the worker said of the illegal liquor. “They’d have shot him.”

9:15 p.m.: With liquor bottles from the Moulin Rouge clinking in the trunk, the agents head toward a biker bar in Northridge. City Councilman Hal Bernson’s office has complained about alleged prostitution and drug activity.

But on Tampa Avenue, something catches Jolly’s eye. He makes a U-turn and drives up to a 7-Eleven, where five teen-agers are drinking beer on the sidewalk. “Let’s harass them a little bit,” Jolly says.

The agents confiscate the beer and politely but firmly ask for identification. Two girls from Taft High School burst out crying when Jolly tells them somebody’s parent has to be called. If he doesn’t get a phone number, they will all be taken to the police station where their parents could pick them up, he says.

“Couldn’t you just leave?” one girl pleads.

As the agents talk with the teen-agers, the parking lot slowly begins filling up with partying teen-agers in search of more beer. As word spreads that the adults with the clipboards are ABC agents, car doors slam, tires squeal and the lot empties.

“We refer to this as a cherry patch”--ripe for the picking of teen-agers looking for beer, says Chase as she finishes some paper work on the hood of the car.

Jolly lectures the 7-Eleven manager and makes a note to have ABC investigators talk with the store’s management at a later date.

10:15 p.m.: Motorcycles out front let the agents know that they have arrived at the biker bar, Tryst II in Northridge. Two warnings are posted at the door: no motorcycles on the sidewalk and, in the bar, no “colors” indicating bikers’ club affiliations.

It is the sort of bar most people probably avoid, but ABC agents prefer the rough bars to the ones skirting Ventura Boulevard.

“The scummy bars get your adrenaline flowing. You always have to watch your back,” says agent Jim Smith.

Inside, the only thing that seems criminal is the volume of the live music. Women in tight jeans dance in groups as most customers drink beer or slurp the unlikely house special: tropical drinks. It is too early for anyone to be misbehaving, the agents conclude, though some patrons appear to be working earnestly at reaching a buzz.

The next bar lives up to its name: Incognito. Agents drive past several times before finding it. Someone observes that the sign above the door of the Reseda bar is misspelled, I-C-O-C-N-I-T-O.

Inside, nothing seems amiss. The two agents kill time discussing Woody Allen’s new movie. They speculate that someone had probably complained about the bar just because most of the customers appear gay.

Just across the street, the Mountaineer, which claims to be the oldest beer bar in Valley, seems more promising. One customers is having equilibrium problems. Twice he falls off his bar stool and is jeered by other customers. The agents decide to wait and see if the bartender serves the drunk again. If she does, they will cite the bar.

Jolly finagles his way into a game of pool, a favorite ploy of ABC agents trying to blend into the scene.

While Jolly loses at pool, Chase watches the drunk from a couple of stools down. The drunk begins flirting with Chase, offering her cocaine and beer if she will go home with him. Chase gently spurns his advances, but inadvertently ruins the state’s case. The drunk, apparently upset by the rejection, leaves the bar.

“He said I had a great looking body,” Chase, a nice-looking woman of 30, tells Jolly as they head past a jukebox spinning a Creedance Clearwater tune and out the door. “Gee, we could have used that as evidence to prove that he was drunk,” Jolly says with a grin.

12:15 a.m.: By the time the undercover agents arrive at Thirsty’s, a topless bar in Van Nuys, their bar tab has mounted. But they are stone sober, having nursed light beers all night.

Agents drink to fit in. If it’s a low-brow bar, they drink beer. In a classier place, they might order Scotch or a glass of wine. If it’s a heavy drinking crowd, an agent might buy lots of beer, but dump them out in the restroom.

At Thirsty’s, three dancers dance to scratchy records as male customers watch from a semi-circle around the stage. The crowd claps when a slim blonde who had been dancing with her skin-tight top on for a few numbers, finally tosses it on the floor.

Chase and Jolly are more interested in a drunk fighting across the room. Before they can make a case, however, he vanishes. They search outside to stop him from driving, but can’t find him.

They leave after a waitress passes around a tin can for “music” donations.

1:10 a.m.: The last stop, a neighborhood bar in Northridge, is also a bust. While the bartender regales his audience with tales of conquest, a young woman dances by herself in a dark corner. The waitress snickers when Chase orders tonic water with a twist. The investigators decide to call it quits.

Heading back to the Van Nuys office, the agents pull into one more 7-Eleven. “Sorry, I can’t help myself,” Jolly confesses. Once again, they spot teen-agers buying beer and cheap wine and make them trot back into the store and return it.

1:40 p.m.: The agents return to the office and unload the liquor bottles and beer cans from the trunk. They will have to finish paper work before heading home.

“A lot of stuff we do isn’t so glamorous,” Jolly tells the reporter. “If you want to spruce it up and say we were in a couple of shoot-outs, go ahead.”