Less Means More : Neighbors Defend Plan to Stimulate Bar’s Business

The furor over topless bars that once sent San Fernando Valley protesters into the streets has apparently bottomed out in Tarzana.

In a twist, neighbors are coming to the defense of a Ventura Boulevard bar owner who wants her bikini-clad dancers to take off their tops to improve business.

Joan Urrutia will seek a zoning variance from Los Angeles city officials Friday for her Candy Cat West bar at 19637 Ventura Blvd. The special permit is needed under the provisions of a recently enacted city rule because the beer bar is within 500 feet of a handful of homes.

The Tarzana Chamber of Commerce has joined several church and homeowner groups in opposing the variance application on grounds that topless entertainment would be disruptive and out of place in the generally upscale, residential Tarzana community.

But businessmen and homeowners close to Urrutia’s bar disagree.

“Their place looks pretty. I wish them luck,” said Max Himmelstein, who operates a baseball card shop across the street from the Candy Cat’s front door.

“I go there for a beer after work with my waiters. It’s a nice, clean place,” said Lucien Riffis, chef and co-owner of L’Olivier, a stylish French restaurant two doors from the Candy Cat. “Their plans don’t bother me.”

Homeowner Louis DeVicariis, who lives 360 feet from the rear of the bar--but is separated from it by the busy Ventura Freeway--said he couldn’t care less about it being topless.

“I doesn’t make any difference to me. I didn’t even know it was there until we got a letter from the city about their hearing,” said DeVicariis, who has lived at his Melvin Avenue residence 15 years.

A beer bar has been operated at the same site on Ventura Boulevard for about the same length of time, said Urrutia. She said she purchased it in March with an eye toward employing topless dancers, as she does at two other bars she owns, the Candy Cat 1 in Chatsworth and the Candy Cat Too in Canoga Park.

“It’s financially important to be topless to compete,” said Urrutia, a 46-year-old mother of four who lives in Hidden Hills.

The Tarzana bar features bikini-clad young women who dance to rock music from a raised, mirrored, 15-square-foot stage. At noontime on Tuesday, the carpeted, 49-stool bar had four customers.

In contrast, Urrutia’s topless Chatsworth bar had 15 patrons at the same hour. Her topless Canoga Park bar had a similar number, including some women.

At the Tarzana bar, 21-year-old dancer Maria Hansen said she is rooting for a variance to come out of Friday’s zoning hearing, to be held at 11 a.m. at the Van Nuys Womens Club.

“The money from tips would be a lot better if we were topless here,” Hansen said. “It would be a 75% improvement. Topless dancers can earn $500 a week or more.”

Tarzana barmaid Judy Schlocker said topless entertainment could triple overall bar business. “People should not be so quick to judge topless places. It’s not unhealthy or degrading,” she said.

But others disagree.

A spokeswoman for St. Mel’s Catholic Church, about a mile away in Woodland Hills, said parishioners have been urged to oppose the variance.

Homeowner Groups Opposed

Brad Rosenheim, an aide to Tarzana-area City Councilman Marvin Braude, said both the Tarzana Property Owners Assn. and the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization are against the variance request.

Since a nearby movie theater that screened erotic films went out of business about two years ago, “that has been a nice retail area and we want to keep it that way,” Rosenheim said.

Ed Hawkins, a zoning investigator for the City of Los Angeles who is handling the variance application, said five letters of protest have been received.

Leah Graver, manager of the Tarzana Chamber of Commerce, said her 250-member group is among those opposed to the topless permit.

“We consider it a blight,” Graver said. “We are a conservative, quiet, rather laid-back community of residents in the upper middle-class bracket. The merchants on that side of the street are very sedate, conservative people. They don’t want it there.”

Merchants Sign Petitions

But the merchants closest to the Candy Cat West have signed petitions supporting the variance request.

“There’s been a bar there since I was knee-high to a golf club,” said Roger Avalier, a manager of an auto stereo shop just east of the bar.

“They’re open late and more than happy to keep an eye on my store. And that bar has never been cleaner. On Saturdays, when fathers drop their kids off to the party store down the street, the bar gives them a place to go while they wait,” Avalier said.

The “party store” is the Magic Emporium, a novelty and costume shop to the west of the bar that stages about a half-dozen private parties each week for children.

Shop owner Paula Kincheloe said Urrutia’s husband, Eric, has pledged to airbrush the painted-on nipples off a stylized cat sign on the front of the bar and to employ a parking lot attendant during the busy Halloween costume-rental season, when her shop is open until 9 p.m.

“He said if the bar becomes a problem, he’d close its doors the last two weeks of October and send customers to his other bars,” Kincheloe said. “I don’t feel ill at ease . . . I used to, before they bought that bar. I’ve told the city I think they run a sharp ship.”

No ‘Topless’ Signs

Urrutia said she will not put a “topless” sign on the flower-decorated front of her building if she obtains her variance. She said she will work hard to preserve her good standing with state and local law-enforcement agencies.

Lonnie Corley, supervising special investigator of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Department for the Valley, said Urrutia’s bars have only received two minor citations in the past, one for use of an unauthorized coin-operated game in Canoga Park and the other for a minor being present in Chatsworth.

Sgt. Al Yarbrough of the Los Angeles police vice squad, said there have been instances of fights at Urrutia’s Canoga Park bar, although “she appears to have made attempts to rectify problems . . . in the past year or so it’s quieted down.”

Urrutia acknowledged that topless bars drew pickets when they began opening in the mid 1960s in places such as Canoga Park. In 1984, the Agoura Hills sought to effectively zone its lone topless bar out of business. There are now eight topless bars in the Valley, she said.

She said she has hired an attorney to press an appeal to the City Council if Friday’s hearing officer turns her down.

“I had to fight to get my first license for Chatsworth. The PTA was against me,” she said. “But the hearing officer believed me then. I don’t think I’ve let him down.”