Quiet Descends on Another Nightspot but Rowdy Few at Fault Escape Liability

What’s a club owner to do?

Doesn’t it seem like whenever a new nightspot opens, complaints from the neighbors start rolling in before the helium has gone out of the grand-opening celebration balloons?

In covering this county’s pop-music scene for nearly a decade, I’ve seen it happen time after time, making me wonder whether the complainers ever consider any solution other than ringing up City Hall and shouting, “Shut the place down!”

That’s the first impression that came across in a letter that turned up recently on my doorstep at home, attempting to rally support in the neighborhood to stamp out weekend dance parties at a local restaurant called.... Well, it really doesn’t matter what the name is, because it could happen--and has--anywhere.

Perhaps because I’ve interviewed dozens of club owners, and gotten to know a handful quite well, I’ve been convinced that most are perfectly sincere when they say they don’t want problems at their businesses any more than the neighborhood residents do.

But there always seem to be a few cretins who show up to party their brains out--something of an oxymoron--and in doing so, unbalance that happy equation between well-intentioned entrepreneurs and peace-and-quiet-seeking city dwellers.

Often in situations like this it doesn’t seem to make a difference that Orange County is supposed to be the glowing heart of free enterprise and no government interference. As soon as some loudmouth makes noise in a lounge, all that free-market flag-waving goes out the window and in come the storm troopers.

In talking to the various participants in this case--neighbors, club manager and police--I found it’s a little less sinister this time. Everyone talks about it quite reasonably and considerately. But the net effect is that the restaurant management has felt compelled to shut down operation at night entirely, and is struggling to survive only on its weekday lunch business.

One of the residents whose house is closest to the restaurant said: “Nobody wants to put them out of business. We just don’t want to have that type of activity there.”

“That type of activity” occasionally went beyond merely disturbing the peace. According to my neighbor, a car parked on the street was vandalized one night, and there reportedly was one instance of assault. But to what extent should the owner of a business be held liable for the actions of people it attracts?

The real pity here is that the person who has to pay the price isn’t the jerk who is causing the complaints but the poor sap who is trying to run a business. My feeling has long been that if there are troublemakers, cite them, or if they are repeat offenders, arrest them. Only if there is real evidence that the club is promoting or encouraging unlawful activities should it be penalized.

But Santa Ana Police Lt. Ken Hall, who has met with residents and the restaurant owners, said: “What you try to do, from our standpoint, is to reach a long-term solution, so we’re not going out and Band-Aid-ing the problem night after night. And based on neighborhood complaints and what we were seeing, it was time to sit down and reach some type of solution. But that is still in negotiation.”

A restaurant employee agreed: “The police just got tired of being hassled.”

What’s missing here is a sense that the neighbors took their complaints directly to the restaurant owner and tried to work out a solution one-on-one. It’s all too easy for us these days to opt, as it were, to send in the Marines.

“I understand (the neighbors’) complaints,” said the restaurant employee, who declined to give his name. “That’s why I stopped (the weekend dance parties). If I put myself in their shoes, I’d complain too. But we invited them to come and talk and they never responded.... We had beefed up our security after we got the first complaints, and asked the people in the neighborhood to let us know if there were still problems. We never heard back from them, so we assumed it was working.”

As it stands, the restaurant may give another go at some kind of entertainment, this time aiming at “an older crowd ... that won’t cause some of the problems” that the predominantly 18- to 21-year-old clientele did of late.

I guess that means they’ll be hiring Myron Floren.