City Tells Solana Beach Nightclub to Face the Music : Lifestyle: Council gives Diego’s Surfside a final chance as complaints of noise, drug use and violence continue.

Patrick Lipe was looking for a public forum, a measured exchange of ideas, when he attended a recent Solana Beach City Council gathering. Instead, the nightclub manager says, he was confronted by an angry suburban lynch mob--ambushed right there in the carpeted recesses of council chambers.

Lipe, general manager of Diego’s Surfside--a popular dance club on Old Highway 101 that abuts several condominium complexes--stood by silently as residents described the sound and their fury, the nocturnal problems they’ve encountered with the often-crowded discotheque.

But, along with reports of tire-screeching, loud music and drunken patrons usually associated with such late-night establishments, Lipe heard other, more unsettling accusations--including what he calls unsubstantiated claims of rape and assaults in the parking lot as well as drug dealing that involved the bar’s employees and management.

“I thought we were going to hear talk about some minor permit obligations we had to fulfill--some dotting the ‘i’ and crossing the ‘t’ kind of stuff,” he said. “Instead, we walked into a firing squad.”

On the opposite side of the council dais, Councilwoman Celine Olson acknowledges that she indeed has her sights drawn on what she calls an arrogant and unresponsive bar management that has continually “thumbed its nose” at requests to tone down the noise and fulfill several permit obligations.

Although nighttime noise is a main concern, there are other sticking points--including reported crowding at the club, construction completed without permits, illegal signs and whether the bar has offered free valet parking, required in its permit, to control late-night noise in the parking lot.

Recently, the council decided to take a rock-hard stand against the nighttime rock ‘n’ roll--setting a July 15 deadline for the bar owners to correct the problems or face losing their operating license.

Noting her frustration at the meeting, Olson issued Lipe and nightclub co-owner Ray Tontini a no-nonsense warning. “This is it,” she announced. “Either put up or shut up. We are making you an offer you can’t refuse.”

Welcome to the newest round of bar wars in Solana Beach. For the past three years, the Belly-Up Tavern has done battle with its neighbors over nighttime noise--its so-called rowdy patrons and driving beat of its live music acts.

Pending a final decision by the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the bar has been forced to curtail its hours but could nonetheless lose it’s liquor license and be forced to close down.

Now, just across Old Highway 101, one of the North County’s few other large music and dance venues is facing a similar ultimatum in what some have called a debate between a more-subdued suburban lifestyle and the more vibrant night life associated with the big city.

“They think this is another Pacific Beach,” Olson said of the Diego’s management, which operates another nightclub in that San Diego neighborhood. “Well, it isn’t. Pacific Beach is a party town. There are a lot of older people here. Solana Beach likes to sleep at night.”

Nobody on the council is saying young people can’t have a good time at either club, Olson says. But not at the expense of people’s sleep. And more people than ever are lying awake near the Surfside.

“There were only three neighbors who complained against the Belly-Up,” she said. “Diego’s has hundreds. They’re just affecting a lot more people.”

More irksome, she said, is the management’s almost flippant attitude about correcting problems since opening in 1986. “They haven’t once, in my opinion, made a good-faith effort to comply with the conditions of their permit.”

Past meetings with the owners have resulted in promises never kept, she said. “Every time they get called on the carpet, they promise the moon. They’re going to clean up their act, do the right thing. But, as soon as we relax, they’re up to their old tricks.

“I think they’re arrogant . . . . And I let them know at the meeting that, ‘Listen you guys, you’ve been defying us, flouting the rules in our faces.’ Now there’s a whole list of things to do. And come deadline time, if they’re not all done--and I mean every single one of them, not excuses of what’s going to be done--I’m going to vote to revoke their permit.”

Surfside co-owner Ray Tontini says management has already met with the permit demands. An outside speaker system that bothered neighbors has been silenced. Sign permits have been obtained. And free valet parking is already in place to see that noisy patrons don’t race their car engines late at night to disturb local residents.

“We’re responsible business owners, and we did everything they asked,” he said. “The last council meeting would have went fine, but some talking heads stood up and made trouble. They made some unfounded complaints about rapes and assaults. They just raised hell. Now there’s a big hullabaloo over this thing. Well, I say, show me the police reports. There just aren’t any.”

Residents say the bar has been anything but a good neighbor. Nearby hotel and motel operators say drunken Surfside patrons have broken windows and ripped down signs--causing complaints from sleeping patrons.

Phillip Franklin, a 40-year-old computer software company worker who lives nearby, said he is routinely awakened by parking lot scuffles, screeching tires, slamming doors and errant car alarms--even until 4 a.m. on weekend nights. And, although in recent years, the bar has been open only Thursday through Saturday night, two weeks ago it began opening Monday nights as well.

But all the parking lot fights combined, Franklin says, have been nothing compared to the two rapes he suspects took place there. “On two occasions, I heard girls screaming, fighting, car doors slamming, and this moaning noise,” he said. “This stuff is really happening out there.”

Franklin says he called 911 but was told he had not been able to offer sufficient descriptions for authorities to make a case. And going to the bar management about the problem, he said, yielded no better results.

“Their response was that they didn’t want to hear it. They said ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re closed at that hour, so we don’t have jurisdiction over the parking lot. Call the police.’ They might as well tell you to go jump in the lake. It’s just so irresponsible--like they’re begging to be closed down.”

San Diego County Sheriff’s Capt. Bob Apostolos of the Encinitas substation, which includes Solana Beach as part of its patrol area, says his department has investigated complaints of drug sales, minors being served at the bar and serving to drunk patrons--and never found evidence to press charges.

He said he could not recall any reports of rapes. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Somebody’s not reporting them. Either I’m not hearing from my deputies, or I’m not hearing from the residents.”

Controversy is not new to the nightclub, whose opening in 1986 on the site of an old bowling alley was marked by picketers seeking to keep the neighborhood’s nighttime peace.

“In a way, Diego’s helped bring about the incorporation of Solana Beach,” Olson said. “It was one of the things everyone was concerned about. I tried to scale down it’s size. As far as our little town was concerned, it was the biggest structure in the world.”

Opened as Diego’s, a North County counterpart to its sister Pacific Beach club, the bar revamped two years later in an attempt to draw a more sophisticated suburban patronage--changes that included a marble dance floor and spiral staircase as well as a higher-priced restaurant fare.

“We spent $250,000 to switch things around, bring in a more seasoned crowd,” Tontini recalled. “We thought maybe that was the problem. But, you know what? Nobody came. So we went back to what we know.”

Over the years, Olson says, the council has kept its eye on the bar--with fire inspectors ensuring that management didn’t exceed the legal limit on patrons.

“They’re nothing but a bunch of young kids--hopped up on alcohol most of the time--and one day they’re going to run down some innocent bystanders,” said Edward Ebenezer, manager of the adjacent Turf Motel.

Other residents complain that patrons routinely park along residential streets to the west of the bar and then cut east through the parking lot--returning late at night to awaken sleeping condo-owners.

“At night, the kids run rough-shod over the streets because, unlike a lot of small towns, there’s not enough police to just sit out there and wait for them,” Franklin said. “It’s just the wrong kind of bar for this city, attracting the wrong kind of people.”

Lipe has an answer for that claim. “A lot of our customers are their kids,” he said. “These people are loading their guns for us, and it’s not justifiable. It’s not our fault that Solana Beach is laid out so that one side of the bar is on a busy commercial strip and the other in some neighborhood.”

On a recent Monday night, at a table near the expansive dance floor, Surfside night manager Manny Correia talked about being a foot soldier in the war between nightclub, homeowners and City Council.

Correia has heard all the claims--the noisy late-night staff parties in the parking lot, that his bully-bouncers are beating up patrons and about drugs being dealt from the bar. All of it’s untrue, he said.

“I know for a fact that no one I work with takes drugs--except for maybe smoking some weed once in a while,” he said. “And my bouncers have been instructed not to hit patrons, even though, I admit, a lot of them deserve a good beating.”

For the most part, Correia says, his customers are well-behaved--except perhaps on Thursdays when the bar offers all-night dollar drinks. That’s when things get hairy, with fights erupting in the crowded bar, he acknowledges.

“On Thursday night we get 100 drunks in here,” Correia said. “And I don’t mean just buzzed drunk. I mean hammered. These guys drink. Maybe they get too intoxicated.”

Meanwhile, patrons are considering circulating a petition that would tell the council their side of the story--that a night at the Surfside bar is just good, clean fun.

“But I don’t know if anyone’s willing to listen,” said bouncer Pete Carroll. “This is the People’s Republic of Solana Beach. They’re trying to turn this town into a Miami Beach. That’s fine for some people. But some of us are still young.”