Days of Summer Lightning

Restaurants die all the time in L.A. County. They’re here one day and gone the next, like water holes in a heat wave.

They go out of business because the food’s lousy, their fad is past, rat droppings are found in the rice pilaf or there are just too damned many of them in the same place.

None that I know of has ever shut down or been sold because of an alleged anti-Semitic remark, but that prospect is facing one of the most celebrated dining spots in the west.

Beverly Hills’ Bistro Garden, where Ronald Reagan and George Bush dined, where the Kennedys gathered like field mice, where Hollywood’s power elite have always been seen, is facing hard times.

Owner Kurt Niklas says business has dropped by one-third in the past six months because of a loosely organized boycott based on what his son Chris might have, or might not have, said to one of the city’s grandest ladies.

Chris insists he said nothing that could have been construed as anti-Semitic. Kurt thinks he might have said something and has apologized profusely. His son will not face a customer for a long time, if ever.

The situation, true or not, demonstrates on a parallel scale what the Mark Fuhrman tapes are revealing in Downtown L.A.: Hatred is a business you can’t get away with anymore, even in the finest of places.

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The incident occurred last February.

Ellen Byrens, a philanthropist and civic leader, had been dining at the Bistro since it opened in 1963. On the night in question, she arrived late and asked Chris where her party was seated.

Byrens supposedly later told friends that Chris replied, “I thought you people could smell each other.”

Chris has a different story. “Ellen was unhappy with her table,” he said the other day. “It was too close to a private room where there was a lot of noise. When she asked what was going on in there, I said it was a Jewish bar mitzvah. That’s all I said.”

Ellen told friends what she thought she’d heard and the comment impacted on the Jewish community with the electrifying force of summer lightning.

You don’t say that kind of thing in a county with half a million Jews. You don’t say that kind of thing when 60% of your customers are Jews. You don’t say that kind of thing to a people who suffered so much at the hands of the Germans . . . especially when you’re German.

It didn’t matter that Kurt Niklas’ Jewish father died at the hands of the Gestapo or that he himself spent time in a Nazi forced labor camp during the Second World War.

Telephones and fax machines worked overtime in Beverly Hills, and the hateful quote was making the rounds. Chris apologized to Byrens “about anything you might have interpreted that I said,” and she accepted, returning to dine at the Bistro a few days later.

She supposedly considered the incident closed and was going to call off what had already become a boycott. She never got the chance. Ellen Byrens died of a heart attack two days after her last meal at the Bistro.

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This is a story without an ending. Byrens’ death leaves the accusation drifting through the sunlight of Beverly Hills like a bad odor.

David Lehrer, who is regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, and a guy who eats bigots for lunch, calls the incident bizarre but considers it closed.

“Ellen said it happened, Chris apologized and she accepted,” Lehrer said. “I have to accept that too. We don’t encourage boycotts.”

But, meanwhile, large organizations have canceled scheduled events at both the Bistro in Beverly Hills and its sister establishment in Studio City.

Long-time habitues of the restaurant, many of them top stars, have stopped coming in. Bitter phone calls are made. Charges of Nazism abound.

Kurt Niklas has been in the restaurant business for 45 years in Southern California and now sees the effort of those years unwinding because of what his son may have, or may not have, said.

“I’ve worked with Jews all my life,” he said the other day, standing in the center of his almost legendary restaurant, looking haggard and distraught. “Fifty of our 60 investors are Jewish. I don’t hate Jews. I don’t hate anyone. I can’t believe this is happening.”

I don’t know if Chris Niklas said what Byrens thought he said. No one will ever know for sure. I do know that there’s enough hatred in the world to fill hell, and our reaction to it is intensifying. That’s the way it ought to be.

Kurt Niklas is a good man and doesn’t deserve to be put out of business due to the perceived sins of his son. But if the Bistro does shut down or change hands, it will forever serve as a warning on how easy it is for bigotry to be blown away when summer lightning strikes.