2 Taverns to Pay Price for B-Girls, State Says

Targeting two of the few remaining watering holes in this city’s working-class La Colonia neighborhood, state officials say they will suspend the liquor licenses of the popular La Michoacana bars this week for allegedly hiring bar girls to draw customers.

Authorities said the so-called B-girls are driven in from the Los Angeles area to pack the bars, La Michoacana 1 and La Michoacana 2. Investigators say the young women flirt with men, who agree to buy them drinks at inflated prices of up to $10.

The women, mostly in their 20s, split the drink money with the bar owner, officials allege.

But bar owner Manuel Garcia Millan denied that he has paid women to push drinks.

“Look, we have a lot of women clients,” Millan said. “I don’t pay them a cent. These women enter the bars and do their things. It’s a problem everywhere.

“Where there are no women, there are no clients. I’m not running a rodeo,” Millan said, adding that he has closed down the dance floors at his bars to control crowds.

State investigator Ed Macias said that officials did not try to determine if the women were prostitutes, focusing only on the bar girl allegations.

“Sometimes we get clean B-girls, other times not,” said Macias, regional director of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

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The investigator added that the case was unusual for Ventura County. While the agency has in the past investigated complaints of bars employing local women to flirt with male customers, it had never heard of vanloads of young girls being brought in from Los Angeles to dance and drink with men, Macias said.

“One interesting statement was that they like coming up here, because it’s a nicer area, as opposed to L.A.,” Macias said. He added that the women stayed the weekend in local hotels.

Along with the sudden influx of women from out of town, community activists had complained to state investigators about raucous crowds, loud music, a shooting and numerous brawls at the bars.

Agents went undercover at both bars earlier this year, launching an investigation scheduled to culminate Thursday with the license suspensions.

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Investigators said that the tiny La Michoacana 1 bar on Hayes Avenue was jammed with about 60 people on a recent night--half local men and the other half bar girls.

“Obviously, you walk in and it’s not your normal beer tavern,” Macias said. “It’s a business. The more the girls drink, the more they make. That’s against the law. . . . This is not a high-integrity type of job.”

State officials say they will suspend La Michoacana 1’s liquor license for 20 days. The second bar, about a block away, is expected to have its license suspended for 10 days. The suspensions stipulate that if bar girls are ever hired at the bar again, the licenses will be revoked.

Continued problems at the bars could also jeopardize La Michoacana 3 in Port Hueneme, which is operating with a temporary liquor license, officials said.

The latest crackdown continues a successful community effort to rid the largely Latino neighborhood of bars, which activists claim are a magnet for drugs, violence and prostitution.

In recent years, the number of bars in La Colonia has dropped from more than 20 to five, Oxnard police said. Bars have been shut down by state officials, and owners have been pressured to leave by activists or have voluntarily closed their businesses.

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The state has given strong support to Oxnard bar crackdowns. In fact, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control announced Tuesday that it will award the Oxnard Police Department a grant of about $100,000 to continue fighting alcohol-related crime.

Local activists were jubilant at the punishment to be meted out to the Michoacana bars, saying that the B-girls are just as big a problem as drugs and violence.

“They’re a haven for bar girls,” neighborhood activist Vicky Gonzales said of the two bars.

“It’s sort of like a form of prostitution, because it does lead to prostitution . . . ,” said Gonzales, who heads the anti-crime Coalition for Community Development. “It leads to other vices. Some of the girls actually have a car in the street, and they’ll go out there and do their thing.”

Oxnard Police Officer Bob Camarillo said the influx of women from Los Angeles has surprised local police, who have stepped up identification checks at the two bars.

“They’re not your traditional street walkers, skimpily dressed,” Camarillo said. “They’re dressed nice and attractive, with nice nightclub clothes. If anything, they’re overdressed for that bar.”

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But bar owner Millan, 37, said he has been an upstanding community member. He shut down the dance floors, he said, to cut down on the number of women who had been showing up, milking drinks from men.

The nondescript, stucco La Michoacana 1, just a few yards off Oxnard Boulevard, opened 10 years ago. All three bars in Oxnard and Port Hueneme have satellite dishes, and Millan said his places are no different than sports bars.

“I only have a few employees, and I’m selling beer like other places,” he said. “I put up an antenna and I want people to come in and watch soccer.”

Activist Gonzales, who in the past has protested the Launch Pad--a notorious hangout south of Oxnard shut down by the state earlier this year--said that she only wants the Michoacana bars to clean up their act.

“If a person or businessman is responsible, we can coexist,” Gonzales said. “We’re not prohibitionists.”