A 1st ‘Brick’ in the Wall : For Dennis Lluy of Koo’s, a U.S. Award for Community Organizing

When the Sex Pistols sang “no future for you” at the dawn of punk rock, they might have been predicting the fate of grass-roots rock-concert promoters in Orange County who cater to the teenage crowd.

The pattern has become familiar: Small-time promoters see an opportunity to tap the young audience that can’t get into the bars only to walk away after, at most, a handful of shows. They mutter about the kids’ wild disregard for club fixtures and furnishings, their disdain for rules against carousing and drinking in parking lots and neighboring streets and the general impossibility of controlling excitable youth at play.

Sometimes an elbow from the long arm of the law--poised, in many Orange County communities, to clamp down on such departures from quiet suburban norms--would hasten the exit of an all-ages venue.

The big exception is Dennis Lluy and his Koo’s Cafe in Santa Ana. Over the past four years, Lluy has hosted some 500 events, most of them rock shows, in the living room of a large, aged, wood-frame house at 1505 N. Main St.

Instead of profit, Lluy’s objective is community organization through the arts, using rock not just as an end in itself, but also as a hook to lure at least some music fans to the poetry, theater, visual arts, dance and social-awareness offerings that are also part of the Koo’s mission.

Instead of hooliganism, Lluy has gotten mainly cooperation from young audiences of up to 500--some crammed into the living room where the bands play, more peering in from an outdoor patio and walkways around Koo’s.

Instead of reaping frustration and defeat, Lluy has won a $10,000 grant, known as a Brick Award, and recognition as one of this year’s 10 most outstanding young community leaders in America. The honor comes from Do Something, a New York City-based nonprofit organization that hopes to seed the nation with activists under 30. The group has given $1.2 million in grants since 1994.

In October, Lluy will travel to New York for an award ceremony and to find out whether he has won the top prize of $100,000. The $10,000 is a windfall for Koo’s, a nonprofit coffeehouse that has taken the term all-too-literally: Lluy says Koo’s has nothing in the bank. It relies on successful concert bookings to make its $4,000-a-month budget, which includes a $500-a-month stipend for Lluy’s work as director.

Many building repairs are being put off for lack of money, Lluy said; would-be visitors to the recently launched https://www.koo’s.com Web site were greeted this week with a notice from its Internet host that the site is temporarily unavailable because of an unpaid bill.

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A $10,000 grant won’t solve Koo’s financial problems, but Lluy thinks it will give him the leeway to book deserving bands and styles of music--especially ethnic and world-beat performers--that aren’t as hot a draw as the ska and alterna-rock that bring in the larger crowds.

And, Lluy hopes, it will buy him time to concentrate less on the rock ‘n’ roll that pays the bills and more on other initiatives. One, which has been drawn up but needs $50,000 to go forward, is a Teen Well Being program that aims to show kids how to cope with stress.

Koo’s also is home to Seventeenth Parallel, a hip-hop and break-dancing group launched as a constructive activity and introduction to performing arts. About 30 dancers, ages 11 to 22, are in the group, said Seth Wilder, the Koo’s volunteer who organized it.

“Dennis is really open to new ideas,” said Wilder, 28, who began going to Koo’s to read poetry at its weekly open-mike nights. “Anything I wanted to propose, he was always very receptive.”

‘Not a Spokesperson’

At 25, Lluy is friendly and unassuming, with a paunchy build, gentle voice, V-shaped beard and shining eyes under bushy, arched eyebrows that give him a quizzical look.

Before learning he was one of the 10 winners, Lluy said that he had felt out of place during three days of interviews in Manhattan for the Brick Awards.

“It looks like they’re looking for a spokesperson for Generation X, a leader for young people,” said Lluy, who had also applied for the grant three years ago. “I don’t know if I fit the criteria. I’m a community organizer, not a spokesperson.”

Lluy left Fullerton College four years ago without earning his two-year degree because he was too scared to take a required course in public speaking. He is unassertive enough to let slide a common mispronunciation of his name--most people say “Louie”; it should be “Yoo-ee.”

As far as Lluy could tell, he said, he is the only of 25 Brick finalists who isn’t a college graduate. The others seem to work for organizations with budgets at least 10 times greater than Koo’s, he said, and they all seem to know one another from past networking and conventions.

Lluy, who spends seven days a week at Koo’s and recently moved in with his grandmother in Anaheim because he couldn’t swing his $300-a-month rent, was too busy trying to keep the cafe going to do any networking.

Among his ongoing worries: termites; worn-out floorboards; the half-painted state of the coffeehouse--which carries the name of the Chinese restaurant that used to occupy the building because Lluy and his founding partners couldn’t afford to replace the original, faded sign; and the pressure he continues to feel from the police because Koo’s lacks an entertainment permit.

Betsy Apple, a women’s-rights advocate who served on the Brick Awards judging panel and interviewed Lluy one-on-one, was charmed and impressed precisely because he didn’t fit the usual young-achiever personality mold.

“He’s an extremely quiet and self-effacing person. Dennis leads by example and does things very quietly,” she said. “He was an important model for a different kind of leadership.”

Past winners of Brick Awards have been profiled in an MTV documentary. Grants usually go to more traditional community organizers pushing for political change or economic improvement or serving the disadvantaged with educational programs. Koo’s, by contrast, is best known as a rock ‘n’ roll joint.

“One of the purposes of the award is to reward people for using innovative tools for creating community change,” Apple said. “When you want to reach out to young people, you have to go where young people go. It’s a clever use of a medium young people are attracted to. They’re drawn in the door because of the music, but they find more.”

City Support and Scorn

Koo’s has survived where other all-ages rock venues in Orange County failed largely because it has support at City Hall.

Facing a daunting array of economic and educational problems, Santa Ana is trying to turn stretches of its downtown into an Artists Village in which, backers hope, galleries, coffeehouses and arts-related annexes of Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine might kindle an economic and cultural resurgence.

Koo’s is “a piece of the puzzle, a place for youth to be” within the Artists Village, said Councilman Thomas E. Lutz, part of a majority on the city council who have helped Koo’s survive the sorts of permitting and neighborhood nuisance complaints that, in the past, have almost invariably spelled doom for grass-roots music venues in Orange County. “It’s given the kids a place to hang out, but hanging out in the right manner, not doing drugs and alcohol.”

Lutz says Lluy’s award and grant “should give him some credibility that he is trying to operate a good business and help the youth. That’s got to bode well.”

Less impressed is Councilman Ted R. Moreno, who thinks Koo’s hasn’t kept enough of a lid on loud music and that the club is a magnet for underage drinking and other forms of carousing that he says spill into the surrounding neighborhood.

The back fences of Koo’s are reserved for graffiti, and some neighbors say that what’s being done under supervision at the cafe is spreading into property defacement elsewhere.

“We’re importing youth from other cities, because this is not the sort of environment other cities would allow,” Moreno said. He chuckled when informed that Lluy had won a national grant for youth leadership. “I guess as long as they use the money to fix up the building, I have no complaints, because that building’s falling apart.”

“I don’t know how anyone could put Koo’s Cafe and our Artists Village into the same sentence,” said Charla Sanford, owner of a neighboring office building, who says a suite overlooking the Koo’s backyard has proved hard to rent because prospective tenants are put off by the graffiti wall, which isn’t visible from the street. “It’s like comparing a covered wagon to a Mercedes. I wish the [Brick Award bestowers] had called me first, because he’s running a graffiti school. What a mess.”

Ed McKie, president of the association for the French Court neighborhood that abuts Koo’s to the east, approves of Lluy’s aims but says problems with late-night concert noise and foot traffic need to be solved.

“I think they’re providing a good service,” McKie said, “but can we provide this service and respect the neighbors’ right to sleep at night? I think we can come to some kind of agreement” such as a midnight curfew.

Given his financial straits, Lluy said, the $10,000 won’t all go to repairs. In fact, he’s wondering whether it should go toward solving a key area of controversy: Until now, Lluy has said Koo’s lacks the cash to take out a city permit that would allow it to charge admission.

Instead, Koo’s asks for a $5 donation for its concerts--meaning that anyone who can’t or won’t pay is allowed in free of charge. Last year, police charged Lluy with a misdemeanor, alleging that Koo’s was demanding payment at the door; a Municipal Court jury acquitted him.

In the world of rock fans and youth culture, anyone who fights the law--and the law loses--is apt to gain stature.

“I almost don’t want [the permit issue] solved,” Lluy said. They get “great support and publicity” from such incidents as the trial and a 1995 police raid that broke up a Christmas benefit concert for a local women’s shelter, making the cops look like Grinches, he said. “They think they’re coming down on us, when they’re actually helping us.”

Lutz, the sympathetic councilman, said that Lluy is “a little bit gunshy” about taking out a permit that would subject Koo’s to regulation by the Police Department. “But he’s going to have to accept that. I’ve told him: ‘Get yourself legal, and get yourself in accordance with rules that everybody has to abide by.’ ”

Shelley Ervin, a 49-year-old community activist Lluy cites as a mentor who helped him find important allies at City Hall, also is advising him to use grant money to normalize the permit status at Koo’s.

“The vice unit [which in Santa Ana enforces permit laws] is always going to be looking askance at them,” she said. “It’s the way it’s always been with artists and the way it always will be. Artists don’t look like ordinary people. Art is avant-garde, Bohemian, cutting edge; it’s also confrontational and upsetting. It’s all of the things Koo’s is.”

Lluy sees his Brick Award as a key building block to help Koo’s toward ambitious goals: housing for artists on an adjoining lot Lluy’d like to acquire; refurbishing the dormant kitchen left over from the original Koo’s and operating a restaurant; having a paid staff; and fostering a network of similar arts-oriented cafes along the West Coast (Koo’s volunteer Alisha Carroll is trying to take the concept to Whittier).

Having won its first grant, Koo’s will try for others. “The foundations will have heard of us [now],” Lluy said. “It’ll give us a sense of legitimacy in their eyes.”