Where Every Night Is Family Night

Loud country music blares from a CD player near the front door and a hockey game is on the radio in the patio out back. In between, surrounding the communal bookshelf featuring works by Agatha Christie, John LeCarre, Larry McMurtry and Carlos Castaneda, sit paintings, sculptures and blown-glass works of art.

Welcome to a typical Saturday afternoon at Buffalo Bruce’s, a 5-month-old club and coffeehouse so eclectic even its owners can’t agree on how to describe it.

“We’re sort of a coffeehouse,” Bruce Hartman says. “A coffee cigar house.”

“What we are is a mini art gallery that [allows] artists to express their art be it with music, with words, with paintings or anything,” says his wife, Vivian. “And you can have a fine cigar and a great cup of coffee.”

Whatever it is, there’s nothing else like it. At least not in Sylmar, something that is largely responsible for Buffalo Bruce’s existence in the first place.

“It’s a rural area. It’s a horse town still,” says Bruce, who lives just a few blocks from the club. “If you want to go out on the weekend, you have to go to Hollywood or Santa Monica or Pasadena. So this just worked out to be a perfect little area. This is for our neighborhood.”

“And,” Vivian adds, “nobody caters to the arts out here.”

Ah, yes, mustn’t forget the arts. Not that Vivian Hartman would let you; if only the NEA had her love--and extremely generous definition--for what constitutes art. Aside from the fact that it’s housed in a former tire shop, a large part of Buffalo Bruce’s charm is that, like the tiny club itself, what it puts on stage and the art it puts on sale can often defy description. Wednesday is open-mike poetry night, for example, which is a fairly straightforward proposition. But when local bands take over the small patio stage Thursday, Friday and Saturday, anything can--and has--happened.

The club has played host to punk bands, country bands, jazz bands, folk singers and regular flamenco nights. No auditions are necessary because there’s no cover, an arrangement that builds in surprises.

On a recent rainy Friday, for example, after Mike Frias had finished his regular two-hour set, a heavily tattooed punk poet gave a long and rambling recitation that recalled the power and emotion of Henry Rollins’ early days.

“The stage is open . . . for the kids or the adults or whoever wants to express themselves,” says Vivian, looking every bit the bohemian club owner in blue overalls, a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey sweater and a knit beret. “People who ask to play get scheduled.”

Still, one regular shudders while remembering the night a group of 14-year-olds made its debut at the club. “They were terrible,” she says. “But they were wonderful. There were moms and dads there with video cameras and everything.”

But get there early. While other clubs are still warming up at midnight, Buffalo Bruce’s is getting ready to close. Most of the action takes place between 8 and 10 p.m. And though the club draws people of all ages, at least half the smallish crowd at a typical weekend show is under the age of 21. It’s an age group many clubs refuse but one the Hartmans try to welcome by banning alcohol.

“I don’t want to have to baby-sit some drunk and worry about people in the neighborhood,” Bruce says. “There’s a bar across the street. Let him keep that business. I want parents to feel comfortable that their kids are playing in a band in a place that doesn’t have that going on.”

A general contractor by trade, Bruce Hartman is a patron of the arts by breeding. His grandfather, Clarence Hartman, was a musician and actor who played bass fiddle and rode alongside Gene Autry while his father, C.L. Hartman Jr., was a Hollywood animator who worked on the Mr. Magoo and Flintstones TV shows. And while Bruce doesn’t figure his little contribution to popular culture will ever rival his father’s or grandfather’s, he’ll nonetheless make his own indelible mark this Sunday by opening his doors to an art exhibition and sale featuring prolific Mexican painter Sergio Ladron de Guevara.

“We hope to establish more of an art gallery-type credibility instead of being just an arts-and-crafts place,” Bruce Hartman said. “It’s about people doing real art, not just as a hobby. There’s more serious art involved.”

BE THERE

Buffalo Bruce’s, 13661 Hubbard St., Sylmar. (818) 364-5668. Monday-Thursday, 6:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday, 6:30 a.m.-midnight; Saturday, 8 a.m.-midnight; Sunday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Open mike nights Wednesday (poetry) and Thursday (music) at 7:30; musical entertainment Friday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m. and every other Sunday afternoon.