Padlock Blues
www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/padlock_blues/7677/
By Ron Garmon
The Fast Finish of Safari Sam’s: I was packing for another long weekend of desert debauch when the rumors began to swirl in earnest about the demise of Safari Sam’s. The Sunset Boulevard venue, named after owner Sam Lanni’s fabled, equally short-lived Huntington Beach establishment that flourished for a couple of well-remembered years back in the mid-1980s, was a noble attempt to bridge the narrow chasm between the Hollywood and Silver Lake scenes. The new Sam’s opened in mid-2006 to as close to sentimental goodwill as Hollywood gets, with crowds of scenesters overflowing into the street every night for months. The Hollywood old mob and rockers-for-life, in particular, took to the place, and pals from the Dragonfly and Garage days hailed me every time I walked past the open doors. The venue didn’t survive the hoopla’s subsiding and eventually emptied out, with sharp-eyed observers of the venue’s MySpace page reportedly getting an early view of the club’s impending fate in a recent blurb – “If your band draws less than 20 people during the week or less than 30 people on weekends here at Safari Sam’s then we will not ask you to play here again.”
Well, the per-ton price of snot in Hollywood is low enough for this to pass without (much) notice. Still, losing friends and alienating people is a bad way to operate even here and the stories flying around Clubland indicate Lanni was doing landoffice business of late at pissing people off. Rumors abound as to where all the money went, but partner Chad Forrello isn’t talking about it. “It’s difficult for me to go through the emotions on this,” he told me on Monday, his voice sounding hollow and blasted over the phone. “I stopped working there day-to-day last February and our relationship deteriorated. I’m still an investor. It was absolutely shocking and heartbreaking to hear of the Sunset closing, but the calendar has been transferred to the Regent.” What of reports in Kevin Bronson’s blog of Lanni’s “mounting debts”? “That might be a part of it but considering he’s still holding onto a large sum of my money, I can’t really say anything negative.”
Sound policy, no doubt, and Chad points to one plausible reason for Lanni’s straits – “It took us two years for the club to open and I think that’s where the trouble started,” he remembers. “That was a lot of money. I don’t think anyone was able to recover from that. It was really hard dealing with the city. To have us work as hard as we did and have the place close was really a heartbreaker. They let us in there last Friday to pick up our stuff and I just broke down, melted completely.”
Nancy Sefton is manager for Dave Alvin and one of the ramrods behind the Dog & Pony Festival benefit for music industry cancer patients thrown at Sam’s this past Labor Day. “Sam’s been important enough in our community over the years and I understand he’s having financial issues,” Nancy allowed tolerantly, “but we put on this three-day event and we haven’t been paid for all the advance ticket sales yet, so I didn’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I got the e-mail Sam’s was to be shut down. We’ve got four cancer victims who are counting on this money.”
“Chris Gaffney passed before the event took place, and the funds for him are for his family’s bill,” she continued, her voice sad and tired. “The three other victims have all had their surgeries and are all on a better side of it right now. We had everyone from Indie 103 to yourselves at CityBeat to Gibson Guitars and Amoeba Music helping out, plus tons of artists from the community with the art auction. Sam came forward, offered his club all three days and was gonna give us 100 percent of the door. He did finally sent a check, which I’m holding because the bank says there’s not enough funds there. He told me he’s been having a lot of problems and he’s been really up front and honest with me, or at least I think he’s been honest. The last thing he did was send us a check, which we got on October 7. It was post-dated October 10, I soon found out there wasn’t enough money in the bank, and a few hours later the club closed. There are people I’m accountable to on this and I’ve been holding off on making an announcement on how much we’ve raised. With his check, we’ve raised over $30,000. Without it, he owes us almost $7,000. This is a fine total for a benefit, but a drop in the bucket for four sets of medical bills.”
“He just has to find a way to make good on this,” Nancy finished, after paying due tribute to an optimistic nature. “Everything will be fine with us and we’ll honor him if he just pays us that money.”
To be continued ...
Published: 10/22/2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment