Party Out of Bounds by Dennis Romero
It’s a Monday night, and the Wilshire corridor is lit up like Sin City. An off-duty bartender gets sick on her night off after downing half a dozen shots of Patron tequila in a smoke-filled café. The guys at the bar take long drags on cigarettes and flick ashes onto napkins garnished with two ice cubes – all easily tossed in the trash if the law shows up.
It’s a common scene in Koreatown, which is quickly becoming the city’s fast-and-loose entertainment capital, with its high concentration of cafés, bars, and clubs pulling in partiers far and wide. To boosters, the venues fill a much-needed void for L.A.’s far-flung, shallow, and sometimes sleepy night scene. Community activists complain that underage drinking, smoking, and other violations happen regularly at some area nightspots.
Incoming City Councilman Martin Ludlow, who takes office July 1, wants the party pared back. He thinks there are too many booze peddlers in a neighborhood battered by alcohol-fueled crime and drunk drivers, making it a worse place to live, work, and raise kids.
“I don’t support additional liquor licenses in the Koreatown community until we have seen an increase in child care, affordable housing, schools, and parks and recreation – services to improve the quality of life,” Ludlow says. “My commitment to that is why I beat Nate Holden’s candidate in Koreatown.”
He is referring to Deron Williams, Holden’s longtime Chief Deputy whom Ludlow beat by more than 11 percentage points in a runoff last month. Under Holden’s tenure between 1997 and 2002, more than 40 liquor licenses were granted in the Koreatown portion of the district, according to the Los Angeles Times. Many of the businesses contributed to Holden’s campaigns or hired lobbyists who were cozy with him, the paper reported. Holden has denied he went to bat solely for the local liquor lobby.
During his campaign, Ludlow vowed not to take money from bar, club, and liquor store owners. Now that he’s entering office, he says his ears are tuned to the neighborhood, not the dons of nightlife. “It’s the end of a way of doing business,” he promises.
A state law that put partial approval of alcohol licenses in the hands of local governments paved the way for the K-Town alcohol boom. State law allows one liquor store for 2,500 people, one bar or club per 2,000 population, and one beer-and-wine store for every 1,250 people. There are looser limits for beer-and-wine bars – there are only 1,153 in the state – and for restaurants that happen to serve up beer and wine with meals, according to Carl DeWing, spokesman for the state department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
In 1997, San Diego officials complained that the limits hurt the tourism-friendly revitalization efforts in the city’s once-seedy Gaslamp district. They convinced state lawmakers to allow more bars and clubs in some communities at the cities’ behest. Now local officials can recommend a license even if the establishment would be in an area with too many alcohol outlets. In Koreatown the loophole was used to create a nightlife district like no other in the nation.
“People come from all over the world to patronize Koreatown,” says Los Angeles police Sgt. Kevin Burke, ABC liaison for the area. “It’s a nerve center. I think at some point, however, you’ve got to address public safety issues that go along with the alcohol being sold.”
“The upside is wonderful,” says Myung-Soo Seok, a deputy district director for Ludlow and one of his Koreatown advisors. “We should be proud of the Manhattanesque environment. But we have to balance it with a higher quality of living.”
Seok says he moved his family out of the area last year after gangsters shot it out with security guards at a club across the street from his apartment. The spot closed, but recently reopened under new ownership. “You have to deal with drunk drivers, disruption of peace, fights, urination in the street,” he says. “It came to a point where it was so unbearable for my newborn child and wife we made a decision to leave.”
Koreatown has more than its share of drunk drivers, according to police, but exact numbers are hard to come by because the area is served by three police divisions and the name describes what seems to be a constantly expanding area. (Generally it’s bounded by Vermont Avenue to the east, Western Avenue to the west, Olympic Boulevard to the south, and Beverly Boulevard to the north.) In K-Town, smoking indoors is the norm, and there are clearly a lot of underage drinkers.
Police are cracking down and have already made a mark: On May 17, cops paid a visit to Nandarang, a café at 3811 West Sixth Street. Authorities allege three underage decoys were sold booze without being asked for identification. Officers found six other youths drinking there and arrested them, according to police. Two Nandarang employees were cited for serving people under 21.
Chris Lee, substance abuse prevention specialist with the Korean Youth and Community Center, says he found six liquor stores willing to sell alcohol to decoys during a KYCC-sponsored check of 30 area outlets in April.
Part of the problem is that there are so many choices for drinking, club and liquor store owners have to find creative ways to make a buck, says Seok of Ludlow’s office. Some reluctantly sell to underage drinkers. Some exploit beer-and-wine licenses intended for restaurants, turning eating places into full-blown watering holes.
“Excessive alcohol consumption is driven by excessive competition,” Seok says. “It leads to people breaking the law to survive. It results in minors drinking. Look what kinds of kids are going into those nightclubs, and it will just blow your mind. They charge several hundred dollars for a table. Why are so many young women being allowed to go into these places?”
Adds Christopher Suk, youth development coordinator for KYCC, “Some of the places, they’ll get restaurant licenses and in effect they’ll actually be nightclubs and their primary service is alcohol.” He says many of these nightspots change their name and transfer ownership, but remain part of a fickle scene obsessed with the newest spots.
“The number one most important concern to me is that they often let minors in, whether they have fake identification or not, especially if they’re pretty young ladies,” Suk says. “Frankly, that upsets me.
“Not only is there an alcohol problem, however, but there’s also a heavy dose of non-compliant tobacco use,” he says. “It’s like some of the rules just don’t apply to these places or something.”
Indeed, it’s hard to find a bar or club in Koreatown that doesn’t allow patrons to light up, despite the state law against smoking in any enclosed workplace. Los Angeles Fire Department officials, who only have two smoking-enforcement inspectors citywide, were not available for comment. It’s an issue that Ludlow will also pursue.
Meanwhile, Ludlow hopes to set up an advisory committee on alcohol licensing in Koreatown after he takes office next month. “Until we can come up with a progressive policy on liquor licenses,” he says, “we will have nothing to do with issuing more liquor licenses in the community.”
© 2003 Southland Publishing, All Rights Reserved. www.lacitybeat.com
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