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Tip or Die: The Death of Al's Bar Death has been kind, in a way, to Al's Bar. In they-only-love-you-when-you're-gone L.A. (and "Al" spelled backward is "L.A." -- how's that for an omen?), a place isn't considered a landmark until after it's torn down, a (de)construct of fuzzy memory's revisionist sentimentality. Although "they" (or "it," however you want to refer to Magnum Properties, the new owners and treacherous curators) haven't (yet) taken a literal wrecking ball to the venerable 100-year-old brick building that housed the American Hotel and Al's Bar, the ghosts have fled, sucked away in the draft of closing doors. Lumbering behemoth the Los Angeles Times (someone must've clued 'em in), which never saw any need to acknowledge the existence of Al's Bar or the unusual, difficult-to-neatly-explain bands that played there during the past 20 years, not even in its listings, weighed in with a too-little, too-lame photo and article about the closure, as if to tease its readers: Here was a genuinely unique, unpretentious yet artistically tolerant and ambitious, scummy/heavenly dive, a Bukowskian place of great magic and even some mystery, that you could have known about, if we'd thought you could've handled it, if we hadn't instead burdened you with two decades of Robert Hilburn's redundant and condescending attempts to explain U2 to third graders. But the Times' studied avoidance of Al's Bar was a lucky thing, creatively, for the rest of us. As with the Sports Illustrated jinx (or a reverse Midas touch), by the time the Times catches up to something (whether it's bands like the White Stripes, or the "newly hip" Silver Lake, or Latinos in general, or the ongoing transgressions of the LAPD - oops! We're still waiting for the Times to document the latter!), it's always too late or bad luck or both. In a way, this is all Charlie's fault. These things happen in threes. The first disaster was former Millie's Diner busboy Charlie Hutchinson's decision to move to Seattle last year, causing Popdefect to break up, which upset the subtle balance of the universe centered around Al's. In Popdefect's two-decade career, the mutant surf-pop trio never came close to becoming famous, yet always stayed together (after going nowhere, why stop now?). It was tempting to think that Popdefect, the quintessential Al's Bar band, would last forever. The second tragedy was the death from cancer, earlier this year, of Frank Parker, a talented and kindhearted homeless artist who used to sell "frangs" (unique bracelets and necklaces he fashioned out of telephone wire) to the bar's patrons. It figures that at Al's, the locus of what's now dubbed the "Downtown Arts District," even the homeless were great artists. There was always a strong arts connection to Al's Bar, going back to 1979, when founder Marc Kreisel took over the former truckers bar, and had pals like Gronk, Skip Arnold and Roger Hermann slap paint on the walls and ceilings, which were later slathered further with several generations of anonymous hieroglyphics, graffiti and band stickers. For the 1984 Olympics, Dustin Schuler somehow bolted the shell of a single-engine airplane to the hotel's exterior, where it remained, defying gravity and earthquakes, for several years. There was even a time when actual artists could afford to live in the "artists' lofts" in the nearby huddle of apartments, or in the American Hotel itself, with its narrow, closet-size rooms above the ground-floor bar. Al's maintained the spirit of the old Brave Dog, one of the first places downtown where the arts world intersected with the then-new punk scene, by having booking agents Lizzie Balogh (and later, Toast and Jim Miller) schedule arty and experimental groups you'd never hear on the Sunset Strip. I'm still in denial. Writing this obitchuary about Al's has been difficult, something I keep lazily putting off, since it forces me to acknowledge that my favorite bar is . . . gone. Al's Bar, the Tropicana Motel, the Cathay de Grande, the Bay Theater, POP, the Starwood, the Vex -- L.A. always devours its coolest hangouts. "They tore it down/my last connection/that's the way it always happens/they're not very sentimental in L.A.," I wrote in a recent Leaving Trains song, referring to the Tropicana, but the sentiment also applies to Al's. Just about every night lately, after I'm home from work and ready to go out, my first thought is "Who's playing at Al's?" followed by the dull realization in my stomach that I have nowhere to go now. I'm banned from almost every other nightclub in L.A., but Al's never turned the power off on my band midsong, or had its bouncers beat up our peaceful fans, or forced its bands to pay to play (or, for that matter, encouraged the anti-intellectual heavy metal careerists who nearly destroyed the rest of the local music scene in the '80s). Unlike Toe's Tavern or Luna Park (both defunct, so there is some karma and justice, I suppose), Al's Bar never refused me admission because I was wearing a dress. Since no one clique ever dominated the environment, everyone -- punks, art students, indie and pop geeks, rockabilly revivalists, etc. -- felt at home at Al's. Well, everyone except yuppies, who were freaked out by the sight of actual homeless people panhandling outside. I'm going to miss smoking out in the small back patio. I'm going to miss Stay-C Little, the best bartender in town. I'm going to miss seeing the typically atypical groups (Paper Tulips, W.A.C.O., the Ray-O-Vacs, Christian Death, Redd Kross, Backbiter, Girl George, Betty Blowtorch, L7, Gun Club, Lydia Lunch, Tammy Faye Starlite & the Angels of Mercy, Project K, the Dagons, Tex & the Horseheads, the Dickies, Arthur Lee & Love, the Beautys, Texas Terri, the Humpers, even Fearless Leader, etc.) that performed there. I'm going to miss the way the Imperial Butt Wizards and the Caltransvestites used to light everything on fire, hurling bottle rockets and stuffed animals into the audience during their glam/performance art three-ring-circus spectacles. I'm going to miss the rust-colored brass hearts hammered on the looming outer walls of the hotel, lining up to the roof, where they jumped off into space like stars. I'm going to miss seeing the little slits of those stars, framed by the hotel's walls in the patio, a rare gulp of the natural in the middle of Skid Row squalor. I'm going to miss every scratch of graffiti on the walls, the Twilight Zone pinball machine (even though I never was able to trigger the gumball prize), the beer-stained pool table, JoJo the genial and nonjudgmental soundman, and doorman Cliff, who never took any shit from anyone. I'm going to miss all the exotic girls I wish I'd dared to talk to, and the kisses I did steal from the pretty girls who would talk to me. I'm even going to miss how hot it was at unventilated Al's, which would turn into a sweat lodge even in winter. There are no heroes here. Obviously the soulless bastards at Magnum Properties have no idea what they possess or how to take care of the treasure they've inherited. I've even lost some respect for Marc Kreisel, who threatened to arrest any of his former customers who looted mostly worthless souvenirs from the club on its sudden, final night (it's time to give a little something back, Marc). Mostly I'm mad at YOU -- and all of us -- who didn't storm the barricades and take over the building, like squatters would in Europe. There never was a real Al at Al's Bar, but if there were, I'd be mad at him too for not saying something to save the place. What a dive. (Falling James) (A much-condensed version of this obitchuary was published in COAGULA art magazine.)
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