Night Life

Received a nice call from the owner of 7969, Steve Goldberg, who thanked me for giving the West Hollywood nightclub's new/old Saturday night joint, Grandville, a mention in a recent column. Just doing my part for the war effort.... Seriously, when times get hard, music and night life get good.

"The night life in this city insults your intelligence," says real estate developer John Thomas. That, Thomas says, is why he's opening a new two-story, 200-plus-seat combination restaurant and "lounge" ("I don't like the word bar, " he notes) in November in the old American Legion Hall on Robertson Boulevard just north of Wilshire. The name--"this week, anyway," says Thomas--will be Boheme. The designer of the restaurant? Thomas himself.

APPARENTLY there are many Angelenos who prefer to view art in the dark. And these are people who like art.

SEEMINGLY since the dawn of time, after-hours clubs have offered a place to get loaded without those stick-in-the-mud cops enforcing their stick-in-the-mud laws. A look at some of L.A.'

Philadelphia's Independence National Historic Park, home to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and other patriotic shrines, is getting some night life, thanks in part to Hollywood. On Friday, "Lights of Liberty," an hourlong sound-and-light show whose creative team includes George Lucas' Skywalker Sound, movie composer John Debney and writer/director Ron Maxwell, debuts at the park.

A handsome stoolie who's no foolie told me that certain club owners are ratting out promoters who set up shop in restaurants without proper dance and/or entertainment permits. The point is, the club owners are annoyed that they're losing business to those who aren't going by the books. I say, it's bad karma all around. Face it, honey, if Hollywood players went by the books, there'd be no night life.

Ma Maison II: Brace yourself for another Ma Maison. No, Patrick Terrail is not reopening the famed restaurant that propelled Wolfgang Puck to fame in the '80s. But the name no longer has copyright protection, so Charles Glen snapped it up for his new French venture in Atwater Village with chef and partner Jacques Emery. Glen's background is in owning nightclubs, but he told us, "Now I'm tired of night life."

The old sales pitch to lure conventions to downtown Los Angeles had an air of desperation to it: Please, please come to sunny L.A. Slim pickings for restaurants? Lackluster night life? No worries! Hollywood and Santa Monica are just a few miles away. The begging appears to be over. The promise of 1,001 new hotel rooms, the Nokia Theatre and about a dozen restaurants and entertainment venues opening by year's end at the new L.A.

For most visitors the words holy, historical, archeological and ancient are used to describe this land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Rarely would one consider describing the life of its people and the pulse of its cities as thriving or bustling. Yet Israel, a country filled with a paradoxical blend of peoples, is also the setting for a paradoxical night life in its three major cities. According to its denizens, Tel Aviv is a "Mediterranean New York."

Raul Guerrero's moody, provocative paintings of Tijuana night life made their local debut at the David Zapf Gallery downtown last year. A selection from the continuing series is now on view in a three-person show at the Saxon-Lee Gallery in Los Angeles (through Nov. 3). Next January, the David Zapf will celebrate its second anniversary with a solo exhibition of Guerrero's paintings and drawings.