Nightclubs

Pasties and a G-string are no good to an Indian erotic dancer. With sari firmly tied, she just flashes some navel, or bares her back, to fire up a bar full of men into a money-throwing frenzy. Striptease is out of the question, table dancing an unimagined horror of Western promiscuity. Women who entertain men in India's nightclubs are supposed to do so more or less fully clothed, with a vague nod to an ancient art of suggestion.

If Frederick Wiseman's involving new documentary "Crazy Horse" is any indication, that old rule about how you get to Carnegie Hall - "practice, practice, practice" - applies equally well to that Parisian temple of self-described "nude chic" known to its intimates simply as "Le Crazy. " At age 82, with 37 documentaries to his credit, the endlessly curious Wiseman shows no signs of slowing down. His latest investigations of human institutions - this film, 2010's "Boxing Gym" and 2009's "La Danse - Le Ballet De L'Opera De Paris" - have focused on bastions of physicality and movement.

Saying that they are emotionally and financially exhausted with nothing left to fight for, the owners of a controversial east Hollywood gay men's sex club have surrendered, closing their business and ending a contentious chapter at City Hall. Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who had fought to keep open the so-called sexual encounter club in her district, announced the owners' decision Friday after reiterating that she would not put her colleagues through any more political discomfort on the issue.

Two men and a woman were killed in three separate shootings in Los Angeles in less than 24 hours, police said Saturday. Four other people were wounded in the incidents. New details have emerged in a fatal shooting Friday night at the Pink Pepper Thai restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. The shooting apparently resulted from an argument on the eatery's patio during which a man pulled out a gun and pointed it at a woman, who tried to grab it, police sources said. During the struggle, the unidentified woman was shot once, authorities said.

Ronnie Stewart bent down along the sidewalk beneath West Oakland's regional transit station and gingerly slid a prototype plaque into place. After more than two decades of cajoling, his Walk of Fame was finally taking shape. A trail of granite markers adorned with musical notes and this city's signature oak tree soon will decorate 7th Street, bearing the names of 84 rhythm-and-blues greats who in the 1940s turned this now mostly barren corridor into a "Harlem of the West. " "Twenty-one years.

Gilley's is a goner. Once it was the most famous of honky-tonks, a vast 70,000-square-foot beer joint on a gone-to-seed street lined with used car lots and pawnshops. John Travolta made the mechanical bulls here all the rage after he rode them in the movie "Urban Cowboy." But the nightclub--self-described as the "biggest, brawlingest, dancingest, craziest honky-tonk in Texas"--was locked shut Friday morning, the day after a court-appointed receiver ordered it closed.

Last year was supposed to have been the big comeback year for glam rock--that cross-dressing, boundary-breaking genre of '70s rock 'n' roll identified with such artists as David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Gary Glitter. Marilyn Manson reinvented himself as a postmodern Ziggy Stardust. Mirroring the period's fashions, Scott Weiland donned boas and heavy eyeliner while promoting "12 Bar Blues."

There will be no more musical performances at a popular youth-oriented business after the City Council denied the owners an extension of their live entertainment permit. Citing calls for police, large crowds and a change in the owners' original business intention, the council voted unanimously to deny the permit extension for owners of the Gig, 9191 Valley View St. Owners last year had said their business would attract local artistic talent.

The Republican National Committee is investigating the expenditure of nearly $2,000 in party funds at a racy West Hollywood nightclub, a party spokesman said Monday. RNC spokesman Doug Heye acknowledged that the party had reimbursed Erik Brown, president of a Southern California firm that has provided direct mail services to political campaigns, for a Jan. 31 outing at Voyeur West Hollywood. The club, inspired by the film "Eyes Wide Shut," is intended to be "risque and provocative" and "a combination of intimidation and sexuality," one of its partners, David Koral, told The Times in October.

A nightclub owner recently withdrew his appeal to the L.A. City Board of Zoning Appeals over a list of conditions his club must meet to stay in business, including hiring more security guards and raising the age minimum to 21 from 18. Richard Kritzer withdrew the appeal after a 1 1/2-year battle with area residents over his Ventura Boulevard club, the Aftershock.

A nightly dance party created as a last-minute diversion to entertain idle hordes waiting for a wildly popular attraction at Disney California Adventure has turned into an ever-evolving mainstay that might just become an accidental institution. PHOTOS: Mad T Party at Disney California Adventure The new Mad T Party scheduled to debut this summer at the Anaheim theme park replaces ElecTRONica, which replaced Glow Fest, which was designed to give visitors something to do back in the summer of 2010 while waiting hours upon hours to watch the instant hit "World of Color" water show.

Ronnie Stewart bent down along the sidewalk beneath West Oakland's regional transit station and gingerly slid a prototype plaque into place. After more than two decades of cajoling, his Walk of Fame was finally taking shape. A trail of granite markers adorned with musical notes and this city's signature oak tree soon will decorate 7th Street, bearing the names of 84 rhythm-and-blues greats who in the 1940s turned this now mostly barren corridor into a "Harlem of the West. " "Twenty-one years.

The opulent picture palaces and vaudeville halls of downtown Los Angeles may be monuments to a bygone era, but they are still keeping their ties to Hollywood. Theaters in the historic Broadway district, including the Orpheum, the Palace Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre, are featured in several current and upcoming movies, including Walt Disney Pictures' "The Muppets," Warner Bros.' "J. Edgar" and "The Dark Knight Rises," and the Weinstein Co.'s "The Artist," the silent, black-and-white period romance that opens in the U.S. this week.

The good times roll Re "Nightclubs having a whale of a time," Oct. 15 My soon-to-be-former bank grudgingly shells out less than 1% interest on my savings account but would gleefully charge me 15% if I couldn't pay the full balance on my credit card. Meanwhile, banker and serial partyer An Pham Jr. throws away thousands of dollars in a single evening entertaining some kick boxer so he won't have to stand in line to buy a drink. And people are questioning the motivation behind the Occupy Wall Street movement?

On a recent Thursday night in Hollywood, NBA player James Harden was holding court, but there wasn't a basketball in sight. The second-string guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder was partying at Roxbury, celebrating his 22nd birthday with several hundred of his closest friends. Jammed into a circular corner booth with roughly 40 others, Harden took swigs from a bottle of Patron as hip-hop music blasted and leggy ladies in short dresses filled the dance floor. The $13,000 moment came when a parade of runway-ready "bottle servers" sashayed toward his table carrying his order of 22 bottles of Moet & Chandon.

Clifton's Brookdale cafeteria, a downtown Los Angeles landmark since the 1930s, will close for three to six months during a $3-million rehabilitation by the new owner. The kitschy forest-themed restaurant at Broadway and 7th Street that has served millions of Angelenos will get several upgrades, including a new kitchen, said developer and nightclub impresario Andrew Meieran, who bought control of the business a year ago. "The newest equipment was from 1949," said Meieran, who will keep some of the old pieces such as giant mixers and boiling pots around as decoration.

Several defendants being sued by relatives of the 100 people killed in a 2003 nightclub fire have tentatively agreed to a $13.5-million settlement. The settlement, if approved by a judge, would be the first in what the plaintiffs hope will be agreements with dozens of defendants in the lawsuits stemming from the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at the Station nightclub in West Warwick. The fire also injured 200 people.

City officials say the Queen Bee Vietnamese nightclub has failed to establish a restaurant as required by its operating permit. The city threatened to revoke the Beach Boulevard nightclub's business permit in June but delayed action to give owners six months to begin restaurant operations. A conditional use permit issued in January 1995 requires the nightclub to maintain a full-service restaurant. City officials say the requirement is intended to limit the number of bars in areas of the city.

If Los Angeles is like America, only more so, then come nightfall, the Mid-Wilshire area is its flyover country. L.A.'s centers of gravity for bar-going -- Hollywood, downtown, Santa Monica -- all lie miles apart, leaving a cavernous, after-dark gap along the Miracle Mile. For residents in the media- and entertainment company-saturated area, getting a drink meant getting in the car, or perhaps buckling down with the visor-bedecked bros at Busby's or washed-ashore rockers at Molly Malone's.

Can a nightclub grow up? After-dark venues tend to be short-lived, exploding onto the scene as the hot place to be and then soon shuttered once the gimmicks have run dry or rivals spring up. But Hyde, a night-life institution that saw a feverish intersection of celebrity, exclusivity and new media consumption in 2006, is getting a second chance. "When Hyde came around the first time, there was a market for a small place. Everything was hip-hop and I wanted to play rock music," recalls Brent Bolthouse, the night-life guru who teamed with SBE to conceive the venue.