These are the people who quietly run the Hollywood nightlife scene.
These are the people who time and time again, buy up venues, run them into the ground and could personally careless if you have a good time or not.
They all use the same formula, the same cookie-cutter venue design, the same method of operation....which produces the same god damn thing..."open for six months, and shut down for a remodel/renaming after every promoter in town has squeezed the place dry, with wack-ass promotions and lame-ass events".
Here they are (in no real order):
SBE: - (owners of the following venues & restaurants)
Hyde Lounge(Sunset & Staple Center), SLS Hotel, MI-6, XIV, Industry, Katsuya, Colony (opening soon), Nacional (soon to re-named and reopened). SBE, they like to buy their way into everything. They really don't create anything cool, so they find people who are cool (sorta) and throw a bunch of money at them to try and make themselves cool by association. In the long term, they end up doing more harm than good. As a result, the nightlife scene gets fucked up as a result.
The Dolce Group - (owners of the following venues & restaurants)
Wonderland, Les Deux, Bella restaurant (now being turned into a bar called "Angels & Kings" which is a rip-off of the one in NYC), Geisha House, Beso/Kiss Lounge, and Ketchup. These guys are a real work of art. While getting young celebs to partner up with them, and buy into a little night club venture called "Les Deux" many years back, created something that WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN in Hollywood History, which is an incredible four - five year run. While they have opened a few other establishments none of them have even come close to the success of Les Deux. So now they are in the same boat as all the others...building lame ass venues, while supplying young girls a place to come and get drunk, do drugs, and get raped in the asshole (allegedly of course).
Syndicate Hospitality Group: - (owners of the following venues & restaurants)
MyHouse, Opera, Crimson, East, MyStudio (opening tomorrow, I think). David Judaken is a man that spends a lot of money on the details. What I mean by that is that he travels the world to find candles, furs, and light fixtures that are extremely rare and unique, just to have them in his venues (which is a cool and rare thing). However, where he fails is that he runs his places in the same vain as all the other owners (i.e., line'em up and buy a table, or have the black promoters there on Sundays and the Asian people there on Thursdays (or whatever the Asian night is). In the long run, they never seem to last long.
Adolfo Suaya - (owner of the following venues & restaurants)
The man owns everything! He's smart. He never really sells anything. After anyone of his venues dies out, he lets nature take its course and keeps the property, while letting some other sucker come in and lease it out and collect the rent. While in a down economy, most people are looking to sell, Adolfo keeps buying and leasing. I posted what venues he owns and leases (and those are simply the ones I know about, I'm sure that there are others). But in the end, he's not a visionary, he's a capitalist. In it for the money, could careless about quality, but rather a ton of quantity.
Chris Breed: - (owner of the following venues & restaurants)
Green Door, Cabana Club, Ritual/Halo (sold it to SBE), Bardot, Avalon, La Vida.
This brit owns a bunch of bullshit spots, however people still go to them all for some reason. I cannot lie to you (personally I still like the Cabana Club as a venue), but you would never catch me walking into that place ever. I haven't walked in there since 2005. But, Chris Breed and some others have opened up "La Vida" on the east end of Hollywood. Its a restaurant/night club...so far I've already heard its dog shit...but that's just what I've heard. Never the less, Chris Breed is still a powerful man in town (to bad his venues suck balls).
So now you know who to blame for the lameness in Hollywood.
Now, I know what many of you are thinking...but what about _____________________ (fill in the blank with some other venue or owners).
Well, I thought about those who own at least five or more establishments in the Hollywood/West Hollywood area. So, if you only own two or three venues then you didn't make the list. However those whom I did mention, are running shit, and will continue to run shit in Hollywood (in terms of most of your Hollywood nightlife destinations).
This will be my last post, until my next post.
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