Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Friday
Fresh off his crushing 2-1 loss to Jerry Brown in the Attorney General race, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo failed to get the The Frisky Kitty strip club in Tarzana closed down. A Los Angeles Superior Court declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the club. He'll get another chance in a month when the judge will hold a hearing on whether a preliminary injunction should be granted against The Frisky Kitty. I don't get these suppposedly liberal, progressive politicians who act as prudish as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. If folks want to go to strip clubs, let them.Former Council President representing the 4th District, John Ferraro, returns from the dead today and joins us here at the Sister City today. We hope you enjoy this new voice.
Red light cameras were installed Thursday in North Hollywood, with about 30 more intersections to be outfitted citywide. The camera at Victory and Laurel Canyon boulevards was the second new camera that has been installed in the city.
The Daily News reports the Museum of Natural History has threatened to pull out of Exposition Park if its lease is not renewed by July 1. The museum's board is concerned about the impact plans for football at the Coliseum will have on its opertations.
Here in Van Nuys asks if a cul-de-sac is a real street? The new urbanists don't think so, and developers - hungry for the cash that mixed use projects can bring in - are starting to agree.
Los Angeles City Nerd scoops us all and announces the folks who publish the Studio City Sun and the Sherman Oaks Sun, are moving westward with their third newspaper, the Encino Sun. (By the way, we stumbled across an ad for advertising sales jobs at the Sun papers, if you're interested.) He also points out something I didn't notice, and that the Westside White Guy (we haven't used that one in a while) has removed the Valley Observed icon from the main page of Joe Mailander's favorite local fishwrap. Though the icon is gone, the site is still up and seems to be relatively up to date.
Friday night Mayor Villaraigosa will deliver remarks and serve as "honorary dinner chairman'' at the 23rd annual LINC TELACU Scholarship awards dinners.
City of Los Angeles Council Meetings for Friday
8:30AM - Intergovernmental Relations Committee Special Meeting
9:00AM - Intergovernmental Relations Committee Meeting
10:00AM - Los Angeles City Council
Labels: rocky delgadillo
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 6/09/2006 12:10:00 AM
15 Comments:
LEAVE THE FRISKY KITTY ALONE!!
Rocky, get over it. You lost to an over the hill blowhard who has seen better days. Men need a place to go and see some talent. MS, you got it made.
Anonymous 1054 - is it Friday yet?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. Long live Iraq, long live Palestine.
JIHAD AGAINST THE INFIDEL!!!
1:08... your a fucking moron. I home Sam deletes your ass when he wakes up.
Anon 10:54 PM,
Rocky's going to clean this City up. Get used to it.
Your support for a craven law breaker, the Frisky Kitty, is amusing considering your consistent law and order views. There are plenty of strip clubs in LA. Just read your competition, the LA Weekly, for proof. The problem with the Frisky Kitty is they opened up in complete disregard of the City's zoning ordinances and have managed to keep chowder heads like you into believing that they are fighting for some other principle other than obtaining an illegal benefit and profits over the competition.
The case has gone to the Court of Appeal twice and the City has prevailed. The Frisky Kitty has also tried and failed in federal court. Why? Because the Frisky Kitty is in open violation of the City's zoning ordinances. I suggest that its patrons visit one of the many adult venues that have taken the time, effort and expense of compying with the City's regulations. For most, it is just a short trip down the street. You could provide a public service by providing links to those establishments, if for no other reason than to show your ongoing support for law and order.
MS, don't worry about that last comment. That's some old NIMBY hag from Tarzana who you would never want to look naked at.
Hey, 1:03, you are as full of it as MS and equally so wrong on the facts. I am a male, not that old and I wouldn't live in Tarzana unless confined there by order of a court. The fact is that the Frisky Kitty has been violating a law that other adult strip clubs are ready, willing and able to abide by. Both you and MS view the goings on at the Frisky Kitty through plexiglass navels because of the location of your collective heads on this issue. But, you will keep on trying because just as a broken watch tells the right time twice in 24 hours, you might well get a fact right at some time in the not too distant future.
Frisky Kitty Wins Battle with City
July 17, 2006
By TROY ANDERSON, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
A judge Monday denied a request by Los Angeles city officials to shut down the Frisky Kitty adult cabaret in Tarzana for allegedly being located too close to a residential zone.
"First of all, I'm happy because we prevailed," said Kitty owner Jamal Haddad. "I run a clean business. That's why I won. The judge advised (the city) not to try something different, but I don't think they are going to listen. We are going to go to trial and I think we are going to prevail again."
City Attorney's office spokesman Jonathan Diamond said the city is trying to get the business to conform to zoning laws.
"And so it's important to note that the judge in her ruling did acknowledge there was a zoning code violation there," Diamond said. "We are reviewing what our options are. We will get our relief. It's just a question of how. But ultimately, we'll get there."
City officials have been trying to shut down the nude-dancing club on Oxnard Street for eight years. Last winter, the City Council ordered City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to shut it down.
Last month, the city filed a lawsuit against the business alleging it was violating city zoning laws by being located within 500 feet of residential areas. Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs denied the city's request for a temporary restraining order to close the business. On Monday, she denied the city's request for a preliminary injunction.
Haddad has counter-sued the city, alleging the zoning ordinance is unconstitutional. Both suits are expected to go to trial later this year.
If Haddad wins at trial, his Santa Monica attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, estimates taxpayers will end up paying $100,000 to $150,000 in legal costs.
"The trouble is the taxpayers will end up paying," he said. "And people wonder why our taxes are so high. Why there are so many potholes. Nobody understands how much money is wasted."
The issue boils down to how the city measures the distance between the strip club and the nearest residences.
Under the way the city measures it, the club is within 500 feet of homes. But under other cities' measurements, the club is more than 500 feet from homes, Roger Diamond said.
"The municipal code is silent on how you measure," he said.
In the meantime, Councilman Dennis Zine said regardless of what Delgadillo decides to do next, a conclusion needs to be reached on whether zoning laws are going to be enforced.
"If zoning laws are not going to be enforced due to the court decision then I believe many communities will be highly enraged," Zine said, adding that more legislation might be needed to decide what can go in certain areas "so you don't have a landfill next to a preschool or a bar next to a nursery school."
troy.anderson@dailynews.com
(213) 974-8985
City Council Agrees To Keep Hands Off Topless Bar
May 30, 2006
CBS News
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles City Council reversed a decision Tuesday to shut down a topless bar in the San Fernando Valley after lawyers for the city told the Council they had no legal say in whether the business was open or closed.
The council agreed on Jan. 31 to enforce a court-ordered closure of Dino's Victory House, also known as the Frisky Kitty, for violating a city ordinance prohibiting adult businesses within 500 feet of a residential zone.
However, city lawyers recently advised the Council that they could not direct the City Attorney's Office to close to the bar.
"The city attorney has the authority in this matter, and it was not ever vested in the City Council," Deputy City Attorney Claudia Culling said. "So all we're doing is cleaning up the record by your retracting the part of the motion that purported to tell us how to exercise that discretion."
The City Attorney's Office said that it is moving forward with plans to close the Tarzana business, located at 18454 Oxnard St., which operated as a bikini bar before going nude about two years ago.
The city asked the bar owner to relocate the business, but he took the matter to court, alleging the city's codes violated the operator's constitutional rights.
A Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the city, and an appeals court upheld the decision last Nov. 8.
The bar has remained open, despite court orders to shut it down.
Study of Club Ordered
May 31, 2006
By RICK ORLOV, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Renewing efforts to close a Reseda adult club, Councilman Dennis Zine won support Tuesday for a study to determine whether the Frisky Kitty is violating city zoning laws.
The 13-0 vote ordering a report by the Department of Building and Safety came as the attorney for the club at 18454 Oxnard St. said Zine's continued threats are "political grandstanding."
"He's doing this only for politics," said attorney Roger Diamond, who represents the club. "The Frisky Kitty has nine lives. It's been open for six years now and it will continue to stay open."
Zine, who has tried to close the club since his election in 2001, said his efforts are designed to uphold city zoning laws that restrict the locations of adult entertainment.
"This is strictly a zoning matter," Zine said. "If we don't enforce our zoning laws, we would have chaos when it comes to planning and where certain buildings can be located."
Zine said the club is too close to a residential area and that there have been repeated crime problems associated with its operation.
But Diamond and club owner Jamal Haddad said the city has changed how it measures distances, and the club has provided extra security for the area.
"We are operating legally," Haddad said. "We follow all the rules. What the city is doing is violating my constitutional rights by trying to change the rules. All they are doing is costing the taxpayers money."
Diamond said he will review the Department of Building and Safety report to the City Council and is prepared to take additional steps to block closure of the club.
rick.orlov@dailynews.com
(213) 978-0390
Judge Denies City's Request To Close Strip Club.
http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_1...
(CBS) LOS ANGELES The Frisky Kitty strip club in Tarzana can continue to operate for now, but the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office will get another chance next month to try to shut it down, a judge ruled Thursday.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the club at 18454 Oxnard St. and its owner, Jamal Haddad. She set a July 17 hearing on whether a preliminary injunction should be granted against The Frisky Kitty.
Haddad's lawyer, Roger Jon Diamond, said Janavs' decision not to issue an immediate order was appropriate.
"There was no emergency," Diamond said. "They've been operating for eight years."
The Frisky Kitty has been offering totally nude dancing entertainment since 1998 and is located in a manufacturing zone. The City Attorney's Office filed suit against the club June 1, saying it is illegally operating within 500 feet of a residential area.
Diamond said there is an ambiguity in the city code that makes it unclear how such distances should be measured. The closest residents are senior citizens who live in an apartment building, some of whom said in previous interviews with the media that they liked the club being there, Diamond said.
However, court documents filed by the City Attorney's Office say The Frisky Kitty was served with a notice of violation of the 500-foot rule by the city Department of Building and Safety in 1998 and that the order to comply was never appealed by its owners.
Frisky Kitty wins battle with city
Judge allows owner to keep Tarzana nude-dancing club open
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_4060579
TARZANA - A Los Angeles Superior Court judge today denied a request to shutter a Tarzana strip club that the city attorney claims is located too close to a residential neighborhood.
Judge Dzintra Janavs' refusal to issue the injunction is the city's second setback in its efforts to close The Frisky Kitty at 18454 Oxnard St. Last month, another judge refused the city's request for a temporary restraining order against the club and owner Jamal Haddad.
City officials had tried for eight years to shut down the cabaret, but Haddad has always maintained the that the city's claims that he is violating zoning laws are baseless.
"We're not Mafia. It's just business. We're not doing anything illegal. We don't do drugs or prostitution or alcohol," Haddad said.
"We call it clean, fun entertainment."
Haddad and his family live in a two-bedroom apartment, two blocks from the Frisky Kitty, and he drives a Dodge Caravan.
He's currently trying to patent software that would pinpoint someone calling 911, even from remote locations. If that makes him a millionaire, he said, he'll unload the club.
But for now, he's happy selling skin - although about 7 percent of the club's revenue goes to legal problems that Haddad and a few Orange County investors inherited when they bought Dino's Victory Roadhouse in 2000 and renamed it.
In seeking the injunction, the city maintained the club was within 500 feet of the Tarzana Courtyard Apartments, where a few dozen seniors live, in violation of zoning regulations.
"If we can't prevail with existing zoning laws, all communities are in jeopardy," said City Councilman Zine, a retired Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, whose district includes the cabaret. "The laws are put on the books for a reason. Period.
"It's not moral or immoral. It's simply about the location."
On a recent day, Haddad drove past the Tarzana Courtyard Apartments and approached his club, where he is called "Big Papa," "Daddy" and "The Godfather." With short salt-and-pepper hair and crowded yellow teeth, he wore big Ray-Bans and a conservative gray suit.
The second son of a textile salesman, Haddad was born in 1960 in Al-Mafraq, Jordan. He moved to the United States after high school and enrolled in an English-language course in Orange County. He later went to trade school.
In the early 1990s, a friend who owned an Anaheim nude club called.
"I had a lot of free time, and my friend offered me a job, so I took it," Haddad said.
A few years later, he was visiting Jordan with his mother when he met Heyam Ayyoub. He promptly proposed. They wed in Las Vegas, and she joined him in Orange County.
Heyam Haddad, 33, never cared for her husband's work at the Anaheim strip club, so she wasn't pleased when he discussed taking ownership of Dino's Victory Roadhouse.
"I don't like his job," she said. "I'm a woman. I get jealous. You know?"
Heyam Haddad said she trusts her husband. But she takes their son and daughter to a Baptist church every Sunday, and she knows how Christians feel about places like the Frisky Kitty.
"She wants me to get out of the business," Jamal Haddad admitted recently, sitting against the club's stage. "So does my mom - and all my friends. Everybody is asking me to get out. It's a moral issue."
But Haddad sees it differently. "I care for the ladies, and I think it is one way to help them out," he said.
"He's the best," said Samantha "Kitty" Hasty, who has danced at the club for four years, longer than anyone else, and makes about $1,300 per week. "He'll help us out when we need it. He trusts us."
Mo, a club disc jockey who refused to give his last name because his Muslim family disapproves of his work, agreed. "You can ask him for a thousand bucks, and he says OK."
The club faced few problems when it operated as a bikini bar in the 1990s or even when it went topless in 1998. Later, however, the dancers went completely naked, requiring the club to give up its liquor license. Then city officials said the club is within 500 feet of the courtyard apartments, and the dancers were ordered to cover up - at least with pasties and G-strings. The club owner refused.
After city officials denied the request for an exemption, the club fired the first volley of the legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
The Frisky Kitty purred quietly the past few years without a permit until the council ordered City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to shut it down last winter.
"We can't selectively enforce. That leads to a slippery slope," said Frank Mateljan, a Delgadillo spokesman. "The defendants are not only ignoring the zoning laws; they are actually flaunting them, so to speak."
Some neighbors, at least, don't seem concerned.
"Frisky Kitty don't bother me. It don't bother none of us," said Viola Houston, 73, who has lived at Tarzana Courtyard Apartments for seven years. "We don't hear nothing. Whatever they do, they do inside."
But the Tarzana Neighborhood Council hopes Janavs rules against the club.
"Those in the area believe prostitution is going on," said Leonard Shaffer, neighborhood council president.
That may have been the case in the past, said neighborhood prosecutor Mike Pizzuti, but complaints of illegal activity have decreased since Haddad met with police two years ago and hired private security.
Haddad's attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, has stated he can keep the city wrapped in litigation - like the $100 million defamation suit Haddad filed against Zine and the city in 2002 that was later dropped - for years to come.
Diamond's latest contention is unrelated to the First Amendment but to how the city measures the distance between a strip club and the nearest residence. It is clear with schools and churches, but there is some ambiguity regarding housing.
"If this were chess," said Haddad, a chess champion in his youth, "it's a stalemate, not a checkmate."
Judge rules Frisky Kitty doesn't have to scratch Tarzana location
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_4063104
A judge Monday denied a request by Los Angeles city officials to shut down the Frisky Kitty adult cabaret in Tarzana for allegedly being located too close to a residential zone.
"First of all, I'm happy because we prevailed," said Kitty owner Jamal Haddad. "I run a clean business. That's why I won. The judge advised (the city) not to try something different, but I don't think they are going to listen. We are going to go to trial and I think we are going to prevail again."
City Attorney's office spokesman Jonathan Diamond said the city is trying to get the business to conform to zoning laws.
"And so it's important to note that the judge in her ruling did acknowledge there was a zoning code violation there," Diamond said. "We are reviewing what our options are. We will get our relief. It's just a question of how. But ultimately, we'll get there."
City officials have been trying to shut down the nude-dancing club on Oxnard Street for eight years. Last winter, the City Council ordered City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to shut it down.
Last month, the city filed a lawsuit against the business alleging it was violating city zoning laws by being located within 500 feet of residential areas. Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs denied the city's request for a temporary restraining order to close the business. On Monday, she denied the city's request for a preliminary injunction.
Haddad has counter-sued the city, alleging the zoning ordinance is unconstitutional. Both suits are expected to go to trial later this year.
If Haddad wins at trial, his Santa Monica attorney, Roger Jon Diamond, estimates taxpayers will end up paying $100,000 to $150,000 in legal costs.
"The trouble is the taxpayers will end up paying," he said. "And people wonder why our taxes are so high. Why there are so many potholes. Nobody understands how much money is wasted."
The issue boils down to how the city measures the distance between the strip club and the nearest residences.
Under the way the city measures it, the club is within 500 feet of homes. But under other cities' measurements, the club is more than 500 feet from homes, Roger Diamond said.
"The municipal code is silent on how you measure," he said.
In the meantime, Councilman Dennis Zine said regardless of what Delgadillo decides to do next, a conclusion needs to be reached on whether zoning laws are going to be enforced.
"If zoning laws are not going to be enforced due to the court decision then I believe many communities will be highly enraged," Zine said, adding that more legislation might be needed to decide what can go in certain areas "so you don't have a landfill next to a preschool or a bar next to a nursery school."
reply to
“Anonymous said... June 09, 2006 9:08 AM
Anonymous said... June 09, 2006 3:32 PM”
______________________________________________
Read comments 9-14, you will find answers to your ignorance, and please do NOT use fancy words to make you or your council look good.
The City Council is corrupt; they serve only themselves, puppets in the hands of their masters- the city insiders, special interests, and lobbyist- and they are no more than a rubber-stamp.
L.A. deserve better.
You come as if you know what you are talking about; the truth is you are the slave of the slave. Take another look; you have no clue about what the hill you are talking about.
No, I am not going to apologies.
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