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Once upon a time, the Knitting Factory’s location in Hollywood was not terribly glamorous; it was surrounded by gift shops, liquor stores and the 18th Street Gang, and had an abandoned entertainment museum as an immediate neighbor. But Hollywood has shaped up quite a bit in the last few years post-Hollywood and Highland complex, and now that the property has become more valuable, the Knitting Factory is apparently not the sort of tenant the city of Los Angeles wants around.
Apparently, it’s going to come down to a hearing next Thursday.
“The Los Angeles Building Department is aggressively trying to revoke our CUP (Conditional Use Permit),” wrote Morgan Margolis, the venue’s VP of National Operations, in an e-mail that was passed around the internet yesterday. A CUP is required to run many types of businesses in a city. It can determine opening and closing times, where to queue ticket lines, and other operations in order to help mitigate impact on the surrounding residents. But now, the city is saying the club is a “nuisance” and does not comply with “upscale restaurant guidelines.” The venue refutes those accusations.
The Knitting Factory was never one of my favorite LA venues, but it was home to a Flaming Lips show the day after Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots was released, one of the few truly excellent concerts I happened to catch while living there. Still, it seems like Hollywood is a better place for its presence on Hollywood Blvd. and holding a bar, however upscale it might someday want to be, to “upscale restaurant guidelines” seems a little ridiculous. If you’re ordering food from the place where you’re seeing a show, you get what you get. But it seems the forces are lining up against the venue in this case, with written allegations, signatures from neighbors and the LAPD all siding with the city. Fight the power, Knitting Factory, and best of luck, either in this location or the next one.
