The Sound and the Fury : Owner of Popular Tavern Battles Noise Complaints to Keep Club From Going Belly Up

Bar owner Dave Hodges remembers it as the Concert From Hell, the gig that set him back 15 years in his relations with his North County neighbors.

Singer David Lee Roth was doing an unannounced performance at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. But a sold-out crowd of 600 fans showed up anyway, eager to hear Roth’s powerful screeches and patented brand of rip-snorting rock ‘n’ roll.

By the end of the June show, Hodges recalls, the ex-Van Halen vocalist had taken over the cavernous club with the gracefully arched, wooden ceilings.

“It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Hodges, who opened the bar in 1974. “And the thing of it was, he had promised he would adhere to our sound level guidelines.

“But, once he started, he just took over the place and refused to turn the volume down. It was a waking nightmare.”

Hodges, who uses a wheelchair since a 1968 accident in which his Jeep plunged over a 400-foot cliff on Santa Catalina Island, rolled about the bar in panic.

“I was sweating bullets,” the 43-year-old said. “I was talking with the sheriff’s deputies who wanted to close us down and arrest the band’s sound man. Meanwhile, I was also answering phones, soothing irate neighbors.

“Sadly, after that night, even the neighbors who had been our allies turned on us. It was out of control.”

For Hodges, it was the blackest night in the 16 months since several suburban neighbors started a move that could make the noted North County nightspot live up to its name and send it belly up.

In July, 1988, two families appealed to the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Department, claiming that noise from the live music and rowdy patrons created a public nuisance.

“Even in the wintertime, when you have the windows closed, you could lie in bed and hear the ‘thump! thump! thump!’ of the bass,” said neighbor Bob Streff.

“And the screams from the parking lot! We tried to ignore it. But, over the years, the music got louder and louder, and the patrons got rowdier and rowdier.”

In January, after a four-day public hearing, an administrative law judge in Sacramento was scheduled to decide the fate of the club--possibly invoking sanctions to curtail its hours, suspend its liquor license or even issue an order to relocate the bar.

Last week, the judge reportedly issued his closed-door decision, according to an ABC spokesman in San Diego. Now, ABC director Jay Stroh has 100 days to either follow the ruling or make his own changes that could include no sanctions at all.

Pete Case, an ABC district administrator, said there are several issues to be decided in the case, which he expects to be settled this week.

“Noise is the gut issue,” he said. “I guess it just gnawed at those neighbors over the years. But the question remains, on top of what goes on inside the place, does a bar owner deserve to lose his liquor license because a patron makes too much noise down the street?

“How long is he responsible for those people?”

That’s what Dave Hodges wants to know. A year and a half after the appeal, however, he’s still waiting for an answer--fearing an unfavorable decision that could put him out of business.

A former college accounting major, he insists that he could not afford to relocate his bar.

“I’ve spent a few sleepless nights wondering what I’ll do if I lose this thing,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll go back to accounting.”

In the meantime, Hodges has added sound-proofing and reduced the noise limits, as suggested by the sound and structural engineers he hired.

He also began valet parking and may move his parking lot away from neighbors’ back yards, where drunken patrons have roused nearby residents with fights and screams.

Hodges also began to change the types of bands he books, refraining from the popular but head-knocking new music preferred by younger audiences.

“It’s hurting us,” he said. “We can no longer book the bands that play that kind of volume. Now they’re going to other clubs.”

He’s doing his part to restrain the rock, Hodges said. But some of the noise complaints against his club have been exaggerated, he said.

Some of the screaming attributed to bar patrons, for example, was traced to a nearby holistic health center that encouraged patients to engage in primal screams, he said.

For Hodges, the controversy has given a black eye to a club that has made its reputation as more than just a live-music bar--featuring everything from jazz and reggae to rhythm and blues--but as a social club for music-lovers of all ages.

In 1981, Hodges began featuring a Dixieland jazz band Friday afternoons, music that draws scores of senior citizens. Today, there are pre-dinner swing jazz sessions four days a week.

“It’s brought in a whole new generation to the club,” he said. “Many of the older people will stay for the first set of the evening show. And many of the younger people will show up for the last set of the afternoon show.

“For about two hours between six and eight, you’ve got no generation gap in here whatsoever.”

Many widowed senior citizens have also found romance at the dance sessions, which suits Hodges fine. Heck, he even promotes it. After all, he started the Belly Up as a place to meet people and have fun.

Hodges sees his bar as more than just an investment, he says. He spends many nights rolling his wheelchair through the crowd, greeting friends and patrons.

Hodges also is active in Solana Beach community affairs, offering his club for many special events. He has found time to counsel other wheelchair users--including one of his former bartenders who was in a serious car crash several months ago.

The idea for the bar came in 1974 after Hodges and a friend made a pub crawl down Pacific Coast Highway--two childhood buddies looking for a friendly watering hole.

Starting in Oceanside, they stopped at dozens of tiny bars before they reached San Diego. But they couldn’t find a spot to match the atmosphere of the Hermosa Beach clubs they frequented as young dudes--well-lighted joints with maybe a couple of dart boards and a few smiling faces.

“We were looking for a place where a couple of old friends could go for a few beers,” he said. “Something like an English pub, not dark and dreary, not a place that smelled bad.”

And so, in the shell of an old World War II-era electronics factory built as a Quonset hut, they opened their own tavern on South Cedros Avenue, a few blocks from the shore in Solana Beach.

Friends and family said the idea would never work. After all, they were on a back street, not the prosperous Coast Highway. “We took that into consideration when we named the place,” Hodges said.

At first, the bar attracted a blue-collar clientele with its taped music, chess and checker boards, pool tables and dart boards. There was even a lending library where patrons could check out novels for some bar-side reading, Hodges recalled.

“We were supported by plumbers, electricians and carpenters, people who wanted a quiet spot for a few brews,” Hodges said. “It was low-key.”

But things changed. Hodges’ partner sold his share of the business. Then a few bars like “Dick’s at the Beach” opened nearby, offering live music.

On New Year’s Eve in 1977, Hodges got into the act; he featured his first live band, a blue-grass group called Squatter’s Rights.

A decade later, after most of the competition had folded, the Belly Up had become the North County spot for live music. National acts performed two nights a week, with local talent filling the rest of the bill.

Word of the Belly Up spread. And now, on some nights, noted performers such as rocker George Thorogood and vocalist Rita Coolidge have emerged from the crowd to join other bands.

The tavern expanded, adding a second-story loft, a second bar, a kitchen and delicatessen. Hodges added an expansive dance floor and refurbished the place with rustic Canadian cedar so that performances soon took on the atmosphere of a hoe-down staged in some renovated suburban barn.

“It’s a real, genuine bar with genuine people,” said Jim Buehler, a tile contractor who recently lunched at one of the Belly Up bars. “It’s got live music by bands that play their own songs. It ain’t no disco, that’s for sure.”

Over the years, however, the bar has seen some wild times, Hodges said.

Once, when punk rocker Wendy O. Williams, famous for her Mohawk hairdo and the see-through plastic bra she wore during performances, played the club, a fan tried to jump on stage.

Instead, the former Plasmatics vocalist jumped on the man’s back and rode him around the bar. Later, she cut her guitar in half with a chain saw.

At one of the afternoon senior swing sessions, an elderly gent passed away from a heart attack suffered on the dance floor. His friends said he died from a good time.

And there have been fights. “Once I saw a guy get punched so hard that it completely straightened his glasses out,” Hodges recalled.

But patrons support the place in growing numbers. In January, the bar threw a “Save the Belly Up” night with music donated by half a dozen local bands. The plan, however, backfired.

A crowd of more than 2,000 lined up around the block to get inside, Hodges said. Traffic was in a quagmire. Hoards of neighbors called to complain.

Once again, the law showed up--this time threatening to close the bar and arrest the crowd for unlawful assembly, Hodges recalled.

Bob Streff, a neighbor who has lived in a neat, one-story house on South Rios Avenue for 31 years, said those are the kind of nighttime antics residents want stopped.

“It’s not every night we hear the noise. It varies band to band,” he said. “But I’m tired of cleaning up the beer bottles every night. And I’m tired of listening to the screams. One neighbor even moved away because of the racket.”

Streff and his wife, Neita, plan their lives around the Belly Up schedule. “I look at the papers to see who’s playing there each week,” she said.

“And, when I see the names of some of the louder bands, some of those reggae groups with the thumping beat, I tell my husband, ‘Oh well, it doesn’t look like we’ll get to sleep that night.’ ”

Not all the neighbors have supported the effort to muffle the bar. Mike Ernst was initially in favor of some action against the club. Then his elderly parents moved in with him from Arizona.

“They started going down to the bar for the swing music,” he said. “They have such a great time, I have to go down there and get them most nights. So I couldn’t really go after the bar with a clear conscience.”

Streff knows he’s up against some stiff competition. At the ABC hearing, the bar presented 38 letters of support, including statements from state Sen. William Craven (R-Carlsbad), Solana Beach Mayor Jack Moore and area neighbors.

“In the past, this city has made it hard on bars for making too much noise,” Streff said. “Old Dave, however, he’s one of the boys. They won’t go after him. But I’ve lived here 31 years. And that’s got to account for something.”