Pretty vacant: There's now a serious dearth of all-ages venues in Vegas. So where will the kids go to hear live music?

By Jarret Keene

In the last month, the all-ages music scene in Las Vegas has been hit hard. The Huntridge Theatre closed for remodeling. Skate City ceased booking shows due to noise-ordinance violations. Café Espresso Roma went tits-up. It's the usual small-business comings and goings, until you consider what these three venues contributed to our cultural landscape -- namely, all-ages shows.

Right now, if you're an under-21 music enthusiast, your opportunities have drastically diminished, with only Doggystyle Café and Matt Ancira's Summerlin Smoothie King (occasionally) offering all-ages shows. Sure, two venues would be all right, except that these places feature local bands rather than national alternative acts. (The House of Blues and the Joint, wonderful as they are, only offer established pop-music artists -- that is, older acts.)

That leaves the Hammer House, a glorified junkyard on the edge of town that will never receive the blessing of parents whose kids are looking for alternative music. And the only thing bleaker than the sound of kids screaming into microphones and clawing at down-tuned guitars is the current outlook of Las Vegas' music scene.

Tom Anderson -- who's been booking shows in the valley for more than 10 years, most recently at the Huntridge and the new Boston -- agrees that things have never been worse.

"I don't see anything on the horizon," he says, "and that's never been the case. For me, it's a low point."

If Anderson has learned anything from the slew of venues he's worked with that opened and then quickly closed less than a year later, it's that club owners can't do it alone. Eventually, the city of Las Vegas (or Henderson) will have to get involved.

"I haven't gone about it the right way," he admits. "Only after shutting down three clubs in a row did I finally realize that to make an all-ages place work, you need help. It's going to take someone enlisting someone in the city government. It's always been a battle to keep these places open -- financially, legally, technically. And until we get support, it will continue to be a struggle."

It's reached the point that Anderson, who now just sticks to booking shows, tells people who approach him with the idea of opening a new club to "go talk to the mayor." What's interesting, too, is that Anderson thinks that someone like the mayor might actually listen.

"I don't know if the city's support has been tested," he says. "The county shows no support, and Henderson is disinterested. But I don't think there's anyone in city government who doesn't want to offer kids a safe environment to enjoy music."

A quiet environment is what the residents of KB Homes adjacent to Skate City (located on Boulder Highway and Tropicana) want. And now they've got it.

Skate City owner/operator Josh Lavietes says people moved in to the brand-new suburban tract a month ago and immediately began complaining about the noise generated by the weekend hardcore shows that have been routinely happening there for the last eight months. But money talks, and the developer had the area rezoned residential, putting Lavietes' 2 1/2-year-old skate facility/warehouse in violation of city noise ordinances.

"So everything's been shut down," says Lavietes. "If I can come up with some money, I'll fight it. But it costs $300 to just apply for a license in front of the City Council planning commission."

And that's the dark truth about maintaining an all-ages venue. It's always costly and rarely profitable. Just ask Brian Saliba, who's been producing all-ages shows in the valley for more than 12 years. Recently, Saliba has worked with Jillian's in Neonopolis on the occasional all-ages event, with mild success.

"We deal with it month by month at Jillian's," he says. "They won't let me do more, because the shows aren't that profitable. You can't charge for water."

Meanwhile, Saliba's annual Extreme Thing, which takes place the last weekend of March at Desert Breeze Skate Park, continues to grow. Since he started the mega-concert four years ago, Saliba has seen a significant rise in attendance. Last year, 11,000 kids bought tickets, making Extreme Thing the biggest all-ages event in the state. (Those numbers are bigger than what the Warped tour drew two years ago.)

"[All-ages shows] are really an untapped market," says Saliba. "If I could do more shows, I would."

Doggystyle Café (located on S. Maryland Parkway) has successfully tapped into the market, but owner Jim Talasek believes it has to do with the fact that he knows which local punk and ska bands (Goldfish Don't Bounce, Jr. Anti-Sex League) draw the kids.

Interestingly, hardcore (a particularly aggressive genre currently popular among youths) isn't something he can afford to showcase.

"We have to stay away from hardcore shows," laments Talasek. "We're a small place, and after a couple of shows we had, we ended up with holes in the walls."

Despite prohibiting certain music genres, Talasek says his hot-dog eatery is packed every Friday and Saturday night.

"We try to make it an enjoyable place," he says, by way of explanation. "I think people have a good time here. And I'm getting calls from bands as far away as Canada who've heard of our place and want to play here."

There are broader implications to lacking a suitable all-ages venue. The most troubling is that national alt-music acts might forever write off Las Vegas (with the exception of Doggystyle) as a place inhospitable to the non-mainstream. Anderson admits that this could happen. After all, he booked 118 shows at the Huntridge before the remodeling. For 2004? One. That's going to leave a lot of bands on tour next year in the lurch.

"I turn away bands all day long," he reveals. "But you need to consider the way bands are routed. They typically go from Phoenix to San Diego, and we're just a stop along the way. But [booking] agents understand that Vegas has always been hit-or-miss. They'd support us if we called and said we had a new club that had some solid backing."

Other consequences include a dwindling number of accounts for local PR companies. Nicole Sligar, whose Shoestring street-promotion team has been littering the Las Vegas landscape for nearly 10 years, has always struggled at this time of year. But now the prospect of a profitable 2004 is up in the air.

"There are no freestanding places for us to work," she laments, "and the Strip doesn't want us. Fewer bands coming through town means fewer promotions for us to handle."

And fewer shows means leaving teens with no other option but to revert back to the days of putting on shows in the middle of the desert. Not exactly the safest, cleanest, most civilized atmosphere. Just ask Isaac Irvine, vocalist/guitarist for the popular Happy Campers. He swore he'd never play any more desert shows after he says the cops hassled him, broke his equipment and pointed a shotgun at him all in the same night. Moreover, he's seen how the death of the all-ages scene affects up-and-coming bands.

"For a lot of young bands," he says, "there's just no place to play. So it's actually harder now to break into the [local music] scene than it was five years ago."

There is some hope, however, of a new, viable all-ages venue. Local promoter/scenester Danny Vasquez, who used to book shows at Skate City, is looking to start a new club, having enlisted a commercial real-estate agent and generally going about things the right way: working closely with the city, getting the proper licenses, etc. He's eyeing two warehouses in town in the hope of opening a place in late 2004.

"[The city is] either gonna have to help with funding or change some of the laws," says Vasquez. "A special case review board has to happen immediately. Otherwise, investing in a club for 90 days only to get denied in the end is ridiculous."

"Do I still want to promote in the bar scene?" asks Vasquez rhetorically. "Well, it cuts out a large market. For Vegas, the kids don't really count, which sucks. Vegas offers a hedonistic culture that most parents didn't want their kids to be a part of. And all-ages clubs offer an alternative."

Jarret Keene is CityLife's A&E editor. He can be reached at 702-871-6780 ext. 347 or keene@lvpress.com.