Hot Hollywood clubs face new pressures

updated 7:11 p.m. ET May 31, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood’s hottest, trendiest nightclubs — they pop up almost as fast as the hair extensions Britney Spears used to attach to her head, and they can disappear just about as quickly as Spears’ real hair did.

But whether it’s the Mood, where a bottle of booze can set you back several hundred dollars, or the hyper-exclusive Teddy’s, where “Pirates of the Caribbean” star Orlando Bloom recently celebrated his 30th birthday, this year’s most mega-happening nightclubs have the same thing last year’s did — a line of hot, young celebrities being ushered past the velvet ropes that keep everybody else out.

Once inside, many of them will belly up to the bar, including it turns out, some not old enough to do so legally.

“Everybody knows it’s happening,” says Harvey Levin, managing editor of the celebrity Web site TMZ.com, which in the past year has posted photos of such underage stars as Lindsay Lohan and Jesse McCartney partying at Hollywood clubs.

“Young, hot stars and starlets attract big crowds and big crowds mean big money for these clubs,” said Levin, adding that pressure to remain the hottest place in town can tempt some to break the law.

“When clubs lose heat, they die,” Levin continued. “How do you keep heat? Keep the stars coming. Sometimes they’re underage, but you let ’em in if there’s no consequences.”

California Alcohol Beverage Control Board crackdown
Some have begun to face consequences, however, due in part to incidents like last weekend’s DUI arrest of the 20-year-old Lohan and photos like the one TMZ.com posted last year of McCartney, then 18, holding a Corona beer bottle at a Hollywood club.

“We’ve had an increased number of complaints, well over what we had a year ago,” said California Alcohol Beverage Control Board spokesman John Carr.

As a result, his agency has launched nearly a dozen undercover operations at clubs in recent months. Teddy’s and Mood, both widely regarded as among the hottest L.A. venues of the moment, were busted.

Teddy’s, whose sightings have included Sean “Diddy” Combs and Paris and Nicky Hilton, among numerous others, paid a $3,000 fine for serving alcohol after hours last year, Carr said. The club has taken to carding even people it is certain are over 21, said Med Abrous, its director of promotions, and refusing to serve anyone who is drunk.

The alcohol board, meanwhile, is seeking a 15-day closure order against Mood for allegedly serving an underage drinker. The club’s lawyer, Stephen Solomon, said Mood was fooled by a 20-year-old non-celebrity who used a legitimate-looking fake driver’s license to get in the door of the 21-and-over club. The woman was never served a drink, according to the lawyer, who said he expects Mood to prevail at a hearing.

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Not that wild Hollywood nightclub behavior is anything new. The Viper Room was the hot club of the moment in 1993 when 23-year-old actor River Phoenix died of a drug overdose outside its front door on Halloween morning. Musician Chuck E. Weiss, who was a part-owner at the time, said he got out of the club business largely because of that incident.

In those days, Weiss noted, pretty much anything was allowed in the club’s small, celebrity-filled VIP room. “But that’s something I’d rather not comment on,” he added.

In 29 years of running the Laugh Factory, Jamie Masada says he has seen everything from fake I.D.s to blustering celebrities insisting it doesn’t matter that they’re only 19 or 20.

“Some of them, they have this attitude: ‘You know who I am! I am the star of such-and-such a movie or such-and-such a TV show!”’ he said.

Still others, he said, will have older members of their entourage order drinks and pass them on, including one he declined to name who Masada said had her publicist pass her a drink in the restroom.

“We asked her to leave,” he said.

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