Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Liar's Club Moves To Alpine

If you receive the almost weekly Bargoers email list, you might've read the following announcement:


From Palm Trees to Pine Trees: Liar’s Club west heads east

Big talk around bargoers, hop heads, and ale freaks has been the recent closing of Liar’s Club on Mission Blvd. Yes it was sudden, and a surprise, but the even bigger surprise is how soon the new GIANT Liar’s Club will open in Alpine. Alpine is closer than you think. Plus you’ll finish the drive and be eating a burger sooner than it took you to find a park at the old place. Menu’s, taps, and the infamous crossed fingers neon have made the move already. The bad plumbing, and painfully cramped kitchen will stay behind. Louis from Liar’s now partners up with longtime local music booster Al Guerra, so expect a bar as popular with SD music fans as it is with ale addicts. Hope for an opening in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned to Bargoer. Address is 2806 Alpine Blvd, Alpine, CA 91901.

I was going to wait to write about this because there will certainly be an official opening fiesta and whatnot, but since the "soft opening" will be happening soon (possibly as early as this weekend- they're just waiting for the final go ahead from the Health Dept.) and with word on the street that Ken Leighton is once again turning this into a Blurt item, I thought I'd share what I know about the situation before it becomes Blurt-ified and sounds like there was some sort of crazy drama.


The new Alpine location has been in the works for sometime. Al Guerra lives out in that area and wanted to open a place that could serve as a music venue for the east county peeps who, for a long time, didn't really have any options other than scattered house parties. Eventually the restaurant and bar hopes to host up to 5 shows a month.


In the meantime, there were some minor issues out at the Mission Beach location. Louis never intended to close the MB location, at least not for some time. According to Al, there were some tax issues, namely late sales taxes, so the ABC got involved and took the liquor license as collateral until the back taxes were paid.


That didn't take long to resolve, however, but in the meantime, with the Liar's Club boarded up, the landlord told Louis that he sold the land to developers, so he would be buying him out of his lease. The same developers bought at least 3 other lots, and plan to raze existing properties to build condos.


I really plan on looking into this a whole lot more, because it was just last week that I was posting about residents who are trying to gather support in an effort to recall Kevin Faulconer, who will certainly be on the side of the developer, and most certainly will be fighting to give them an exemption to the current beach height limits in that zoning area.


Probably not so coincidentally, it also comes down just as the noise ordinance that was enacted in the SDSU area has been expanded to the Pacific Beach and Mission Beach areas, that gives police the right to give $1000 citations to hosts and homeowners hosting parties deemed "too noisy". Smells like gentrification to me...get those college kids out and make way for the rich people who are getting crowded out of La Jolla and Del Mar, no?


Anyway, no doubt you'll be hearing all the facts from Mr. Leighton, right? You know the deal, Blurt publishes at noon on Wednesday. And Street is already looking into it, too...

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