Barroom Dispute : Hollywood: Small businessmen and neighbors of a rowdy bar on Yucca Street were glad it closed. But now it's open again.

By JOSH MEYER

Feb. 21, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It took a fatal shootout to close down La Iguerita bar in Hollywood last June, even though neighbors had been complaining about the place for years.

John Lee, owner of the tiny Oriental Market two doors down, breathed a sigh of relief. He said the gang members, rowdy drunks and other bar patrons that had intimidated his customers had all but vanished, and his old customers had returned.

La Iguerita’s owners had voluntarily given up their liquor license. Despite assurances from state and local officials that the bar on Yucca Street was shut down for good, La Iguerita has reopened for business. And those who live and work nearby, in a gritty neighborhood in the shadow of the Hollywood Freeway, are not at all pleased.

“There’s a lot of strange people gathered around there,” says Lee, referring to the bar’s clientele. “They do crazy things.”

Lee, a Korean immigrant who lives around the corner from his market, said his customers will again be afraid to leave their apartments, even in daytime, to approach the store. He said he is also worried that his past efforts to shut the bar down, including spearheading a petition drive, will place him and his wife in jeopardy.

Others are concerned, too. “They have so many violations, I just don’t understand how it can stay open,” said Robert Abrahamian, co-owner of Joseph’s Cafe, down the street. “All the time the bar has been closed, there has been peace and quiet. Now they’ve opened again I don’t know what will happen.”

Earlier this week, a man who identified himself only as Raoul unlocked La Iguerita’s iron-barred front door, with a huge “Grand Opening” sign above it. It wasn’t the bar that attracted troublemakers, Raoul contended. “The trouble is not here,” he said. “It’s in the streets.”

Neighbors disagree, and so do police and officials at the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

For several years, they have been compiling dozens of complaints of illegal activities at the dimly lit bar, whose customers, most of them Latino men, go to drink and watch sporting events.

In the past, alleged instances of serving alcohol to minors and to already intoxicated patrons led to the filing of civil charges against the bar.

There were several temporary closings, but efforts to permanently shut the bar were unsuccessful until last year. On a muggy Friday night in April, a fight inside the bar spilled out onto the street, and before it was over, one man lay dead from gunshot wounds, and at least three other men were seriously injured.

State officials again shut the bar temporarily, saying they had planned to anyway and that the timing was “coincidental.” On June 14, when state officials went to the bar to give back its license, one of the owners voluntarily agreed to shut the bar down for good.

Neighbors threw a pizza party to celebrate. But owners Cruz Antonio Guevara and Ramon Valenzuela quietly appealed, saying the license was given up under duress.

In December, the state’s three-member Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board said there was a “reasonable possibility” that the bar owners had been coerced, and ruled that they were entitled to an administrative hearing on the issue. In the meantime, the bar was permitted to reopen, and it did so earlier this month.

At the hearing, set for April 8, the ABC plans to proceed with efforts to shut the bar down, based on charges that it sold alcohol to a minor and because of public-nuisance charges stemming from the fatal shooting.

David Robbins, district administrator for the ABC, defended the agency’s actions in not closing the bar sooner. The department operates much like the police, he said, in that it files charges and then has to wait while the case makes its way through the legal process.

“It has been a long time, though,” Robbins said. “It’s frustrating.”

Joseph Shea, president of the Ivar Hill Community Assn., said he was “shocked and disappointed” that the bar has been allowed to reopen. In a round of letters to elected officials, his group has called for reforms at the state level.

“We think the ABC is out of touch with the communities they serve, and are responding only to the interests of the alcoholic beverage industry,” Shea said.

While the bar was closed, Shea and other neighbors said, they noticed a sharp drop in crime in the area. The Ivar Hawks Neighborhood Watch group had cut down on its patrols of the street, but has since reinstituted them, Shea said.

Capt. Rick Dinse, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, said the bar in the past has caused “some of the worst problems we have ever seen” and that he too believes crime dropped off when it closed.

Dinse called the bar’s reopening “unfortunate” and said his officers will keep a close eye on it.

Councilman Michael Woo, who represents Hollywood, and state Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said they will continue their efforts to close the bar for good.

“This place is a hellhole--it has been for years--and we want it shut down once and for all,” Woo said. “This is really an unbelievable story of Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstruction.”