Le Chalet keeping motorcyclists out

When Paul Krug bought the Le Chalet nightclub near the foot of Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach a year ago last December, he was well aware of the club’s notoriety as a hangout for bikers, and of the reputation of the entire 5000 block of Newport as a troublesome area. But he was determined to revitalize the club, which feature live entertainment by local rock, jazz, and rhythm-and-blues bands. So when he arrived at his club one day last month and saw four freshly painted motorcycle parking spaces directly outside his front door (a parking space for a car and a portion of the red zone adjacent to the crosswalk had been removed to make room) he was livid.

In the weeks since, Krug’s concerns have been more than realized; because his dress code — which disallows biker insignias, chains, and knives — effectively prohibits bikers from coming inside his club, groups of motorcyclists have been congregating just outside. And he’s already counted five fights, as well as an incident of vandalism in which all his front windows were knocked out by bottles five days after the appearance of his diagonal parking spaces. “I really have nothing against bikers,” Krug insists. “But I’ve worked so hard to clean things up down here, and then this happens without me even being notified, I’m trying to attract couples, but if people come down here and see four or five motorcycles parked out in front, they’re not going to come in. There’s a big public parking lot right across the street, by the pier. Why did they have to put those spaces here?”

A complaint last month to City Councilman Bill Cleator’s office prompted a Cleator aide to request the city engineering and development department, which put in the parking stripes in the first place, to remove the stripes. Associate traffic engineer Dave Alvarez says the stripes were painted “because of a request we received some time ago from somebody who said there was a need to provide parking space for motorcycles,” although he refused to divulge who originally made the request for fear of starting a “neighborhood feud.” But Cleator spokeswoman Pat Barnes says her own investigation has led to the identity of the culprit: police. “Apparently, they felt the bar was a hangout for bikers, and they felt that a lot of the area’s problems would be solved if the bikers could park right in front,” Barnes says. “But as it turns out, the bar didn’t want the bikers and even has a dress code so they can’t get in. So they’ve just been congregating out in front, drinking beer.” (Captain Mike Tyler of the police department says, “We were trying to accommodate some additional motorcycle parking at the foot of Newport, but the officer who put in the original request didn’t envision all those motorcyclists being there.”)

In light of Barnes’s request, however, the city’s Dave Alvarez says the parking stripes are now slated for removal “sometime within the next week or two,” just a month after they were painted, and the red zone will be repainted to its previous length and the car parking niche restored. “Apparently, it’s caused a lot of problems and complaints,” a nonchalant Alvarez states, “so we’re just putting it all back in.”