Plush No More

[The first thing I saw when I opened up this morning's Comical was a big, splashy feature in the Datebook section about the new, purpose-built cabaret venue opening this week in the Hotel Nikko downtown. I devoured the article about Rrazz Productions and their new plaything. I lost my job at the Friendly Neighborbood Cabaret because of these two, and had heard lots of things thru what's left of my grapevine to that world.]

[I scanned many paragraphs before I came to the bit that really interested me, the bit between whose lines I knew I could read much:]

"Rrazz Entertainment has gone on to produce scores of entertainers in venues large and small around the country, including the Alcazar Theatre, the Palace of Fine Arts and the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. In 2005, they began booking the Empire Plush Room, the city's longtime cabaret mainstay in the York Hotel. Dealings with the hotel management, and with some of the performers, were stormy. Rumors of the room's closure came and went. It finally happened last year.

"Many mourned the demise of the Plush Room, with its faux-Tiffany ceiling, compact dimensions (126 seats) and legacy dating to the 1920s. But the room has its problems, too - notably an out-of-the-way location on Sutter Street and an inferior sound and lighting system. Kotonly and Paull shopped around before settling on the Nikko. They said they had offers from other hotels."

[When Rrazz took over management of the Plush Room in 2005, I have to say things were a mess. Those "rumors of the room's closure" predated Rrazz's involvement by a good spell. Booking, management, box office...all of it was being done by people (including me) who had little to no experience, and the place lost money. (I will say that the sound and lighting, while basic, was usually praised by the performers.) The management's hiring of Rrazz was a last-chance attempt at saving what had become a vanity project for the long string of owners and managers of the York Hotel.]

[But we loved doing it: we truly believed we were the last, best hope (on the West Coast at least) for a dying but worthwhile art form. And we had a lot of fun. Most performers stayed at the York during their runs. Betty Buckley expressed it best when she described the general atmosphere as being like a college dorm - it was that fun, that close, and that socially dysfunctional. (Also, that intoxicating.)]

[And Rrazz coming in meant graduation or flunking out. One minor innovation, from an economic point of view (I wasn't being paid squat), was that my job in the box office and seating most shows was farmed out. I was jobless and very depressed for two and a half months when Charlotte got me the job at The Place Where I Used To Work. As problematic as that job was, I was surprised by how much I didn't miss working at the Plush Room - I tend excessively to sentimentalize the past. Working there during and immediately following the double whammies of the ends both of John and me and of law school was a good thing, but that good thing had ended. Going to see Jackie Beat there with Allen, MyGregory and a few others this past December didn't set off any of the emotional vibrations I usually experience when trying (and failing) to go home again.]

[As for Rrazz, I was loath to admit they made as much of a success of the Plush Room as possible. See, they were these outsiders, with no connection to San Francisco or our incestuous little cabaret world. They were these New Jersey strangers with these harsh-sounding accents and an ugly corporate name who didn't play to our delicate California sensibilities, or not much, and we resented it. But it worked - the room survived for another two and a half years. I was reminded lately again that a business isn't a family, and points for trying don't show up on a balance sheet. I don't know if I'll see a show at the new Rrazz Room, but I do wish Robert and Rory well.]

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