That turned out to be just a foreshadowing of the raucous destruction that some enthusiasts caused later. "They trashed the bar," Craddock says indignantly. "They caused $5,000 worth of damage."
Craddock says she's still playing phone tag with TEAM Security to find out how people managed to escape the building with such obviously stolen items. Since they were listed as inventory for the sale, Craddock says she's had to pay to replace them.
Levy says he doesn't think the damage was quite that extensive, and sees the frantic seizing of Nita's memorabilia in typically modest fashion. "It's somewhat flattering," he says with a rueful grin. "Someone thought so much of Nita's that they're going to take a glass or stool, that they'd want anything just because it's from Nita's."
Now that his time's not occupied seven nights a week, Levy says he's going to focus his energies on Charles Levy Management even though, at this point in the game, it earns no revenue. "What am I going to do, ask the guys for like seven bucks?" he says with a laugh, when asked if managing a couple of bands is a lucrative gig. "You don't do it so you'll make $100 this week. You do it for the long haul, so in maybe two years, you make $100,000 and then you invest."
His best chance for that at the moment is Gloritone. Its debut album, Cup Runneth Over, was released last month on Kneeling Elephant, a subsidiary label of RCA. The band is getting radio play and has just returned from a successful tour of the East and Midwest, and will hit the road again later this month in the South.
But until Gloritone strikes it rich, Levy's not starving. He sold his PA to Balboa Cafe, where the Revenants are currently playing tunes from their Epiphany debut album Artists and Whores every Wednesday night. "I'm just going to live off that money for as long as I can," he says of the sale.
He insists he was "burned out of the whole thing" by the end of his stint at Nita's and, since he didn't own the club, he felt stifled by not having control over certain changes. He would have loved to do all-ages shows, he says, and raise the ceiling above the stage. The closing came "at a good time."
But the resignation in his voice is clear, and it's apparent from what he says next he's going to miss his old haunt. "Obviously, if someone came to me and said, 'Hey, I've got this great club, do you want to help do it?' I'd be the first to do it. But it would have to be the right situation.
"The only thing I really miss now is there's nowhere for me to hang out," he says mistily. "That's why I did Nita's. Now that Nita's is gone, where am I going to go?
