The
Lair
101 Cortez Place or Crescent street, Santa Barbara |
||||
|
At the end of 1987, T.J. Daniels decides to invest in the creation of a club, with the participation of his friends Laken Lockridge, Ted Capwell, Jake Morton and Hayley Benson. He decides to buy a night-club well known in Santa Barbara called The Purgatory and do it up entirely. Inside a large hangar near the port, T.J. creates The Lair, the new landmark for night-birds, where he imagines at first imprisoning his friend Jake and some pretty girls in iron cages to attract customers.
The decor is colorful, made of yellow flashing neon lights, blue and pink lights on the walls, walls welcoming themselves some paintings in multicoloured contemporary designs. Here and there, green plants in their pots try to give an impression of jungle.
Plaster statues of wildlife (lions, tigers, elephants...) are arranged here and there to recall the concept of the place, the lair of the wild rendez-vous. And for the opening day of the club, these are real animals which will take possession of the cages !
In the middle of the room, round tables allow to dine or to relax between two dances. Because very soon, The Lair becomes more a catering place than a night-club. It is besides there that the Santa Barbara inhabitants come to sit down and discuss after the abandoning of Johnny's Place and the gradual disappearance of the Orient Express.
At the bottom of the place, a counter faces the entrance, where can simply be taken a drink.
At the left of the bar, a spiral staircase gives access to a floor that will never be seen on the screen. Then a door gives access to the rear of the hangar, in a dark and unwelcoming alley. It is in front of the walls of The Lair that Hayley will find death, knocked down by Carmen Castillo's boyfriend.
On the right and the left of the bar, two doors give access to the storeroom. With walls colored in blue, the room, darker, serves as an office to T.J. and to store miscellaneous supplies and alcohol.
Among the successive servers, we can quote, in addition to T.J. and Jake, Margot Collins, for a few months in 1988. T.J. will soon experience financial difficulties in the management of the club. He will be forced to accept money from one of his former mistresses, Olivia Welles, in exchange of a night of love with her. At Jake's departure from Santa Barbara, it is Ted who will invest his money in the club, thus offering himself a job of bartender. After a hiring conflict with the apprentice bartender Wanda Berkowski, Ted will prefer to withdraw from the business for one symbolic dollar.
T.J., as for him, to avoid a trial with Wanda, will prefer to sell all his shares to Bunny Tagliatti, who will rename the club Bunny's Lair. If the decoration will not undergo profound changes, Bunny will serve Italian food and impose the presence of a singer every night, including Gina Capwell and later Sasha Schmidt. In 1990, Bunny, in lack of money, resells a part of his parts to Stephen Slade. After Bunny's disappearance, Stephen will manage The Lair alone before also disappearing so mysteriously at the beginning of 1991.