TKC NOTE: Our friend Craig Glazer has authored an IMPRESSIVE TREATISE on Kansas City club life that not only speaks to this town's history but also brings us into the modern era. Seriously, this is an impressive summation of the movers and shakers behind Kansas City's club scene and it's CERTAINLY worth a read for anybody who cares about local nightlife.
Check it:
The Dark Knights
‘It's Saturday night
and I'm just hangin' out
Lookin' for a place to party
So I jumps into my ride
and I hits the road
Cause there's only one place to go
Down to the nightclub…’ – ‘Down To The Nightclub’ by Tower of Power
The times, they are a changin’. Well Kansas City has never had a plethora of national celebrities running around town being chased by reporters from TMZ, we did have a town where nightclub giants once roamed. From the ‘60’s through the ‘90’s, Kansas City could match almost any city between New York and LA with its night club owners being the Princes of the city. The late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s had two nearly household name entrepreneurs; Butch ‘Carmen’ Civella and Victor Fontana. Civella’s mainstay was a nightclub called ‘Mother’s’ on 50th and Main. Vic Fontana became a nightclub impresario with ‘Walter Mitty’s’. What made them both local celebrities were two major issues: 1) they were Italian and thus, somehow automatically connected to the mob and 2) Both clubs were packed on the weekends and there were lines to get in and if you were a connected youngster or a hot babe you might get in with a fake ID. There was a third maybe equally important reason, both men were charming and handsome in their own way and the women lined up for them.
What made Butch kind of a big thing was his relationship with the Civella Crime Family which made the front page of the Kansas City Star seemingly every other month. Butch, however, was not involved in organized crime nor was he ever sent to prison. Just the aroma of Mafia after the movie ‘The Godfather’ made every guy in a leather jacket or every girl who could squeeze into a tight dress want to be Butch’s next best friend. Vic Fontana was the taller, more classically handsome of the two. I should know, years later we battled over a beautiful KC gal that he won over me even though he was much older at the time. As an adult teenager and a young man soon to join the ranks of these ‘Dark Knights’ as a club owner, I hung out at both clubs. I was closer with Butch than Vic, maybe because I had a couple of run-ins at ‘Walter Mitty’s’ and was thrown out for fist-fights.
Butch Civella never really recovered after ‘Mother’s’ was no longer the hot spot. He tried a couple other clubs but to no avail. He later moved out to Las Vegas and we just never heard much about him anymore. Fontana, however, opened a series of restaurants and nightclubs over the next twenty five years, his biggest being ‘Fanny’s’ in Westport; for a time the crown jewel of nightclubs and high-end eateries in the city. Vic would go on to open several other places, most notably ‘The Edge’ downtown with his son. Unfortunately late one night, a young man fired bullets through the windows of ‘The Edge’ striking his son in the head and killing him. Vic was never the same afterwards and passed away a few months ago.
The ‘80’s and ‘90’s belonged to Jack Hanrahan and Dave McQuitty. They would go on to own five nightclubs including four in Westport. While they would go on to have successes like ‘Guitars and Cadillacs’ they were best known for all the attention their Westport club, called ‘The Harris House’ achieved in the early ‘90’s. The two guys were overly blamed for all the urban violence of the late eighties and into the nineties in Westport. They also had a huge dance club called ‘London’s’. The Harris House got national attention with gun battles featuring members of the Kansas City Chiefs including Dale Carter; Chiefs All-Pro Cornerback. Jack and Dave were victimized by the times, however, they both stayed in the nightclub/restaurant scene all the way up to today. Dave dropped out recently due to health issues. Though their clubs sometimes had a ‘bad boy’ image, they were not the colorful characters that Fontana and Civella had been.
Another nightclub player arrived on the scene in the ‘70’s and ran his game all the way into the 2000’s. His name was Stanford Glazer and he opened a place called ‘Stanford & Sons’ in Westport in 1975. The restaurant exploded onto the scene and battled ‘Houlihan’s’ on the Plaza for the Number One Eatery spot throughout the ‘70’s. Stan was more of a Dean Martin type playboy with flashy sports cars and he dressed like a young Hugh Hefner. Ladies were to be found everywhere around him. That included his most famous prize Sandy who would later marry Kansas City Mayor Dick Berkely instead of Stan. Stan’s sons; myself, Jeff and Jack ran Stanford & Sons off and on through the nineties. The Glazer boys took over the business in the early nineties and with Westport leader Bill Nigro, got Westport back on the map as THE entertainment spot in Kansas City; spearheading huge events like the Red Friday celebrations and outdoor Westport concerts.
To be fair, there was one female ‘Dark Night’, her name was Phyllis Miller and she owned ‘Dirty Sally’s’ on the Plaza. She was best known for hiring loose women and tough doormen and having an insane crush on Elvis Presley who did come and visit her once before he died.
The mid-nineties through the early 2000’s were pretty much owned by myself and my brother Jeff. My brother and I took over comedy and moved it to another level with household name celebrities like Pauly Shore, Kevin Nealon, Katt Williams, Lewis Black and Damon Wayans. We opened a dance in club for KU students so we could handle the overflow from our bar which was famous for its 2-for-1 drink specials. The dance club went urban with lines down the street and then all hell broke loose. The dance club was called ‘Studio 504’ fashioned after the nationally known ‘Studio 54’ in New York and boy was it. So now Hollywood came to Kansas City and to make it even more explosive all the local sports stars also came to Stanford’s. Everyone visited us from Joe Montana to Johnny Damon, from Neil Smith to Marcus Allen. The parties that went on upstairs in the large offices after hours became stories of legend. It’s unlikely we will ever see these times again.
Today we have a handful of hot clubs most notably Aura owned by Stuart Solomon who once owned major hotspot ‘The Fallout’ in Westport (also a one-time celebrity hang-out) and Johnson County club magnate Shawn McClenny who owns several bars including Fuel and really packs them in on the weekends.
Well, sports fans, while it hasn’t come to a total end, the days of the super-star club owners have certainly fallen. While Power & Light as well as Westport continue to have some great weekends and packed bars, the days of the ‘Dark Knight’ owners with big-time reputations is pretty much a thing of the past. It’s a product of our times, people just not going out as much as they once did, fear of DUI’s and Law Enforcement after midnight, and certainly a greater awareness of crime and violence in the wee hours of the morning have certainly contributed to the nightclub’s decline. Maybe a contributing factor is the fact that there is no media coverage of nightclub owners like myself, Civella and Fontana. At one point, men like these were regular features in the local papers as well as radio and television. It seems every cool guy with an extra nickel from the seventies to the two-thousands wanted to open a cool club or bar somewhere in the Kansas City area. Some did. Almost all of them came and went quickly save the ones mentioned in this story and a couple I left out. The sad truth is the one’s we talked about here had times of great financial success, none of the owners ended up with homes in Holbrook or memberships to the Mission Hills Country Club. Maybe these days will come again with a young and different group of Dark Knights.
You see, while many of these men made and lost small fortunes, it was never really about the money, it was about the fame, the party life, women and rock and roll. Only these guys know if it was worth it or not.
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