The Witness

Some years ago. A local boy made good, came back to town, and plowed some money into a club dedicated to local music. Simple as that.

Aw, who am I kidding? It’s never that simple, is it?

Johnny Serrano is a musician. He’s an okay singer. Knows his way around a piano. But he can play that guitar of his like a mother-fucking riot .  He’s been in bands you’ve heard of.  Fuckable Saints, Hungry Tree, Kinetic Orchestra, Lascivious, Air and Thunder, to name a few. He’s been a studio player for years. And he’s gone on many road tours with various acts 

(although I’m sure those rumors about him and Louise Mandrell aren’t true.) He likes to smile, and it’s a rare night when someone doesn’t ask him to tell one of his many many stories of the music business.  On rare occasions, he’ll even get up on stage with acts that come through town or play a few with the Piss-Poor Liars (The Witness’s house band).

But for the most part, Johnny is relatively happy in his retirement. He just wishes that the club wasn’t running at a near-constant loss. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The Witness does well enough that it’s almost always close to break-even. But running a music club is a sure recipe for weird expenses and so, even doing well, Johnny has to dip into savings. There may come a day when he might have to close the doors, and that’d be a shame because in the five years it’s been open its remade the local music scene completely.

The Neighborhood:

The Witness sits in the grungier part of downtown. Lots of empty parking lots with grass growing through the cracks. brown glass strewn everywhere.  Likely, you’re going to be panhandled around the club environs and if you don’t lock your car doors, the homeless people in the area will at very least go through your glove box.  Many of the club denizens don’t bother having anything their car worth stealing.

The Exterior:

The club from the outside is a boxy looking structure of old school dark red brick. Caged exterior lights go all the way around the structure providing some illumination to the parking spots closest to the club proper. Anything other than the original brick on the building has been fetishistically painted black. When Johnny bought the building, there was something spray painted over the big metal door out front. the top of the message had been worn away over time but the words at the end of the sentence, “...And the Witness shall be known!” remained.  Johnny said that it had an ineffable quality to it.  Eventually, it wore away but Johnny bought a blue neon sign that says simply, “The Witness”  There is a jack-leg wooden ramp/loading dock that is around the back so that bands can load in.  All the doors on the exterior of the building are heavy duty metal fire doors.

The Show Floor:

They turn the AC way up because when the club is full it literally can’t keep up with the demand and the place can be sweltering in the dead of winter. (Cigarette and blunt smoke don't help much) Sadly, there really isn’t anything like a coat room. many times the narrow high tables end up being a pile of coats and what not. Again, as outside, nearly everything in the show floor area is painted black. Most of the flat surfaces appear to be a little sticky.  The stage is a 3/4 thrust and tables line the walls, leaving a wide-open space in the center.  One actually enters the stage from a stairwell on the stage right side down from the second level. Legend has it that Jello Biafra accidentally slipped down them and then played an entire set with a dislocated shoulder.

There is an oversized closet on the left-hand wall, that is essentially the area for sound system management. It has a bunkhouse door, so whomever is running sound can sit in there but still see the stage.(sorta)

The Bar: 

Weirdly, the bar, because of the layout of the original building had to be put behind the stage area. There is a wide door to the right of the stage that leads into the bar and patrons are encouraged not to linger in the doorway, usually because the regulars will shove them. Hard.  There is one TV that’s usually tuned to CNN with the sound off. The Witness is NOT the place to come if you want to drink and watch a sporting event. There is an old-school cigarette machine.  The bar is a long burnished oak affair that looks like a proper bar. The bar is also very well stocked. Johnny’s been experimenting with selling microbrewery ales here and that seems to be going ok. You can find a decent selection of whiskey and a few wines as well. It should be mentioned that anyone that orders a PBR or a Milwaukee’s Best in here will have the bartender say, “Here’s your beer, loser.” and the regulars will chorus “LOSER!”  The bartenders are under strict orders.

To the right of the bar are the bathrooms.  The bathrooms are fairly spacious and even at their cleanest, look pretty grungy. They’ve seen a lot of damage over the years and there are some bacteria in here that can only be killed with ritual AND fire.  The bar also has a side door that leads out to the jack-leg dock and the back parking lot.

Behind the bar is a stairwell down into the basement. The downstairs runs the entire length of the place and the floor is thick enough that sound bleed-over is fairly minimal even with a full house and a live band.   The downstairs is almost all storage with a small area set aside for a card table and chairs. There is a set of ANCIENT school lockers where employees can stow their gear. They had to build a cold box down there for keg storage  There is a Dumbwaiter that they use to transport kegs up to the bar level and drinks up to the green room.  But the lift engine is somewhat erratic. Pity the poor bastard who has to hump a keg up the stairs.

The Green Room:

Again, not by choice, the only access to the green room is via the fire escape stairs on the back of the building or the stairs down to the stage. The only other door leads to Johnny’s office. Once a year, Johnny buys nearly indestructible furniture from the local university, and puts it in the green room where it is subjected to the sort of abuse that even college kids can’t manage... and then after a year or so, he arranges a Viking funeral for it in the back parking lot.  Usually on a night when the club is otherwise closed. last year, he invited the rest of the staff and a few friends and there was barbecue.

The green room is home to an impressive collection of graffiti from bands that have passed through this way. Johnny encourages this. There is a go-cup with sharpies that has been thumbtacked to one of the walls.  One graffito even has a frame over it and glass.  Bowie played a nice intimate show here 2 years ago. Word has come down that if anyone obscures Bowie’s signature that the consequences will be terribly dire.

Johnny’s office:  

Johnny’s office is the de-facto place to hang for the staff after hours and for the bands that he’s friendly with.  Johnny has his own fridge and microwave up here. He has a desk up here that had to be brought up in pieces and assembled.  There are only two things of real value up here.  There is a safe in the floor where Johnny drops the nights take. Anyone looking to crack that box better bring heavy tools because you’ll have to take it out of the floor and that won’t be easy. Each of the floor levels in this building are 2 feet thick solid concrete. It’s one of the reasons that things are the way they are here. renovations would NOT be cheap. Building and wiring up the sound closet cost a damn fortune all by itself.

The other thing of value is Johnny’s axe.(“Rosalie”)  He also has a piano up here.  The rest of the office is a long and comfy couch and a stack of folding chairs in the coat closet.(there is also a milk crate in there filled with little percussion instruments and tambourines.) Johnny is most likely to be encountered here after the club has closed and before it’s opened. Mostly after hours, he’s entertaining friends, co-workers, and whomever might be playing tonight.  Before the club opens, he’s trying to untangle the business end or maybe booking acts to play.  When the club is open, Johnny likes to move around, say hi to the regulars, jump in to help if the bar is in the weeds, maybe play on stage a bit. You never know.

The Staff:

Tony Serrano:

Unlike Johnny who grew up tall and then filled out over the years, Tony, his cousin, stayed relative short and compact... So on those rare occasions when Johnny loses his temper and starts laying about himself, it’s intimidating to see.  But you should be more afraid of Tony. Tony is actually a black belt in Brazillian jiu-jitsu and is more than capable of putting guys on the deck that are twice his size. It’s the main reason he enlisted in the army. He got tired of being messed with because he was short.

Tony Serrano is the club’s cooler. He hires the bouncers and makes certain that they err on the side of caution.  He’s got a pretty good radar for when a man might have rage control issues, and if he determines that someone he’s hired has those sorts of problems they are canned on the spot. And in at least two cases,are then sent to the emergency room with multiple broken bones 

Tony don’t play. And although he bitches constantly about being the “Party Dad” it is work that suits him temperamentally.  He almost never smiles, and his sense of humor is Mojave desert dry.  Every once in a while some club girl with daddy issues (usually one he’s saved from being date-raped) tries to climb up in his lap for cuddling. and while he doesn’t discourage this, he’s in his forties and knows that those things won’t last. But while they are going on, well...He almost smiles.

Donna “Sunny” Padget:

Sunny is a tallish, thin woman. nicely built, in her mid-thirties and has an adorable smile. She’s the bar manager and 3/4 of the men, boys, and even a few of the ladies are madly in love with her. This is not helped by the fact that during the summer months when the heat in the place is intolerable, she’ll strip down to shorts and a sports bra while the male bar- tenders are down to shorts alone. The call her “Sunny” because even though like a lot of clientele, she enjoys punk, emo, and goth music, she has one of the most unfailingly bright and sunny dispositions, often being the one person able to cool off a conflict before Tony can get involved.  Loves both of the Serrano boys and they, in turn, would do anything for her.

Get a drink or two in Tony and he starts talking about marrying her.  He’s only half kidding. 

Donna for her part is just slightly more partial to Johnny and they had a thing once on the down low.  But it just made things more complicated and they swore off of it, only occasionally falling into bed again every six months or so.  If Louise Mandrell were to walk into the club, Donna would probably try to scratch her eyes out.

Donna is in charge of all aspects of bar business and does all the hiring for the bar.  Her people radar is not as good as Tony’s but she’s beginning to trust his radar more and more when it comes to people. He was able to tell that Bryce was ripping off the till before the numbers caught up to him and proved it.

The Spiritual level: 

Things around here are not so good. The original building was a sweatshop when it was first built. There was a fire that killed 3 women and gutted the interiors, but people kept trying to make a go of it. The building had good solid bones. Eventually, it became the squatting place of a man who was luring gay men there so he could kill, cook and eat them. 

The grounds HAVE been exorcised. SO there aren’t specific ghost causing troubles, but it has left a kind of psychic stain on the area.  Fights and conflicts that take place here tend to escalate out of control and at times hard feelings can fester for a long time before bursting forth and boiling over.  It’s how Lowell got killed.

Lowell is one ghost that the club has gained since it opened. He was a guy who got killed in a fight that took place in the bar because some scumbag would not keep his hands off of a lady friend of his. Lowell’s been hanging around since.  Occasionally he makes life difficult for any dude who won’t take no for answer. Usually, all it takes to using phantasm to make a young woman’s drink fizz or change color. (making her think she’s been roofied.) Security takes a real dim view of that shit.  Occasionally he’s able to use Terrify to some effect in either the bar mirror or in the bathroom mirror. He’d like to learn Possession and occasionally borrow the body of one of the bouncers.

Connections:

*The Caboose and The Witness have a bit of bleed-over. Bartenders go from one place to another. DJ Big Willy helped to design the sound system, and DJ Psycho-Pirate is in here all the time. Mainly because she's stalking a number of the local musicians.

*Ditto for Noel and Luna from The Grimoire 

*This is a primary pick-up spot for Gilbert Savage from Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean. He enjoys being able to say that he's half-demon to the women he picks up and have them not him seriously. Then he takes them home, and they find out why they should have.

*Lara X frequents the place and can be found here when she's not trolling more specific waters. Johnny has seen her here often enough to consider her a regular and occasionally buys her a drink.

*Darla Grumman used to date a singer and has spent a bit time working on the sound system here. as far as Johnny is concerned, Darla is magic and can do no wrong. Her money is no good in here.

* Johnny knows Teflon John Galloway well enough to ask about his family. John doesn't dig most of the music in here, Not his groove at all. but some of the goth girls...well. Johnny at least knows that if Galloway is dealing on the premises, he's doing it discretely. Few members of the staff don't enjoy getting baked from time to time.

*Joseph Cartolano has been in here tracking vampiric prey. But he knows it's a bad idea to try to attack anyone in a place as public as this one. Tony has marked him as a martial artist.

* Schuyler Lavey used to come in here. One night Lowell took it upon himself to ruin his evening. He hasn't been back since.  Milo Karanikas has also drawn Lowell's notice.