Planet Rooth Gallery to move, owner says landlord and nightclub to blame
After nearly 10 years and almost 100 Saturday nights, Ray at Night organizer and co-founder Gustaf Rooth says that he’s moving his flagship gallery, Planet Rooth Studio Gallery, to Hillcrest. What’s more, he says that as much as it breaks his heart, he’s pretty much done with North Park. While he will still promote Ray at Night on the website that he owns (www.rayatnight.com) and plans to help host art shows at Bluefoot Bar & Lounge to run in conjunction with the monthly art walk, he wants to focus more on Planet Rooth’s new location at 3334 Fifth Ave. Rooth describes it as a “bigger, better and improved” location for the gallery, and says he originally wanted to expand into a space next to the current location but that the landlord wouldn’t let him.
Rooth also said that recent changes to North Park’s nightlife scene has made it an unbearable place to live and work (he lives above the gallery) and that the arts and culture scene in general has suffered because of the patrons that flock to bars like True North Tavern [which is owned by bar and restaurant company, the Verant Group, which owns five local establishments including the neighboring West Coast Tavern]. This comes on the heels of a New York Times article—in which Rooth was interviewed and his gallery featured—that proclaimed North Park a hot national destination
“It’s great that it’s put San Diego on the map, but North Park’s success is coming at the immediate expense of the people that have lived here for years,” Rooth said in an interview on Monday. “As much as we once liked to participate in it, now we want to get away from it.” Planet Rooth will hold its last show during the 100th Ray at Night on Saturday, Jan. 9.
CityBeat: What made you decide to move the gallery?
Gustaf Rooth: Two things and I’ll give them to you in order: My landlord and True North. The North Park bar scene is just too much.
But I’m expanding, I’m not shutting my doors. It seems like just as I’m gaining momentum I’m gonna move. But I don’t want to put a negative connotation on my reasons for leaving, but it’s not all positive. I’ve never even it thought about it before, but I said to myself the other day, “In order to get to heaven you have to go through hell first.” I didn’t think that ten years ago. I thought you create your own little heaven. And little did I know that [pauses] I remember sitting on the North Park Main Street board of directors and them saying that, “Yeah we want to focus our attention on arts, culture and entertainment. Well, now North Park’s the entertainment district of San Diego. What happened to the arts and culture? I’m sure Ray at Night will continue, but what the fuck’s going to happen in the future? True North is going to open a brewery on the corner [the corner of 30th and North Park Way] to add onto their existing location. I’m glad 30th has become the street, but at the expense of who? A little at the expense of me, but I’m expanding now. I’m going to move forward with what I do, but not here.
My chairs are blowing up right now [Rooth also designs furniture. His “Barrelly Made It” chairs, made out of old wine barrels, have sold very well] and I’m gonna make a lot of money off those but I know exactly I’ll do with it: Put it right back into San Diego. That plays a huge part in why I need to leave because I told my landlord, that because the chairs are being picked up by a major U.S. retailer, that I wanted to expand to the space next door. I told her that I need more space and initially she was all happy about it, but then two days later she was like, “No, I don’t want to rent more space to you. I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.” When Craig left [Craig Bretthauer, former owner of 4 Walls Gallery, which neighbors Planet Rooth and closed earlier this year] it was painful. That was one of the worst moments for Ray Street. But she wouldn’t rent to me so I’m glad I’m leaving. She’s raised my rent every year for the past five years, except for last year. I’ve gone from bitter to pissed.
CB: Getting back to the changes in the neighborhood, you mentioned that lately there’s been more focus on entertainment as opposed to the arts…
GR: Yes, it’s changed very rapidly and there’s definitely less focus on arts and culture… And being at the center of what’s going on here, you can just tell that some people just don’t give a shit about the arts and it is fucking frustrating. I don’t think you have to have a “eureka” moment as an artist, for example my chairs, to be in a position to where you can criticize what’s going on, but I guess that’s what it takes unfortunately.
CB: But, what have you seen here in the past year that’s made you want to say something?
GR: To be blunt, it’s living here between 11 and 2:30 at night. They talk about how they want San Diego to have live/work spaces. Well, I live and work in one of those spaces and I can complain about what’s going on. People tell you over and over, “Well, you shouldn’t live in the city.” I shouldn’t live where I am because these people have no drunk etiquette? I’ve never yelled and beat up my friends or thrown bottles and left garbage on the street when I’m drunk. And they think that’s going to get better?
Again, it’s good that 30th Street has become the beer and bar capital, but what does that come with? Does anyone have the guts to stand up and say that one of the reasons I’m moving is because of True North? Don’t get me wrong, there not a reason, but I’m glad that I am because I can’t take that place anymore. I just can’t. Regardless of what they’re trying to do. The Bluefoot hires someone that stands outside, pretty far away from the bar, and asks people kindly to be quiet. True North doesn’t do that. I’ve never seen someone stand on the corner and ask someone to keep it down and I know why. Because they’re probably afraid that person will get shot. Their fucking crowd is terrible.
CB: It’s obvious that you’re upset but you’re also excited. You don’t want to deal with the bullshit anymore, but you’re business is blowing up, but at the same time is there any part of you that feels like you’re giving up?
GR: Man, it’s so bittersweet. Don’t make me cry dude, I will [becomes visibly choked up]. I’m sorry but this has been 25 percent of my life and when it goes in one direction [pauses] I’m passionate but that’s what communities need. I never tried to be some community leader. I never tried to do any of this, it just came naturally because I care.
This guy was shitting behind my building and I put up a sign that said, “Don’t shit here,” and now people don’t shit there anymore. So do I have to write in big letters on the street, “Don’t fight here, ” or what? Anyways, you meet people and you become involved in your community if you want to. As an artist you can’t help it, because that’s what you want to do and, interestingly enough, it’s a way to promote yourself without ever really knowing it. Most everyone is bummed I’m leaving. And I am upset, because I could have expanded here and this could have happened in North Park, and now that I’m not gonna do that. Some people might call me a sell-out, but I don’t have much of a choice.
CB: Can you tell me about the new location?
GR: Yeah, it’s on Fifth Avenue, in between Thorn and Upas. It’s a Craftsman home built in 1892, two stories, 3800 square feet, a shop in the back and another cottage behind that. I’ve transferred over my business license. We’re gonna throw soirees there that are just going to be insanity. It’s really bitchin. It’s so big, you have to see it. It used to be a flower shop. I walked into that place and I was like, “Go fuck yourself, this is so fucking bitching.” I’m so blessed and so excited. I’m so happy, but I’m so torn. I spent the whole weekend there and I didn’t even want to come back here.
CB: But you’ll still be participating in Ray at Night even though the gallery is leaving?
GR: Yeah, on every Ray at Night I will be hosting shows at the Bluefoot from 5 to 9 in the evening. Bluefoot has supported me for years. Adam [Cook] and Cuong [Nguyen] [Bluefoot owners] would donate a keg for my openings. That gets tips for me and really helps. That’s supporting the arts. That’s brotherhood.
CB: Has True North ever offered to do something like that?
GR: Fuck no!
CB: They’ve never reached out to you?
GR: The owners have never once stepped into my place. The first night True North was open and there were people throwing stuff at me and Anjela [Piccard, Rooth’s girlfriend]. There was a huge fight in the street and someone had broken a bunch of pots and these guys are fighting and I’m yelling at this one guy to stop punching this one guy and kicking him on the ground. Meanwhile, his friend is punching his girlfriend. So I’m yelling at these guys and all of a sudden this huge rock comes out of nowhere and just misses my head. I went there the next day and told the manager, on my coolest behavior, and he talked to me like I was some fool, telling me that, after a few months, that the crowd was going to mellow out.
Then after another altercation I went down again and he told me that they were going to install some cameras to take pictures and that they were going to team up with the other bars and share these pictures of these troublemakers. It’s this whole bar etiquette that I’m not even familiar with. I think those guys are fucking douchebags. I really do and you can print that. So no, none of those guys have ever reached out to me. The only time they’ve ever talked to me is when I went there and told them I had a problem and I did it very diplomatically. They tried to give me this stuff that they live here and they care about the neighborhood. They don’t give a fuck!
The fact of the matter is that one day, someone’s gonna turn up dead and that’s just all there is to it. It’s the clientele. Nothing against the bar, nothing against what they’re doing, but this is what’s going on. I have to put up with their loud noise. And now they’re going to open a brewery right on the corner on North Park Way and 30th in the old upholstery building. They can’t say for a moment that they want to get involved in arts and culture. Arts, culture, entertainment. Well, for them, I guess one out of three ain’t bad. Might as well take out the arts and culture aspect of Ray at Night out and just have it be entertainment, because is seems to me that’s where it’s at.
CB: And there’s more bars coming it seems.
GR: North Park’s gonna be known for bars. It’s going to lose the arts and cultural part. There’s no culture when you keep pulling a petri dish out of the fridge and smashing it to the ground and starting a new one. It’s unfortunate. People like to drink, people like to have a good time, but I just think that, here, the arts, culture and entertainment, the entertainment aspect is supposed to be third. The arts creates the culture and that creates the entertainment aspect. They’re riding my coattails, but they don’t support me. They’ve never been in my studio. They know who I am and they’ve never been to say hi and check out my place. And they say something like, “Well, have you ever been to my place?” And I’ll tell them, “I’ve had your cheeseburger with tater tots. I thought it was OK. The tater tots were kind of cold. I didn’t like the ketchup you used. The waitress was great. I think you should use red onions instead of white.”
Somewhere, along the line nobody thought about, “How are we going to keep North Park intellectual?” It’s like Silverlake in L.A. All the artists got kicked out and all of a sudden it was just bars and restaurants everywhere. The bottom line for those guys is money. How much of your integrity you can sacrifice to make a buck? If that does if for you, that’s great, but in general, do you give a fuck about me? Do you wonder if Gustaf is able to sleep at night or if one of your customers is throwing rocks at him? They don’t give a fuck about me. You wake up out of a cold dead sleep at 2:30 in the morning and watch the kind of violence that’s going down on Ray Street. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to print it. But I see it with my own eyes. They don’t live here. They don’t understand that someone getting into their car right underneath my window at 2:30 in the morning, they’re loud as fuck. Pissing, screaming, cranking their tunes, totally drunk. And that wakes you up and when you ask them to be quiet, they’re like, “Fuck you asshole.”
Poor Chris [Puzio, owner of the now-closed Spacecraft Gallery who lives near the corner of North Park Way and 30th], he’s got the worst of it. People call him faggot in front of his kids and tell him to go back inside and fuck his kids. I don’t blame him for being a bit more aggro in his approach. To me, it’s a lose-lose situation. The only thing you can do is be like me. Move and be vocal. I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired and I don’t want to get to the point where I go down there and end up hurting somebody.
CB: So you’re obviously not that enthusiastic about the future of the neighborhood at least from a cultural standpoint? Even with the New York Times article and all?
It’s great that it’s put San Diego on the map, but North Park’s success is coming at the immediate expense of the people that have lived here for years. As much as we once liked to participate in it, now we want to get away from it. Once, it was about being part of something, now we can’t get far enough away from it. I’m glad I don’t own a home down here. Go talk to the guy in the purple house down the street and he’ll tell you it’s a fucking joke now. Walk down the street on a Sunday morning and look at all the bottles on the street.
I just don’t understand what those guys are trying to do, the Verant Group [owners of True North and West Coast Tavern]. They’re not bringing culture, they’re bringing a headache. I heard that one of the guys was at a North Park Main Street meeting and he was saying, “Well, you have all these galleries on Ray Street and they serve alcohol at their events and they’re not even supposed to be serving.” Are you kidding me? They make money off alcohol. I don’t. The fact is that they care about one thing: The bottom line. My biggest concern about everything I’ve done here it has never been about the bottom line. Obviously I’m in the wrong business if I was only concerned about that. For me, it’s always been about good times and entertainment on an artistic and cultural level.
Addendum: The Verant Group was contacted before and after the publication of this piece and declined to comment.
Yeah North Park is not the mirror image of what it used to be but it’s not all True North’s fault. Yeah once that place opened it brought a bunch of db’s to NP but come on blaming them for bottles on the street? What are they a fucking mini-mart?
Try to be a little less one sided in your argument next time.
Maybe you should be part of the solution instead of running away and you can blame True North all you want but U-31 and Bar Pink as plenty a**holes too
RAY AT NIGHT has had a good run though when economies flounder, bars, hookers and bank robbers prosper.. for a little while at least. The Bush years took a lot of people down with them and though gustaf had a few bad days he rose like a phoenix …….in 3-d even! we all had fun and as the American dream goes , if it isn’t bought out by a major corporation it goes to crap and fades to dust…..having been in some of the first Ray at Night art events………. though now it’s a Barbi Streisand thing..you know……. MEMORIES IN THE CORNERS OF OUR MINDS…..blah blah blah! Praise God and the internet because at least one of them is sure to give you eternity…. though at times i question which one runs the best operating systems
The business associations in North Park and South Park support the opening of ever more alcohol-focused venues, because those are the ventures that make enough money to survive. Thank goodness for the Cal ABC, which has guidelines that at least prevents the opening of pure bars at a certain saturation point.
North Park Main Street and the South Park Business Group want businesses that survive, not out of concern for the quality of neighborhood life, but because of the potential for their business group to collect a Business Improvement District fee from every business. NPMS recently expanded their BID down 30th to Thorn. Each business there pays from $125 to $500, depending on number of employees. Those fees are used to promote 30th Street as an alcohol destination. Some of the fees are used to plant trees and powerwash sidewalks, but the main goal is promotion: to bring in as many people as possible who will spend a lot, as late into the night as possible. Alcohol is the main attractant that will accomplish that goal.
SPBG would love to form a BID, and one of their big supporters would be Sam Chammas, Whistle Stop and Station Tavern (yeah, lousy tater tots) owner (and part owner of Live Wire in NP).
The streets parallel to and crossing 30th have many residential properties. The people living in these homes and aprtments near the bars endure the noise, litter, drunks, and parking problems, and are routinely disrespected by the business group members. The most usual response by the business groups to the legitimate complaints of residents is “move if you don’t like it.”
Does anyone remember scolari’s and how the douche bags in the condos across the street, whom us bar patrons would make fun of and run them out, complained so much to the city about, “noise”, that they were unable to renew any of their license’s? Then, what happens? Those douche bag get their new hangout spot…The Office. Any complaints from the people across the street? No, because now that’s their new hangout across the street from where they live.
Let’s not forget about other shitty places in northpark, like U-31. And yes, it is getting more violent. Last month my roomie received multiple stab wounds at a party in northpark, and he’s really not the type of guy to get stabbed. I heard Rocky Balboa did some damage though!
And the response of the drinkers to nearby residents…see above. Enough said.
An additional reality: living along/near a small-community mixed-business/residential street is not bad when the businesses there exist primarily to serve the nearby residents. For example, owners of a barbershop, shoe repair shop, grocery, bike shop, or laundry mat aren’t normally dependent on attracting customers outside of the community, and generally hope to do well just serving the nearby residents. These types of businesses aren’t benefitted by promotional events, and don’t benefit directly (I know, the great tree-planting and powerwashing events…but that could be done other ways) by paying a business association an annual fee. When the business association gets the higher earning bar and restaurant owners to back formation of a Business Improvement District, the little neighborhood businesses are forced to subsidize those business owners who do want to attract as huge a number of outsiders as possible. The BID fee is just another cost to what may already be a marginal small business, and if the barber moves out, the BA can hope to attract a bar or restaurant to replace him/her. Higher overall tax revenue and BID fees are an incentive for the City to support this type of transition. In District 3, Toni, and now Todd, NEVER said/say “no” to the BID Council members when it comes to supporting Neighborhood Conditional Use Permits. The BID members are big voices in election outcomes, bigger than mine and my neighbors’.
Whaa and boo-fucking-hoo. Welcome to the real world, where upcoming neighborhoods attract bars, and yes, their fair share of douchebags. For better or worse (I’d personally go with worse), money runs the world, not art. Running away isn’t going to help your cause in the neighborhood you supposedly love. You sound bitter at best and delusional at worst.
North Park is going through a vicious cycle. Artists, intellects, activists, GLBT, and struggling musicians moved to North Park because of the cheap rents. Because of these people, NP went through some kind of Renaissance (about six years ago). Then came the gentrifications, hipster bars, Starbucks, and now the knuckleheads thanks to that place that used to be Shooterz. The high rents and presence of knuckleheads would drive those who once made NP a better place move to a better place (like further north). Because of the shenanigans that you would expect more on Garnet than 30th, North Park would be back to a terrible shithole like it was back in the Reagan/Bush I era.
Unfortunately, the greedy BA kowtowed to the likes of the Verant Group that would make NP meet its Waterloo.
Good Riddance to Gustaf and Planet Rooth. What a joke. The problem with Ray at Night is Gustaf. It has always been about him. I was wondering who would finally get the nerve to sculpt a damn statue of him so we can praise Gustaf up and down for saving our neighborhood and making it such a great place to show art and live. – At least to shut this guy up. — Nobody did. I suspect that is the real reason Gustaf is taking his precious gallery to another neighborhood. ..and then going to drive Ray at Night into the ground because he owns the copyrights. Why are you interested in promoting the name any further? Oh yeah. Because you are pissed. Boo-hoo! Can we drop the name and just call the event North Park Nights…now? Ray at night is dead and the way Gustaf ran it… it should be.
Really?? -
“I shouldn’t live where I am because these people have no drunk etiquette?” G. Rooth
Many times Mr. Rooth’s own drunken behavior at his gallery drove away his business. Now he claims it’s the other drunks fault? The Art business requires building sober, trusting relationships. Working well with the people that create the art and developing a loyal customer base, is step one. Once a month, for ten years, G. Rooth has had great art parties and a couple of times even had decent Art in there.
No one comes to North Park Nights, so get over the stupid drama of what should be called what. Gustaf owns the website because he built it. Why should he give it up? And anyone who’s been in the area for years knows that True North has caused a plethora of problems for residents here. Most locals don’t shit where they sleep but TN’s patrons aren’t locals now are they? The only reason people on this street hate on Gustaf is because he isn’t afraid to protect what he’s created or to call it like he sees it when the whiners and moaners aren’t handed a 15,000 person mailing list for free. Get over yourselves. If you think you can do it better than Gustaf has, now is the chance you’ve been waiting for. But wait! After Planet Rooth is gone, who will you gripe about?
Maybe we could host a North Park Gladiator Night: Gustaf vs. all his foes in a coliseum made from barrel staves! That just might save the neighborhood and give the bored lions at the zoo down the street some excitement.
went to “North Park Nights”, what a waste of time! It’s on the third sat. of the month, one week after “Ray at Night” Smart move! Everyone goes to “Ray at Night” & NOBODY goes one week later. Most of the galleries don’t even open. As for Gustaf, what’s new? It’s the same everywhere. Artist’s come in to a crappy area of town, set up shop, bring the public in, voila, rent goes up, the artist’s get pushed out. Same old, same old.