Club Scout

Like most bar owners, Kim Sparks is pretty meticulous when it comes to running her place, from cleaning the street and sidewalk in front of the Cherry Pit(60 South Broadway) on a nightly basis to making sure underage drinkers stay out. Unfortunately, no one is on top of her game all the time. And this past November, the bar was handed its second liquor-code violation after a bartender unknowingly served an undercover cop without examining her ID closely enough. "Our bartender was having an off night," explains Greg Smith, speaking on behalf of Sparks, his wife, who's a little shy when it comes to speaking with the press. "He glanced at her ID but did not look carefully."

As a result of this second violation, beginning Sunday, March 6, the Cherry Pit will be closed for twenty days -- on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays through the middle of April. Then on Friday, April 15, the bar will again be open full-time. "The state liquor board was very fair with us," Smith says. And from the sound of it, Sparks and her crew are doing everything they can to make sure nothing like this happens again -- including undergoing TIPs training, which taught them how to better spot a fake ID, as well as when to cut patrons off.

But for every bar that closes -- even for just twenty days -- another one opens. On March 10, Krash Club will debut in the Ice House space at 1801 Wynkoop Street formerly occupied by Sevilla and, very briefly, Chrome. Catering to the "More Party, Less Pretentiousness" crowd, Krash Club is touting itself as home to the "No Fee VIP" Krash pad, offering private couch seating with no fee or bottle minimum. On Tuesday evenings, the club will host a night dubbed "MP3J," giving club-goers the chance to control the sound system for thirty minutes at a time with their MP3 players.

Sounds like a Krash course in the making.