The now legendary Safari Sam’s nightclub in Huntington Beach was open for just 23 months between 1984 and 1986, but those months were like a fevered dream. Sam Lanni and co-owner Gil Fuhrer were to nightclubs what Luis Buñuel was to film. Their club wasn’t there to fulfill expectations, but to upend them.

Walk in one night and the Minutemen would be pounding out their San Pedro lives in two-minute bursts of song. The next night might be a local avant-garde opera. The next, R&B pioneer Sugarcane Harris sawing away on the electric violin. And then a Jonathan Richman/Ted Hawkins double bill that left everyone in tears, followed by Beckett’s Endgame. Next night, a poetry series. Gil’s experiments in jambalaya. Nights when dadaist humorists cocooned in sleeping bags caromed through the room to Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance.” A night when the Jesus and Mary Chain made their West Coast debut to an audience rightfully shouting “Bullshit!” at them. Nights of polka, western swing and roadhouse rock. Hundreds of nights, none of them quite expected, except perhaps the last night, when the HB police shut the club down. You’ve gotta wake up sometime.

That was two long decades ago. Now Sam’s dreaming again, in Technicolor, with a resurrected Safari Sam’s on Sunset in Hollywood. He’s had the place 23 months, during which time the club has presented night after night of nothing, sitting dark while Lanni bled $17,000 a month in rent, dreaming of an end to a government permitting process that’s glacial.

Glaciation is practically the only eventuality he hasn’t been required to prepare for. The fire department wants one thing; Building & Safety wants something contrary. The Department of Fish & Game, for chrissake, had to be satisfied that Lanni’s turning a former strip joint into a nightclub—“a cultural events center,” he prefers calling it—would not negatively impact the local haddock and stoats.

Lanni optimistically thought he’d be open last summer; instead, the money he’s spent decades accruing—on which he and his family might have retired—has vanished in big monthly chunks. When he finally got approval to start construction last December, he didn’t have the $30,000 in ready cash to proceed. He sent out an e-mail sharing his plight with friends and musicians, resulting in a George Bailey moment where Lanni got more offers of help than he needed. Since then, money he had tied up in an investment has been freed up, giving him operating capital.

The 465-capacity club was scheduled to open on Feb. 9, but the bureaucratic wheels weren’t quite done rolling over Lanni. First, a plumbing inspector due the previous Friday didn’t show up until the following Monday, delaying the final drywalling, which delayed getting the final fire inspection done, then the fire department said they wouldn’t be by for another eight days, meaning a week after Feb. 9, with no guarantee that will be the final sign-off. Which means acts canceled, more rent and payroll down the drain, while Lanni seems to be functioning in some Zen-like state that occurs one step beyond despair.

The one night in mid-January that Safari Sam’s was actually open was a unique one: Lanni put out an open invite for people to come share their vision of what an ideal club would be. Some 90 people—musicians, artists, music fans and neighbors—sat amid the construction rubble while Sam, feverish with flu, explained his dream and asked what theirs were.

“I love to have fun. I love music. I love to hear people laugh. I love hanging out with interesting people,” he croaked out. “I don’t think club owners spend enough time loving what goes on in their clubs. If you’re good at what you do, and you do it with passion, I want you here. I don’t care if there are only two people here to see it. Don’t be boring; we have to deal with George Bush every day. It’s time you guys help us have a good time.”

Jesus, why not take some of the lumber stacked behind Lanni and just crucify him now? One might easily wonder what sort of chump he is, if Lanni hadn’t made magic happen once before.

As for the folks filling the other chairs: one wanted lower cover charges so more people would come out; one wanted avant-garde films; one wanted online streamed broadcasts of shows; one wanted community outreach, such as a discount card for locals; one wanted more pirate music, the kind his band plays, in costume, while their costumed fans have mock swordfights in the audience. (Lanni says he also wants to hear your ideas, if you’d care to e-mail him at sam@safari-sams.com.)

And one of them noted, “I’ve been playing in clubs since I was 16, and I’ve never seen a club owner do what you’re doing with this meeting here.”


Born in Italy about 50 years ago and soon relocated to California, Lanni grew up in a household full of singing, accordion playing and the usual Italian racket, so it’s no great surprise that the first pop record he fell in love with was Elvis singing “It’s Now or Never.” Elvis was the first thing he saw in concert, in 1969 when he was 14, and then he got around to the Zep, Tull and Floyd. The last time he saw Elvis at the Long Beach Arena, it was the fat Elvis, and it was so pathetic that Lanni cried for 15 minutes after the show.

He’d been a paperboy for the Register, worked in his parents’ Huntington Beach liquor store, sold real estate, tried growing weed in Italy for a while, moved to Fallbrook and produced some rock shows there. One night he stopped in at an OC pizzeria where Gil Fuhrer was working. A long conversation about Apocalypse Now ensued, and they were friends.

In 1984, the pair leased a former Charlie’s Chili, festooned the interior with palm thatching and opened Safari Sam’s, which initially was just a restaurant.