BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION OCT. 8-10, 2017) — At 1:20 a.m. Sept. 10 in the Fenn Street parking lot adjacent to the building that houses Lach’s Lounge, a 32-year-old Pittsfield man was shot multiple times. Judging by the cold bullet casings littering the ground and earwitness testimony, the gunman got off at least 10 shots. According to police, the victim had earlier been in Lach’s. THE PLANET had one wag caution against ordering a shot and a beer at the bottom-scraping barroom. We would only add if you do, drink the beer first, because the shot will likely leave you full of holes.

We’re not saying we haven’t occasionally enjoyed the atmosphere of the bar or that we have, but it’s generally not a good sign when you enter a gin joint and the first thing you see is the outline of a body chalked on the floor. Likewise, we tend to avoid bar and grilles that list the Heimlich Maneuver as “Today’s Special” and feature Naloxoneas an “entrée” selection.

Lach’s has been connected with three shootings and one murder in two years:

• The Sept. 10 shooting, which we shall dissect in a moment.
• A fatal head-shot delivered to James Dominguez III, 30, a Springfield resident, whose body was found in January 2016 in the parking lot at 129 Fenn St. Dominguez, police said, had earlier left Lach’s. A 911 call had been made at 1:30 a.m. He had taken “two in the hat,” as they say on the street. The medical examiner concurred. Pittsfield police said Lach’s had been “overserving” patrons on the night of the murder. That’s polite talk for when a bar keeps plying patrons with booze after they’ve gone beyond three sheets in a gale-force wind (“I’m not as think as you drunk I am”). Moreover, PPD said the bar provided drinks that night to those who were already spit-faced when they arrived, having previously consumed their oceans of booze elsewhere. Dominguez, incidentally, had been arrested in 2014 on a drug raid in Pittsfield. Drugs? In Pittsfield? No way. He pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and heroin and released on time served. A month later, Dominguez had a bullet in his head after his repasts at Lach’s.
• In October 2015, a man was shot on Lincoln Street. Police investigators determined that the gunman, Anthony Robertson, had earlier been in Lach’s, a fact the bartender conveniently forgot to mention when questioned by detectives.

——– ooo ——–

In the past eight months, Lach’s Lounge has  been before the Pittsfield Licensing Board (PLB) eight times. Let’s see: 8-for-8. That’s almost perfect, and it’s damned sure to win you a batting championship. It’s also damned sure not to close you down. Not in Pittsfield, not if you have what the wise guys call “protection” — not that we’re saying Lach’s does, of course. We wouldn’t NEVER say that. This very day or night, in fact, if you wish to get loaded watching baseball, football, hockey, or girl’s lacrosse, you can head to Lach’s. It’s still open. The joint has been dragged before the PLB three times now in a couple years in wake of violence, gunfire, shootings, and murder. Three taps on the limp wrist, and …

… It’s still open.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

The Sept. 10 shooting is made even more hilarious because, unbelievable as it sounds, the near murder didn’t cause another appearance before the PLB. Police Lt. Mike Grady wrote up the bar not for the shooting but for overcrowding that night. Grady told a befuddled PLB that police counts revealed 81 or 82 patrons in Lach’s the night of the Sept. 10 shooting. That didn’t include blind spots outside the range of video cameras. At the Oct. 3 hearing, Grady told the PLB he would “assume” there were more than 82 people inside, given the blind spots. Lach’s interim GM, Ishmael Lytle, no relation to Herman Melville, disputed Grady’s claim. Lytle said there were only 61 people there that night — 61: Same number of HRs Roger Maris hit in ’61. Keep in mind that Lach’s might be able to comfortably contain the three Apollo 8 astronauts and the human remains populating two phone booths, but more than 82 — even 61 giving the benefit of the doubt? Sounds like SOMETHING hot was occurring there prior to the gunplay. THE PLANET‘s guess: 2-for-1 soda pop.

At the Oct. 3 hearing, it came out that police couldn’t say for certain the shooter was inside Lach’s, although the victim surely was. If it quacks like Daffy, po-goes like Daffy, has a beak like Daffy, lisps juicily like Daffy, and “ho-hhoooos” like Daffy, it’s probably Daffy. Oh, and Grady offered this little tidbit: On that fateful-near-fatal Sept. 10 night, Lach’s had served booze to an underage person. Nonetheless, for some mysterious reason known only to Odin, Zeus, Imhotep, Baal, the Great Juju Who Lives In Silver Lake, and the rest of the gods, that violation wasn’t part of Grady’s complaint.

Why wasn’t the shooting the main thrust of the PPD’s complaint? In the hearing, the PLB struggled to figure that one out, notwithstanding any “nudge-nudge wink-winks” being exchanged. After Sgt. John Soules told the PLB “both the victim and several of the bystanders had been inside the bar prior to the incident,” and although the man was shot multiple times not long after leaving the bar, he couldn’t make a connection between barroom, shooter, and victim. Sherlock Holmes, out city turns its lonely eyes to you.

The PLB then rushed in to play Advocate for the Defense for the besieged bar.

Board member Dick Stockwell said that even if the shooter was in the bar, “having a few drinks [is] not illegal.” Bingo!

“I’m having a hard time connecting Lach’s to the shooter and why it is their responsibility,” said board member Dennis Powell. Double Bingo!! Powell also offered the lame excuse of social media. He absolved Lach’s, because on social media everybody knows where everybody else is. The shooter, Powell said, could have learned his victim was in Lach’s and simply waited outside for his target. “That isn’t the fault of the establishment.”

Stockwell said that since the bar hasn’t had a problem since it installed video cameras, all was well and good. What about the Sept. 10 shooting? Not the responsibility of management, he said.

——– ooo ——–

On the night of Sept. 10, according to Lytle and Lach’s owner Michael Kruger:

• Lytle closed the bar at 1 a.m.
• Kruger went home.
• Patrons left but continued to hang around in the parking lot, where the shooting occurred.
• Lytle locked the doors.
• He and a security guard (formerly called “bouncers”) cleaned up.
• Lytle said he heard more than 10 gunshots and called 911.

PLB member Diane Pero scolded Kruger: “There is a problem with your bar, and it has been happening over the course of years, one after another.” Kruger said there are bad things happening all over the city, and he doesn’t know the good guys from the bad. A great tutorial on that can be found any time of day at the Cumby‘s on First Street.

“I’m a bad judge of people,” Kruger said, stating the obvious but not grasping the back-wrenching contradiction in what he next said: “I think everybody is good.”

And what did the PLB do? It voted to continue the hearing to December. No harm. No foul. No envelopes stuffed with $100 bills. The shooting most likely will disappear in the foggy dew, like so much of the violence and mayhem in The Land of Benigno Numine. The police haven’t issued the victim’s name, haven’t said if they have a suspect, nothing. Zilch. Nada. Neither The Lovely Linda “Trashcan” Tyer nor acting-interim-kinda-sorta police chief Mike “The Spin” Wynn want you to know about this sort of stuff. It goes too much against the narrative fiction.

So drinks on the house for everyone. Call the roller of fat cigars. Let the Big Lady sing, Stevens, because all is “vibrant” and “dynamic.” Call this miraculous non-intervention of the licensing board a form of magic peculiar to The Suits and Insiders of Pittsfield. Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, don’t ask. You wouldn’t understand, although you definitely get it.

Folks, you can’t make up side-splitters like this. The Lantern‘s Fry-O-Lator isn’t up to code? Shut it down. Lach’s gets implicated in another shooting? No problem.

Vibrant. Dynamic.

The final punchline, given the PPD HQ’s proximity to Lach’s, is that police say they learned of the gunplay through Spot Spotter.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“Let the moon move the tides in such a way to wash us all clean.” — Sir Tiberius Fruitjuice

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.