We're Not at Your LEVEL: An Open Letter to LEVEL Venue

To the owners and managers of LEVEL Venue, 9320 W Pico Blvd:

When we started this website, we went out of our way to be kind. We called your building beautiful. We said we wanted you to succeed. We wrote a list of five requests so modest they could have been handled in a single staff meeting, and a dozen essays about how venues and neighbors can live side by side. We meant all of it.

That was months ago. This letter is different, because you are not.

You have a ballroom. You use the patio.

By your own count you have about 9,700 square feet of indoor space: the Lounge, the Gala and the Glass Room, with air conditioning and what you call “crystal-clear sound.” You also have an open-air patio that backs onto an alley. Across that alley, and on every side of it, are apartment buildings.

Evening after evening, you put the DJ, the singer, the microphone and the speakers on the patio. Not the cocktails and the dinner, which nobody objects to. The amplified music. The part that travels.

Music played indoors would still be heard. We know that and we can live with it. Music played on that patio is heard inside our homes, with the windows shut, in our children's bedrooms, on school nights. One neighbor wrote to us at 10:17 on a Sunday night: a first grader has school in the morning and the DJ is still screaming into the microphone. That is not a noise complaint. It is a description of what you sell.

We are not at your LEVEL

You describe yourselves as “the new standard for luxury events on Pico Blvd.” Your listings put the minimum spend at $6,000. That is your business, and good luck to it.

The people behind your building are renters. Young families, retirees, people who get up early for work. We are part of the same Pico-Robertson community whose weddings and Bar Mitzvahs you are so eager to book. We are just the part of it that will never be your customer. And that, as far as we can tell, is why we don't count.

So let's be clear about the arrangement. The community that can afford you gets the party. The community that can't gets the noise, free of charge, whether it wants it or not. We're not at your LEVEL. We're at your property line.

We asked. You shrugged. The police came. You waited.

A neighbor walked over during one of your events and spoke to the organizer in person. He was brushed off.

LAPD has been called to your venue again and again. Residents have watched what happens next: the volume drops while the officers are there, and it climbs back up after they drive away. That is not a misunderstanding. It is a policy.

Your own FAQ promises that “all musical performances must comply with our sound regulations to meet local ordinance requirements.” Los Angeles Municipal Code Sec. 112.01 says amplified sound audible more than 150 feet from the property line, in or near a residential zone, is a violation. Our homes are one alley from your patio. We'll let you do that math.

What happens now

Nothing we ask would cost you a single booking. Move the DJs, live singers and amplified music inside, every event. Keep the patio for cocktails, dinner and conversation. Respect residential quiet hours. Put a manager's number on the door and answer it. Keep the alley clear.

Until then, we will keep documenting every night, with dates, times and recordings. We will keep calling. We will keep adding names to the petition. And we will keep this site where anyone who searches your name can find it, so the families booking your patio know exactly who is lying awake on the other side of it.

You told the world you had a dream: to make every event unforgettable. Congratulations. On our side of the alley, nobody can forget them.

And here is our offer, in public: no DJs, live singers or amplified music on the patio after 9 PM, and a manager's number that gets answered during events. Keep to that, and this website comes down. We would honestly rather be asleep.

LEVEL with us. Bring it inside.

— The neighbors