Crown Jewel

“I’ve often thought of the paradox, but alcohol is not the problem, it’s the people drinking it,” muses Williams, who is 17 years sober. “And in order to reach people who are drinking, you have to go where they are. I did think at one point that if living right meant giving up the business, I’d do that. But I didn’t. If I did think that, I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

In the boom time of the 1980s, the Catch One was one of those Hollywood overnight success stories that had about a 10-year lead-in. Dance maven and professional gender-bender Madonna started hanging out — picking up, among other things, some raw material for her “Vogue” single — and other celebrities followed suit. Some of the West Hollywood set started migrating east to Crenshaw and Pico, and the crossover was officially on. Events producer Bryan Rabin remembers first venturing to the Catch in 1988 and being the only white boy in the room — and loving it. “I’d never experienced anything like that before,” he says. “Dancing in that room, with the DJs playing the real stuff . . . it was really otherworldly, but I never felt excluded. It was one of the shaping experiences of my life.” Veteran Catch DJ Claudette “Sexy DJ” Colbert helped introduce hip-hop to the club in its pre-bling-bling days of Kool Moe Dee, Queen Latifah, Keith Sweat and Guy. Colbert rocked the Catch back when virtually no women DJs were given a chance to do so at big venues. “I did a party for a gay and lesbian group one weekend, and Jewel and [her partner] Rue came up to me and said, ‘Do you want to work?’” recalls Colbert, who sported a distinctive look of skintight bodysuits and a bald head crowned with a Roman-helmet Mohawk. “I was living in San Francisco and only down here for the event. I wound up staying, and Jewel hired me on the spot.”

But glory and hard times came in equal measure at Catch One, and always had. From the beginning, Williams fought off potential disaster — harassment by cops and vice squads, resentment of neighboring merchants, aggressive bids to buy the property as the demographics around the Catch shifted and became part of a thriving Koreatown. Then in 1985 came the fire that shut down the Catch’s upstairs main room for two years. Williams rebuilt, though the arson case was never solved. She has her ideas about what happened that she hasn’t entirely put aside, but she remains philosophical. “I weathered that storm,” she says, “like I weathered a lot of other ones.” She and the club got a timely boost a couple of years ago when Rabin convinced Madonna’s record label to hold its release party for her dance-heavy album Music at the Catch. Rabin took the opportunity to give the somewhat worse-for-the-wear club a face-lift that included re-carpeting upstairs and down. “I love Jewel,” says Rabin. “She’s done so much and given to so many. The place was kind of a money pit, but what she asked for, we gave her.”

Williams talks obligingly about the hardship but prefers to talk about what’s going right: the health clinic and the longevity and unique stature of the Catch, which may be an increasing burden but is also a clear point of pride. Though still in the business of trends, she doesn’t care to know too much about current affairs, particularly about the machinations of the Bush administration. “Right now I want to be ignorant of what’s going on,” she says. “I used to have the news on constantly, but I really haven’t seen the headlines since the dictator took over the nation. The only way I keep a purpose is to keep doing what I’m doing.” Williams acknowledges the Catch One has had to change in order to survive; one big change is doing outside-promotion events, which used to be almost exclusively in-house. Williams says too many clubs these days are going after the same demographic and siphoning off Catch customers. “It saddens me that people don’t have quite the loyalty they used to,” she says. “But if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” She disparages the message of hardcore hip-hop but is encouraged by the younger generation’s tolerance, which she says was often missing in the old. “What I’m seeing now in a lot of kids is a lot fewer prejudices and less concern about gender — they just want to be whoever and whatever they are. Purple hair, black fingernails, whatever. That’s really exciting to me.”

Exciting enough to keep Williams at the Catch? She has thought of selling more than once and says flatly that she’s burned out. But it’s obvious that the Catch is too much her baby to let go to just anyone; at this point it is less a business to sell than a torch to pass. “If someone wants to take it over, great,” she says. “But hopefully it’s going to be a black person and a lesbian. I’ve had the privilege of being here for a long time — the average life of a club is two and a half years — and seeing lots of changes. I can say goodbye with no regrets, but I would like to maintain a place that’s in the community — and that’s ours.” But Williams is not exactly on her last dance, and likely never will be. She reminds herself that she went back to school at the age of 56 to study acupuncture “because I knew I was too young at heart to retire,” she says. “I was looking for another way to be helpful.” For stalwart Catch fans, being here has been help enough. “It’s home for a lot of us,” says DJ Colbert, who now works Friday nights at the Factory. “I miss the Catch sometimes. But I have the vibe inside me, and I take it with me wherever I go.”