Mark “Happenin’ Harry” Harrison
Insomnia. Cobalt. Eagles. Eclectic. Joe. Emersons. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Due to the recent salvo of Valley coffee houseries and the unwritten Cartesian motto du jour: “I take cappuccino, therefore I am,” one might balk at the idea of reading yet another story, like this one, about another caffeine establishment. However, do not abandon hope ye who plod on, for The Boom Boom Room, located at Colfax and Riverside (yes, in North Hollywood), is a latenight faux bohemian living room with a twist. Open about three months and serving up the mandatory lattes, iced mochas, cheesecakes, and muffins, The Boom Boom Room is a warm and airy storefront painted lime green with white lattice borders, and appointed with overstuffed chairs and sofas and large coffee tables spread with gossipy magazines. The crowd on most evenings looks like a slice of North Hollywood life: 12-step meeting goers getting a legal buzz, intimate couples getting more intimate, serious, bespectacled types with big, esoteric books, and barefooted neighborhood regulars bantering with friendly owner Richard Gloria. However, come Friday night, the mood, clientele and even the establishment’s title change dramatically as The Boom Boom Room becomes “Happenin’ Harry’s Love Shack,” a night club sans booze.
The fashionably lean show up fashionably late. They come in throngs to hear the music, free and unplugged of course. It’s after 11 p.m. and a quick glance around takes in a stirring visual dynamic. Here recline the Who’s Who of the East Valley as beaky youths in buzz cuts rub elbows with nose-ring clad urban pastoralists; as long-hairs break bread with nubile, half-naked bodies; and as vampirellas in black with black hair and black lips sit pacifically with reborn 70’s daisy girls. The three common denominators among the crowd are first, a cup of Java, second, a year or two under the belt of community college-level philosophy and, most important, carbonated hormones. The Boom Boom Room, which spreads vibes of Agape-style love, now becomes the Love Shack, promulgating love, in the deepest meaning of Eros. The friendly North Hollywood living room where you can ring up a tab becomes an Hieronomous Bosch painting, a synecdoche for the 21st century.
There are notables in the audience as handsome actors, gorgeous porn stars
(Hyapatia Lee, Shawna McCullogh), and very skinny members of Circus of Power, De’Molls, Badfinger and Anthrax drop by to hear the music. The entertainment is loose, unplanned, helter-skelter, as musicians with guitars and other portable acoustic instruments in hand show up to jam, hang, and get away from the noisy and smoky rock venues — from the notorious to Everyman, they all come, of course, for Harry.
Harry, a.k.a. Mark Harrison, has done a lot in his 24 years. Artistically, he’s as singer (“I sound a lot like the singer from UFO meets the singer from Humble Pie”), but to pay the bills he is owner and proprietor of a casting agency (Actor’s Plus) and a night club promoter. Veteran of the Sunset strip club scene, Harrison is friend to musicians everywhere and has been arranging, booking, and propagandizing music clubs for the past three years.
Harrison was introduced to the Boom Boom Room when his girlfriend Paula got a job there. He said he knew right away that the place would be gold for him. “My first thought was that I could pack this place,” he said, “I always think like a promoter.”
Known for his wardrobe and high-profile demeanor, Harrison was dressed for attention, if not success, during a recent interview at, naturally, a local coffee house. Treating the whole matter of NoHo Magazine with great importance, Harrison showed up in a royal purple D’Orsay collarless suit, black vest, and Doc Martens, topped off with a purple paisley bandanna across his shoulder-length red hair. “I feel good in these clothes,” he said as he leaned into the table and knitted his brows, “You know, I used to be caught in the stretch-jean syndrome, but I get more done when I look good,” he says.
Harrison is a Chicago native and self-admitted opportunist and ex-autograph-monger. He came out to L.A. a little more than five years ago “to go to a party,” he said. “I wanted to mingle, shake hands, ya’ know, and I never left here.” At first Harrison “did the couch tour,” never having an address of his own, holding odd temporary jobs that ranged from salesman at Sam Goody’s record store to clerk at the tuxedo department at Sear’s. “I did a day of tree trimming, I was willing to do anything for a few bucks,” he remembers.
Harrison kept active at night as well, hanging on Sunset, getting phone num-bers, keeping close to the music scene. He eventually became road manager for the D’ Molls, an alternative, now-defunct L.A.-based band. “I began to get a lot of phone numbers,” he says.
At the time, his growing group of friends urged Harrison to start his own club. “They say I’m funny, crazy at parties, a mischief-maker,” he says, chewing his ice. “They said I was funnier than that Rikki Rachtman from MTV.”
Now he lives in the Valley with two roommates, sports two business cards, four phone numbers, a pager, and still works on his singing career during the down times. Harrison refrains from using drugs and drinking and finds his life a lot “happier” because of it. But the secret for his expedient prosperity was passed down from an old friend. “He’s a rock singer, but I don’t want to name names. He told me to never throw out a phone number and don’t ever diss anyone, and I don’t,” Harrison says, smiling sardonically.
So if you venture some Friday evening to the corner of Colfax and Riverside and see a friendly looking guy at the door flamboyantly dressed, you might go over and offer a hand. That will be one Mark “Happenin’ Harry” Harrison, and he will gladly get your number, remember your name, and kindly usher you into his club, where there’s more than meets the eye than a cup of Joe. Do try The Boom Boom Room — another in a long chain of coffee houses by day, perhaps, but a Love Shack by night.