The girls proceeded
to lock the door, which I clearly did not do, and then they went into complete
freak out mode! This was far from your typical night at 1OAK, this just
happened to be the night these waitresses were going on about code red, or some
other color that I can’t recall, because there were shots fired inside of 1OAK
and we were all going to be bunkered inside of that bathroom and not opening the door until someone said it was
safe. We spent about ten minutes held up in the bathroom trying to figure out
if this was real or false alarm, all the while having no clue what was going on
outside, other than the occasional pounding on the door and the girls yelling
at them to leave.
It turned out there were gun shots, as it came out later
that Death Row Records founder Suge Knight was shot multiple times along with
two other people. By the time we finally vacated the bathroom the club was
nearly empty and we had missed all of the chaos. The party at 1OAK was to
celebrate the upcoming VMA Awards and 1OAK was nothing but stellar up to that
point. But for whatever reason, and the speculation is running wild, at least
one person was able to get a gun into 1OAK. Perched on the second floor,
and seeing how packed the first floor of 1OAK was, it is sad to say with three people being shot;
the crowd had to be actually thankful there was not more carnage.
Making my way out to my friends who thankfully waited, there
were a few people still finishing there cocktails and realizing at this point
there was not much else to worry about. So we went about our business of
finishing our drinks while enjoying the empty VIP booth with the few remaining
people inside of 1OAK. When someone says something seemed surreal, well this is
one of those times. It did not take long until the police finally cleared the
first floor and made it to the second to escort the few remaining people out
the door. Being told to put your hands up as you exited seemed somewhat of an
optional type of request never having experienced this before so I haphazardly
had my hands up while drinking a Red Bull, my leisurely attitude exiting 1OAK
quickly changed as we hit door to exit the club to be greeted by a gun pointing
in our direction, quite the 2 a.m. wakeup call. From there it was trying to
maneuver our way out of the closed off block and driving under yellow tape.
Waking up the next day and seeing the headlines of what
happened all over the internet was pretty shocking to say the least. That
certainly is one for the story books, the first visit to 1OAK on Sunset
Boulevard and that happens. Beyond the sadness of the shooting you have to
wonder how the gunman got past what seemed to be pretty tight security and I
would venture a guess that now you are going to have even tighter security in
the future. I’m not sure what the perspective will be of 1OAK moving forward.
You can view it as they dropped the ball but you can also view it as it could
have happened anywhere and that you just might want to avoid anyplace that Suge
Knight is. But simply from the view of what you are looking for in a nightclub,
1OAK was pretty great. That staff from top to bottom was incredible, everyone
in the club was very cool, they had great music and a high energy dance floor
and although certainly not my favorite person on this earth, the fact that
Chris Brown was performing in the middle of the crowd and had everyone in a
frenzy says a lot about what 1OAK can create in this setting.
Would I go back? If 1OAK can step up security I would say
definitely yes. Simply a very beautiful Vegas-esque club that is a hell of a
lot of fun, minus the gun shots.
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