Pamland Central

Not only that, but she doesn't think she should have to pay a lot for it, either. "I like the Continental, and I love the Satellite, but when I go there, the covers are high," she says. "We like to keep cheap covers, cheap beer, cold beer and have a good time. I can't risk the DWI after having a couple beers at the Satellite and going over to the Continental, or vice versa. Here you can park, and you're not gonna get a DWI walking to Silky's or Mary Jane's. It's just better; you can walk around and get a variety."

Not that everything's peachy at Pamland Central. Parking figures to be a bitch at some of the bigger shows, especially if more than one of the clubs has a big show booked on the same night. For now, though, Robinson has a more trifling concern. "If I could just get them to change the law about leaving with a drink," she says wistfully. "That's the only downfall: You have to down your drink here or leave it. We have to keep somebody at all the doors because that is the law."

Two years ago, Robinson, who was then known as Pam Arnold (she's since gotten married) ran Walter's Ice House, a Durham Street barroom that was shut down by a new-in-town Dallas-bred suburbanite who bought one of the new town houses a few blocks away (see "Murphy's Law," by Melissa Hung, August 3, 2000). Billy Murphy called Walter's regulars "lowlifes" and "riffraff" and accused them of peeing in public, driving recklessly and threatening him and some of his cohorts. He hounded Robinson into submission by ceaselessly filing noise complaints (virtually all of which HPD found to be groundless) and siccing the TABC on her. He stated at the time that he envisioned a Starbucks in Walter's stead.

"I saw him one time standing in the middle of Washington Avenue shaking his fist at Jax Grill because they were playing zydeco," remembers Robinson. "He was standing there shaking his fist and going, 'I'm going to stop you!' And we were like, 'Who's that nut in the middle of the street? He's gonna get run over.'

"What's funny is that all the noise we ever made was not near as much as the damn trains. The police were there doing the sound readings, and they would say, 'Look, it's jumping to 110 decibels with the train. And you're complaining about 55 with the icehouse?' He could do something about us, but he couldn't do anything about the train."

Robinson eventually caved, a defeat that today she accepts philosophically. "He won," she says. "I paid a lot of money in legal fees, fixing the place up to try to blend in with the neighborhood, but he was having no part of it. It was really sad, because many of my customers lived in the same town houses he did. They loved the fact that they could have a few drinks and walk across the street and be home. They loved it, but he hated it. He won. Oh, well."

Murphy may have gotten Pam Robinson out of his backyard, but he sure hasn't cramped her style. "But in the long run, I win," she says. "Because I'm having a good time, and he's not, and you can quote me on that. Murphy -- bah, humbug! You're not having any fun, and I am!"