IT MAY BE farewell for the wildest 95-year-old in town. In 1995 a beehived PJ Harvey stalked its stage, playing guitar and taking requests from the less-than-100 capacity crowd into the wee hours. In 2003 eXtreme Elvis risked mad ass splinters when he planted his bare bottom on its wood stage and had a good man talk with the crowd between appropriately unsettling renditions of "Suspicious Minds" and "It's Now or Never." It's cropped up in the Francis Ford Coppola film The Conversation, hosted lovebirds Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, and presented comics Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg.

It's the Hotel Utah Saloon. And the pub, which was built in 1908, is going down for the count, after seeing its share of trysts, fisticuffs, and shenanigans courtesy of a legion of gangsters, gold diggers, longshoremen, indie rockers, roots music fans, and folkies. Sometime booker Ilan Laks believes his Nov. 29 show (including his band, Turn Me on Deadman, Coup de Grace, and SixSeven) will be the last hurrah for live music on a Saturday night at the Utah, and on Dec. 2 owner Joanna Karlinsky is finally closing the doors of the club. Struggling even on a reduced rent since she bought the venue just before 9/11, she says she has been trying to sell it since the new building owner has raised her rent to the original $7,000 a month. Several buyers appeared but backed out, so now Karlinsky says she's being evicted after losing a quarter of a million dollars.

"I can't afford to lose more," Karlinsky said. "I tried real hard to find a buyer, and every buyer has backed out because [the building owner says] the buyer would have to take over the existing lease." She believes the owner will turn the building into a residential hotel, and she sees it as the end of an era, especially considering the recent death of The Electric Horseman screenwriter Paul Gaer, who revived the Utah as a live venue for up-and-coming performers in 1977. "San Francisco has been sold to the highest bidder," she said ruefully.

What does the Utah mean to longtime fans like Laks? "It's the kind of place you always take for granted," he said. "It's the fallback place you can always rely on, to get a weekend show. It's a good room, really friendly, and it's not hard to fill with short notice. And it's a staple for a musician in San Francisco. Everybody's played there."

Bomb bust David Paul, impresario of Bomb Hip-Hop Records, received a nasty surprise Oct. 22 when he got a knock on his door from an agent of the U.S. Secret Service. Paul happened to be out, the agent left his card, and when the Bomb honcho called him back, he said the Web site Cheap Tickets was claiming Paul made threats against George W. Bush when he called a few days earlier to check on his flights.

Paul told me he made no such threats: he merely called the company to get the total price for four tickets to Oklahoma City for his DJs on the Return of the DJ Tour. The seats were charged to Bomb Hip-Hop. After taking his vitals and asking if he owned a firearm, the agent asked for an in-person interview, which Paul consented to and which DJ T-Rock witnessed. Still unable to get specifics on the threats Cheap Tickets alleged, Paul was asked to allow agents to check his room for pictures of Bush with targets drawn on them. Maybe they were also checking for lit bundles of dynamite.

Later Paul figured the combination of his company name, e-mail (once bombusa@mindspring.com), and the destination city triggered the check. After the incident, Paul wrote a letter to Cheap Tickets but received no detailed response from the company. Letters of complaint were also sent to Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. In the end only one quirk occurred when he arrived back in San Francisco after the tour. "My record bag was my carry-on bag, and the security went through it three times and pulled up every record," he recalled. Despite the hassle, Paul is continuing his label work, including a free DJ exhibition with Return of the DJ turntablists Dec. 12 at Amoeba Music in S.F., and he's definitely not changing the name of Bomb, which he's run since 1991.

Life after college rock Dan Zanes has officially graduated from his '80s band the Del Fuegos and gone into children's music, after becoming frustrated with the lack of children's folk recordings for his daughter. His fourth "all-ages" album – read: music for kids – House Party (Festival Five), has the sweet, colorful folk art and dead-giveaway fat cardboard pages of a children's book, as well as traditional and original songs like "Wabash Cannonball" and "Jamaica Farewell" and guest appearances by friends such as Debbie Harry, Philip Glass, Angelique Kidjo, and Bob Weir. As for Zanes's performances (he plays Nov. 29 and 30 at Zellerbach Hall), he tries to take a page from Weir's book. "Really, in my mind, what we're shooting for is to have it be like a little Grateful Dead show," the Brooklyn artist said on the phone from the East Coast, where he's on tour. "It's a reason for people to get together, but the band isn't 100 percent of everybody's focus. There's a lot of sing-alongs, and it dissolves into a dance party at the end, always."

Really? So where are the candle sellers?

"You know what? I never saw the Grateful Dead," he confessed. "It's that communal feeling, when people get together and ..."

Pass around the doobage?

"Heh, heh, pass around the sippee cups. I brag to other musicians that my audience can have a full-throttle dance party before lunchtime, and it's really true." Of course, you also can't rule out the four-to-the-floor nap time after lunch.

Dark daze The Donnas' Brett and Alison were in the house at Slim's Nov. 21 when the Darkness took the stage to vocalist-guitarist-keyboardist-airborne split specialist Justin Hawkins's chant of "Give me a 'D'! Give me an 'arkness'!" ... Speaking of the Donnas and their sometime label, Lookout!, company honcho Chris Appelgren's band the Pattern recently called it quits.... Lucinda Williams was about 40 minutes late for her appearance Nov. 20 at the Fillmore, but considering the general state of affairs, her excuse seemed almost plausible. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I turned on the news yesterday and it made me sick," she drawled before playing her first song, "Passionate Kisses," which she dedicated to all the innocent people who get caught in the crossfire of U.S. adventures in Iraq and elsewhere.

Hep Youth speaks! Greetings from the Department of Corrections. A while back I got Numbers guitarist Dave Broekema's take on the epidemic of guerrilla-show action by a band called Hepatitis Youth. Later I heard from one of the ornery youth himself, who wanted to correct misconceptions spread by the story.

Here's the poop: Hepatitis Youth core member Ian Lynne says he's not a teenager, nor are most of his bandmates. Most of the 16-person band are college age, there are seven core members, and there are four different factions of the "band," including Hepatitis B, C, and D Youth in Florida and the Midwest. (He promises there's one coming near you, starting up near S.F.) They're not led by a former candidate for mayor; instead a friend, Kelly Benjamin, who once ran for Tampa City Council came along for the ride, though he's not in the band.

The group was started in a garage by six Latino 16-year-olds – and himself, Lynne says – and got their name because one of the Youth has hepatitis. "It's not musical. No one has to worry about songs. We take everything off video. Captured in the moment, just noise, a bunch of kids with guitars and drums and whatever instruments are lying around," he told me on the phone from Tampa.

As for the Erase Errata and Numbers shows Hep Youth crashed, Lynne assured me, "People are making a bigger deal of it than we actually are. Everyone thought we didn't like them, which isn't the case. Musically they're good bands," though the site for the band's label, Cephia's Treat Recordings, trumpets, "Hepatitis Youth vs. Erase Errata and the Numbers ... we win." "It's more against Troubleman Unlimited," Lynne said. "That guy hypes or changes with what's cool of the moment. I remember a couple years ago when he was putting out hardcore shit, Cap'n Jazz. It's just funny. It was kind of a joke attack."

Nonetheless Lynne said Hep Youth have gotten a lot of praise as well as flack. They've also sold more merchandise than they expected. "We've had people say, 'You have to leave [Erase Errata] alone – they're nice girls.' Other people say, 'What do you do? Hate girls or something?' " said Lynne, who added that he honed his street performance techniques putting on nonvenue shows in Tampa parking lots, train yards, etc. – a necessity because the city has so few under-21 clubs. Next time they won't play nice, he promised (though there might also be a plenty-friendly tour in the future as well, with Friends Forever). "Next tour we're actually doing a tour with Hot Hot Heat. That one's for real – that's Hepatitis Youth versus garage rock. Then don't be surprised if we have lots of enemies."