We Interviewed the Company Behind the $32 Ice at Erewhon
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Pre-COVID, 90 to 93 percent of our business was bars and restaurants. During COVID, there was not only a huge push in direct-to-consumer [sales], but also retail stores, liquor stores, grocery stores. We started targeting them to try and get our product to people at home. After looking into several spaces, Buss decided to purchase the 63-year-old Pasadena venue, which is dubbed as the oldest comedy club in the country, from longtime owner Bob Fisher. As fans of comedy, Johnny and Jerry had seriously discussed opening a comedy club together in the past.
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He shifted away from sports, bought race cars and trucks and started getting into the business of off-road racing. Throughout the brick building in downtown Pasadena, vintage and modern flourishes demand attention like stylistic punchlines. The glowing stalactite chandeliers, electric neon art of cacti, waves and sun punctuate the walls of the California Room, the venue’s second stage. Guests pass through the red-brick walls of the revamped bar and patio area into the revived main room. Despite the club’s new mainstage set up, dubbed the Legendary Room, it still retains an intimate vibe where stand-up idols and up-and-comers have thrived on the raw energy and laughter of a working class clientele. Once again the building is outfitted with mics in the ceiling to capture the roar of one of L.A.’s loudest laughing crowds.
Late-night food,
The way that our ice is produced is that there’s constant agitation of the water. By doing that, the impurities don’t have a chance to settle. Effectively, what these machines do is push all the impurities to the top, which is where all the cloudiness is. Then we cut that off, leaving a clear 300-pound block of ice, which we then use band saws to cut down into the desired shapes to achieve the final product.
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There are some people who find value in the product and some people who don’t, and as much as I can talk about science and dilution and time and labor, usually our biggest selling point is just how attractive it is. I’ve learned that if people don’t think it’s viable — if people would rather just use their ice machine or a mold they already have — there’s usually very little I can do to convince them otherwise. “I’m really excited about what this club’s gonna be,” he said.
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It’s a sound new owner Johnny Buss — the oldest son of the late Lakers owner Jerry Buss — has been waiting to hear since he bought the place in 2019. It takes anywhere from three to five days to freeze 300-pound blocks, and then we cut them down by hand and distribute them all over Southern California. It’s a very time consuming, labor intensive, and also dangerous process that a lot of people either take for granted or don’t have much forethought or concern about.
As an original draft pick for the Sparks when the team started in 1997, Toler was the first player to score a basket in WNBA history. After Buss hired her as general manager of the team years later, she assembled the roster that led the Sparks to a championship victory in 2001. For all the years she was involved in the WNBA, Toler says she and Buss always had a great working relationship that allowed her to grow in her career.
There’s some flavor going in the ice in your freezer as well. Although his dad didn’t get see their comedy dreams come to fruition, Buss still plans on turning The Ice House into a family business. The pandemic shut things down just a few months after the purchase, so he took the opportunity to renovate the venue with a design that he said still pays homage to the club’s past, while upgrading it for a new era. “It’s a little easier for me with the club because the Ice House has a legendary history. My phone rings off the hook when people want to perform,” Toler said.
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So after purchasing The Ice House in 2019 — and giving it a $4 million facelift during a three-year closure, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic — Buss finally has the club he and his father had always dreamed about. When the lights hit the stage and he was finally able to open the doors to the legendary Ice House comedy club in Pasadena on Feb. 16, new owner Johnny Buss admitted that while the audience was laughing, he was getting a little emotional. By the time Johnny stepped down as president of the L.A. Sparks in 2006 — a team he’d helped build into a winning franchise in the WNBA — Jerry’s health had already started declining. After his father’s death, Buss said he didn’t want to think about opening a club anymore. “There’s no way I was going to do that without him,” he said.
Indoor Bar & Restaurant
Although it just opened, the club already boasts a packed schedule with well-known comics. After Cho’s opening night, comedian and podcast host Adam Carolla sold out the stage on Feb. 23. Comedian and actor Jaime Kennedy is set for a March 16 performance and Gabriel Iglesias, who recently sold out two nights at Dodger Stadium for his Netflix special, is set for March 24 and 25, performing two sets each evening.
Though it’s always served its purpose as a training ground, the Ice House is also going to be a place where stars can mingle while they watch famous funny people perform. That’s where the club’s secret crown jewel, the newly built VIP lounge, comes into play. It’s also a place where he dreams of discovering the next big star. Holding himself to a higher standard because of his father is nothing new to Buss, who grew up in the midst of one of the world’s greatest sports dynasties. His father’s notoriously outside-the-box methods of running a team made him a genius and impossible to predict.
Since she became the club’s general manager, Toler’s been regaled by every comic she meets about stories of the club from back in the day. These tales keep motivating her to ensure that the club spends the necessary seven figures to upgrade itself without selling its soul in the process. Love the backyard games& the smoking patio that is huge and full of great music. The menu for Ice House may have changed since the last user update.
The ice “ballz” are the work of Penny Pound Ice, which produces and distributes ice in Southern California. Penny Pound’s products range from familiar, like pebble ice ($7 for seven pounds), to fancy, including gold flake rocks ($28 for eight rocks) and round balls filled with edible orchids ($40 for eight balls). Though the company has been around since 2012 (its product is used at cocktail bars like Los Angeles’s Thunderbolt), it only got onto shelves at Erewhon last month, hence the surge of new attention — and confusion. Since the club originally opened as a live music venue in 1960, Buss also plans on bringing live music back, too, with weekly jazz, reggae, pop and country nights starting in the next few months. “But I don’t know anything about a club, I’ve never managed a club,” she told Buss over the phone when he first offered her the job.
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