While looking for more information on the Hobbit House of Culver City, I chanced across this article:
Manila's Hobbit House bar: Full of little people and a big love
Ex-Peace Corps volunteer Jim Turner rescued dwarfs from the Philippine capital's harsh streets and gave them a place to call home. Now they can't imagine life without him.
By John M. Glionna
August 10, 2009
Reporting from Manila, Philippines - Every night without fail, Jim Turner is there at the far corner of the bar, chain-smoking his Marlboros and sipping ice-cold San Miguel from the bottle, watching over the Little Ones.
He considers them family, but they're not his children. They're the dwarfs and other little people the 70-year-old Iowa native has rescued from the heartless streets of this capital city to offer them friendship and honest work.
For 35 years, the former Peace Corps volunteer has operated the Hobbit House, a bar themed on J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, a realm marked by all things miniature.
Under his care, hundreds of dwarfs have adopted new cultural identities. They're no longer shunned or even feared as supposed evil spirits, but have become popular characters called hobbits -- merry figures who serve drinks, crack ribald jokes and even entertain onstage.
At Turner's bar, on a dingy block of strip clubs and speak-easies in central Manila, the dwarfs draw a loyal crowd. They're entertainers who get the joke, always ready to use their small size for a few good-natured laughs.
The Hobbit House features what may be the world's smallest Elvis impersonator. There have been hobbit jugglers, comics, dancers, flame-eaters and a singer who sounded eerily like Frank Sinatra.
Many of the waiters and bartenders are the grandchildren of the dwarfs who helped Turner launch the bar. There's now even a second location, at a tourist resort in the central Philippines.
Yet critics have accused Turner of exploiting his workers. Stubbing out a Marlboro, he frowns.
"We took many from the worst slums in Manila, where they were mocked and ridiculed," he says. "Now they're no longer carnival freaks. They're respected entertainers and businesspeople."
And Turner is their godfather. Workers tell of the night when two drunken Australians began playing catch with terrified little people; Turner stepped between two ruffians nearly twice his size and threw them out of the bar.
He has provided many of his workers with loans and housing and has paid tuitions. Several years ago, he gave them something perhaps even more precious: the Hobbit House itself.
He founded a corporation, naming seven of his employees the main stockholders. Now they make the decisions and call the shots. From his perch at the bar, Turner watches over the business as a consultant and takes only enough salary to pay his bills.______________________
The Monday rush is here and the workers at the Hobbit House are ready for action.
But sitting around a table, a few quietly voice a common concern: What would they ever do without the nurturing and guidance of Jim Turner?
Although he swears he's in perfect health, they know he drinks and smokes too much. A decade ago, when he got sick, a large group of employees went to visit him in the hospital. An exhausted Turner had to tell nurses not to admit any visitor less than 4 feet tall.
Many say it gives them comfort knowing he's there at his perch, with a green lamp by his side so he can see bills and paperwork in the darkened bar.
But they know he's getting older and more frail.
Perhaps Waiter Edward Vitto, 33, said it best: "It won't be the same place without him -- just a bunch of little people with broken hearts."
The full story - which involves Ferdinand Marcos and Marlon Brando - can be read at the LA Times website.
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