Jesse McCartney Upholds Illegal Traditions at Sunset Beach - Formerly Dublin's

So we've been waiting...and waiting.....and waiting...for 3 years since the famed Dublin's on Sunset got shut down for something, anything, serving drinks to take its place. Dublin's had a surly reputation - underrage drinking haunt, on the police "hitlist" etc...even Jay-Z's famous shout out in "I just Want to Love You", ("...peanuts in LA, Rumblin' at Dublin's") couldn't spare its 2004 demise.

After an aborted opening last fall, the almost new Sunset Beach appropriately lost its liquour license after 2 weeks...it sat empty for 8 months until last Wednesday (22 August).

How did they celebrate? By staying true to their roots with a "celebrity" performance by a 20 year old - someone not even legal to be inside... Jesse McCartney (born '87, All My Children '01).

Say, you get your driver’s license yet? What do you mean you don’t have a high school musical poster on your wall? Oh, well then, you might not know who Jesse is. (Photo at above). He looks like teen terror Aaron Carter (Lohan Boyfriend ‘pre disaster , E!’s “House of Carters” ’06,) , sings more like Aaron’s older brother Nick Carter (Backstreet Boy ’93-01) and apparently doesn’t mind playing understudy to Ryan Cabrera (The “femme” half to Ashlee Simpson’s “butch” circa ‘04). Cabrera bagged the party last minute and in the most predictable celebrity story of the summer, Jessie McCartney was available.

To counter the “pretty boy” vibe pumped through the vents (he caked his face in make-up), Jesse wrapped up his 20 minute set with some hardcore hip-hop delivered in the non-threatening, acoustic, teen-dreamboat-on-a-stool way. He mashed up two covers: Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” (the song that goes “you’ll have me suicidal….suicidal when you say its oooooooooo-ver”) and Akon’s “F*#k You”. He crooned like it was 1997.

Funnier to watch, the bartenders who didn’t know anything - including how to make Sunset Beach’s ridiculous Spring Break inspired drinks – (ie “Shark Attack”).

One bar-lass fumbled the register so clumsily I thought up a new race as I watched her: “What will happen first?”

• A) My florida grandmother redesigns your Myspace in Flash
  
• B) This girl figures out how to run a credit card bar tab.
  

Better: DJ Steve Aoki who followed the boybander. He's cool.

Kudos to our friend Leland Drummond (Choate '98, Platform Media Group 'current) for bringing some heat back to that scorched corner of Harper and Sunset Blvd. (Rappa, left, and Leland)