# SPAGHETTINI, SEAL BEACH — the counter-example
3005 Old Ranch Parkway, Seal Beach CA. Studied 1 Jan 2024 – 31 Dec 2026.

## How this was obtained
The venue runs WordPress with The Events Calendar plugin, which exposes an unauthenticated REST
endpoint. The whole calendar came from the venue's **own database**, not from scraping or
third-party reconstruction:

    https://spaghettini.com/wp-json/tribe/events/v1/events?start_date=2024-01-01&end_date=2024-12-31&per_page=50&page=1

1,139 raw records, zero gaps. 40 non-music records removed (closures, private buyouts, wine
dinners, VIP passes); duplicate ticket-type rows merged (the venue posts "Barstool Seating",
"10:00am Seating"/"1:00pm Seating" as separate records for one show).
**Net: 1,085 distinct shows across 899 nights.** Ticketing is tix.com, self-operated.

Venue count: ONE. Every record carries venue ID 396, Seal Beach. **Spaghettini Beverly Hills books
nothing in this period** and has no page in the site's 70-page index. Its closure date is UNRECOVERED.

## Volume
| Year | Shows | Venue-tagged contemporary/Latin jazz |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 332 | 205 |
| 2025 | 351 | 222 |
| 2026 | 402 | 265 |
| **Total** | **1,085** | **692** |
Dates after 13 Aug 2026 are announced and on sale, not yet played.

## Concentration — house residencies, not agencies
~330–420 distinct acts (soft at the edges: tribute titles inject subject names that were never on
stage). Average 2.6 bookings per act. **The top twelve acts take 593 of 1,085 shows — 54.7%.**

| Act | Shows | Desk |
|---|---|---|
| DW3 | 299 | direct, no agency |
| Mic Dangerously | 63 | none found |
| Eric Marienthal | 36 | Chapman manages; **booking direct** (Lee Ann Marienthal) |
| Andy Vargas | 31 | none found |
| Poncho Sanchez | 29 | none found |
| Pretzel Logic | 26 | none found |
| Terry Steele | 24 | none found |
| Erin Stevenson | 24 | none found |
| Michael Lington | 22 | Fred Hansen, Reliant |
| Chris Stevens Trio | 16 | none found |
| Chris Standring | 12 | none listed |
| Cory Clark | 11 | none found |

## THE HEADLINE — desk share of all 1,085 shows
| Desk | Shows | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reliant Talent / Fred Hansen | 99 | 9.1% |
| Chapman & Co. | 73 | 6.7% |
| Mighty Music | 43 | 4.0% |
| Major Scale | 38–42 | 3.5–3.9% |
| Independent Artist Group | 17 | 1.6% |
| Entertainment Creative Concepts | 8 | 0.7% |
| Wasserman | 7 | 0.6% |
| MPI | 6 | 0.6% |
| **ANY named desk (union, distinct)** | **219** | **20.2%** |
| **NO named desk** | **866** | **79.8%** |

On the jazz-tagged subset only (692 shows) named-desk coverage rises to 28.0% — still leaving 72%
untraceable.

**Four out of five bookings at the highest-frequency contemporary jazz room in America trace to no
named agency at all.** The room is supplied by house residencies and direct-booked local acts.

Three corrections that change how the table reads:
1. Reliant and Chapman overlap on six artists. **Chapman-exclusive volume is 39 shows (3.6%), and
   36 of those 39 are Eric Marienthal — whose own page says booking is direct.** Chapman's actual
   booking-desk share of this room is ~0.3%; the 6.7% is a management footprint, not a booking one.
2. The IAG figure is inflated: 9 of 17 are "Dave Koz Cruise Presents…", a branded showcase where
   Koz is not on the bill. Koz performs once (1 Sept 2024, guesting on brunch).
3. 224 shows (20.6%) belong to eight acts with no desk sourced at all.

## Who books the room
**No publicly named talent buyer, booker or music director exists.** Stating that plainly rather
than guessing.
- Artist submissions go to `entertainment@spaghettini.com`, a role inbox (Contact page).
- The About Us team page lists 14 people; the only one attached to that inbox is **Danika Mckee,
  "Artist Relations Manager."** That is the closest thing to a named buyer in public. No evidence
  she holds any other role in the scene.
- **Eric Mondragon Jr., Production Manager**, also performs at the venue on his own bills
  (Songs of Stevie 2025-07-20 and 2026-01-11; Soul Trio 2026-06-15; DW3 birthday bash 2025-10-02).
- Owners Laurie Sisneros and Cary Hardwick. Sisneros previously "managed many entertainment venues
  for the largest club owner in Boston." Her bio does NOT say she books the room and that is not
  inferred here.
- **No third-party booking company, agency or promoter is credited anywhere** — not on the site,
  not on the team page, not in any of the 1,139 records.

## The real finding on who decides
Four recurring series are curated by the ARTIST, not the house:
| Series | Editions | Curator |
|---|---|---|
| Music Monday feat. Eric Marienthal & Special Guest | 36 | Eric Marienthal |
| Michael Lington presents Sax To Soul | 7 (+7 paired pre-shows) | Michael Lington |
| Dave Koz Cruise Presents… | 9 | Dave Koz Cruise brand |
| L. Young Presents: Yacht Soul | 2 | L. Young |

Marienthal's Music Monday guests over three years: Vincent Ingala, Rick Braun, Peter White, Grace
Kelly ×2, Lee Ritenour ×4, Richard Elliot ×2, Marcus Miller ×3, Brian Culbertson ×2, Gerald
Albright, David Benoit ×2, Nathan East, Lindsey Webster, Keiko Matsui, Boney James, Candy Dulfer,
Morgan James, John Splithoff ×2, Bryan Eng, Larry Braggs & Rebecca Jade, Ilya Serov.
Lington's Sax to Soul brought Regina Belle, Howard Hewett, Marcus Miller, Boney James, Ruben
Studdard, Kandace Springs, Kenny Lattimore, BeBe Winans, Peabo Bryson, Haley Reinhart.

**If you want to know who decides who plays this room, the answer is closer to "Marienthal and
Lington on their nights" than to any house buyer or any agency.**

## Michael Paulo's footprint here
**8 dates in three years** — 4 in 2024, 1 in 2025, 3 in 2026. That is 0.7% of the calendar and
roughly 16th among individual artists.
    2024-01-27 Michael Paulo (CD release) · 2024-04-27 · 2024-09-07
    2024-10-06 BPM album release (Bromberg/Brown/Paulo)
    2025-09-17 Smooth Jazz AllStars (Bromberg, Karukas, Land Richards, Michael Oneil, Paulo)
    2026-01-24 BPM · 2026-04-13 Anne Walsh Bacharach tribute, Paulo as sideman
    2026-05-23 Michael Paulo & Gregg Karukas 70th Birthday Bash
**Never billed as host, curator or presenter — not once in 1,139 records.** No indication he books
or programs the room. apauloproductions.net/apaulo-events is an empty page with a phone number.
NOTE: an earlier pass called Spaghettini his most frequent buyer 2010–2027. That may hold in
relative terms across fifteen years, but in this window the absolute number is small.

## Unrecovered
Spaghettini Beverly Hills closure date · whether the venue prunes past events (the 2024 record
starts cleanly at 1 Jan with no gaps, which argues against it) · desks for the eight largest
unattributed acts (224 shows, 20.6%) · whether Danika Mckee negotiates deals or only administers.