When Dutton's announced that its Beverly Hills branch was going to close at the end of 2006, many wondered what had happened, since the main reason that branch opened was because of a partnership with the city of Beverly Hills that never materialized as expected. But after the January 9th meeting of the city council, which attempted to clarify their involvement with Dutton's but instead, as our tipster put it, "massaged the facts, dragged out their meaningless memes, did a considerable amount of fudging as to their agreements having to do with the store's original deal, and basically tried to shift blame for all the evil in the world on to that terrible Doug Dutton creature."

The store, in a statement on its website, has countered city council claims. "Dutton's never asked for any subsidy from the City of Beverly Hills," they state with particular emphasis. "We simply asked if we could talk about renegotiating the lease. This is not a subsidy. We also did not demand or insist that utilities be paid, common area costs, property taxes, or anything else...It is disingenuous for the city to hide behind a state law that has nothing to do with renegotiating a lease of city property. The city refused to renegotiate the lease, so we had to leave." No doubt there will be a much more complete picture that becomes clear in the coming months - and many more attempts to spin the closure in particular directions.