"This is the song that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends..."

I was standing at the bar late Friday morning at the nightclub Lure on Washington Avenue. Tony Trupiano shook his head impatiently at one of my questions. He said, "We really don't want this to be about ancient history."

Of course not. Tony's brother Nick had called me about problems the nightclub is having with the city, and those problems are very much in the now. The city is threatening to yank the club's liquor license. There could be some kind of public hearing within the next couple of weeks. If there were to be any talk about history, let it be recent history.

Like shootings on Locust Street early Monday. Those shootings had nothing to do with Lure, the brother said. In fact, Lure isn't even open on Sundays.

But still, there I was Friday morning, thinking about ancient history.

Betty Thompson has an office on the fourth floor of the building in which Lure occupies the first floor. She is the director of the Kwame Foundation, which provides scholarships and grants to minority students.

She was a leading figure in the local civil rights movement 30 years ago. I remember listening to her at rallies. "The freedom train is coming!" she would shout. "We've got to get on that freedom train!"

When Tony Trupiano said he didn't want the story to be about ancient history, he wasn't thinking about Betty Thompson. He was thinking about his dad, Matthew "Mikey" Trupiano.

He was this city's last mafia chieftain. By the time he assumed the top position — he got it through nepotism; he was Anthony Giordano's nephew — there wasn't much to inherit. In fact, the feds secretly recorded conversations in which he complained that Italian-American businessmen pretty much ignored him, the national guys had cheated him out of money from a hotel sale in Las Vegas and his own soldiers were holding out on bookmaking proceeds.

Still, the feds obsessed about him. They were especially concerned because he was president of Laborers Local 110. They wanted to cleanse the labor movement of "organized crime," and when they learned that Trupiano was a regular in a gin rummy game that was played during working hours, they busted him for defrauding the union by playing cards when he should have been working. He went to prison for playing gin rummy. He died shortly after getting out of prison.

Over the years, he and I had become friends. Which is why his sons called me about the problems with their nightclub.

Actually, even if I hadn't been friends with their dad, I would be sympathetic. This is a tough town in which to be in the nightclub business. We organize "entertainment districts" composed of saloons, and then we get upset because they attract drinkers, some of whom drink too much. It's like Mardi Gras. We promote the heck out of the idea of a huge street party and then we arrest people for public drunkenness.

According to the Trupiano brothers, there are two issues at play in their dispute with the city. The first has to do with some of the loft-dwellers in their building. Some of these people object to noise — the nightclub is only open three nights a week but is open until 3 a.m. on those nights — and smoke. The club is very smoky. Besides, there are problems inherent with nightclubs — litter, occasional fights. So the loft-dwellers complain to the city.

Secondly, there is the matter of race. Thursday night at Lure is a hip-hop night. That is, the deejay — there is never a band — plays hip-hop music. That attracts a black crowd. Some Thursdays, 400 people gather.

By the way, if I can return to ancient history, Betty Thompson's son, Tony, understood that the freedom train was really about education. He got a bachelor's degree in architectural engineering and environmental design from the University of Kansas and then a master's in civil engineering with a construction management major from Washington University. In 1991, he founded Kwame Building Group, a general contracting firm that has been hugely successful. The company, like its foundation, is in the same building as Lure. In fact, Tony Thompson is Lure's landlord.

Back to the present. It does not take many incidents of violence to ruin an entertainment district. So when a nightclub attracts a young black crowd, people hold their breath. The Trupiano brothers insist that their Thursday night specials have not been a problem. They say that they hire off-duty police officers as security. They say that two other clubs that have been cited have 18-and-over nights. Lure doesn't. "We attract a more sophisticated, older crowd," Nick Trupiano said. He mentioned athletes and celebrities.

The Trupiano brothers are framing this as a civil rights case. They put a sign in their window on Tuesday: "Jim Crow is alive and well downtown." Perhaps their lawyer will make that argument, too. He is former mayor Freeman Bosley Jr. Incidentally, his administration steered a lot of work to a certain construction company that was then just getting started. I hate to keep bringing up ancient history, but it's the song that never ends.