Bishop Arvin recalls a time he tried to get into a bar near 14th and O streets.

Even as hip hop music played from inside, Arvin was not allowed in because he was wearing a gold chain necklace with a small cross.

“They said I had to take it off” because of the dress code barring urban or hip hop cultural wear, he says, moving the collar of his dress shirt to show the small necklace.

“You can have a Sean John shirt on and not get in,” says Arvin’s friend Justin Dillwood. “But you can listen to the music coming outside of the club, and it will be P-Diddy’s song. You can’t have a Roc-A-Fella (Rocawear) shirt on, and the next track will be a Jay-Z song.

“So it’s kind of ironic that I can listen to his music inside the bar, but I can’t wear his clothes to get into the bar.”

Arvin, Dillwood and their friend Micheal Q. Thompson are trying to establish a consistent urban entertainment option in Lincoln.

“There’s a different type of environment from the parties or venues that we throw compared to (the downtown bars),” Thompson said.

Arvin and Thompson, members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, started their own production company, Dem Pretty Boiz, to provide positive, creative nightlife events. Dillwood is president and owner of record label/entertainment firm STF Enterprises LLC.

“Urban entertainment is the hip hop culture that was started by African Americans in the (1970s),” Arvin said. “The way we wear our clothes, the words that we speak, the cars we drive with big rims on them — that’s all part of our culture.”

This fall, Dem Pretty Boiz began hosting Saturday night hip hop parties at The Hurricane, 311 N. Eighth St., and STF has been hosting events at Bristo Ballroom, 2112 Cornhusker Highway.

Dem Pretty Boiz and STF hosted a number of events at Opulence Ultra Club, a bar in the Gold’s Building at 1033 O  St., before it closed this summer.

Sometimes more than 700 people filled Opulence, Arvin said.

“But then you deal with the negativity that comes from packing out a club,” he said.

Scuffles and disturbances are “glorified” when they happen at hip hop venues, Thompson said.

“With every nightclub, every place that sells alcohol, you’re going to have those knuckleheads — that’s just going to happen,” he said. “But I think that it’s a little bit more widely known when the venue is more of an R&B type or hip hop type atmosphere.”

The men said when something happened at Opulence, it pulled away police resources devoted to 14th and O streets, where bars are more concentrated, “and it’s glorified that something has gone wrong,” Arvin said.

Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady said in an e-mail that officers “go to where the problems are.”

“That means where somebody has called the police, or where we have seen some kind of issue occurring.

“I think you would find that virtually every single downtown bar owner that caters to a youthful drinking crowd feels emphatically that the police give their particular establishment too much publicity and too much attention when something happens there.”

Dillwood said some bigger cities are better at policing and securing an urban entertainment environment, allowing for urban entertainment but maintaining a police presence.

“They try to eliminate (urban entertainment), then it pops up somewhere else, then it goes somewhere else.”

Sometimes problems may escalate between people because Lincoln is a small town, Arvin said.

“Everyone in our culture knows everyone in Lincoln,” Arvin said. “When you talk about going to Atlanta, Ga., there’s not as much tension between people because they don’t know each other a lot of the time.”

While it might be smaller here, urban entertainment has a market in Lincoln with the growing African-American young business network, Dillwood said.

“People of minority descent are getting degrees every semester, staying in the city, and they’re thirsting for things to do, things culturally that fit into who they are,” Dillwood said. “Let us do our thing.”

Arvin said they just wanted a fair shake at what they’re trying to establish in Lincoln.

“If we don’t have our ability to throw our type of events, and listen to our type of music that a lot of the clubs and bars don’t play, we’re just back at square one,” he said.

Reach Hilary Kindschuh at 473-7120 or hkindschuh@journalstar.com.