The first time, Fanali had no choice in the matter. Officials from the city of Sunnyvale fired Fanali from his job as booking agent for The Fishbowl, one of the few all-ages music venues then left in the Bay Area.

This time, though, the 25-year-old promoter voluntarily walked away from three years of booking shows at The Outhouse, the Los Gatos teen center run by nonprofit A Place for Teens. When its board of directors informed him that it wanted to change its concert-booking policies, Fanali wrote a letter stating his intent to stop working with the group.

Fanali said the board, which recently formed a partnership with the Los Gatos­Saratoga Community Education and Recreation Department, told him it wanted future concerts to be restricted to those under 21 years old, that five people 25 years or older needed to chaperone the shows and that concerts could not be held the same night as Los Gatos High School events.

He refused to make the changes, since his concerts had previously been praised for providing a safe, fun atmosphere for teens without such policies.

"They feel the restrictions placed upon [the teenagers] will guarantee the correct behavior," Fanali said. "I want to build a community that supports musicians and teenagers making their own decisions, and the new Outhouse ... wants teenagers to be restricted in their behavior."

Those in charge of The Outhouse said the changes are less about restriction and more about attracting a specific age group.

"Our basic idea was to make sure that the concerts were aimed at the teen audience," Cathy Miller, new board co-president, said. "That should have been done all along and I don't know that that was happening."

But Fanali said adult board members (the A Place for Teens board of directors includes both adults and teenagers) never even came to the concerts, which he said were attended most heavily by teens. He said he invited Mike Loya, recreation coordinator and Outhouse director, to a concert, but that he only drove by the venue one night.

"I feel like he didn't gather enough evidence to make these decisions without my input," Fanali said.

Loya was unavailable for comment.

Former board member Kari McClelland, 20, used to help Fanali set up and supervise concerts when she was a Los Gatos High School student. She said there were never any problems at the shows and that it was mostly a teenage audience that attended.

"Eric did a really good job of advertising to that age group ... [and] of making sure that if people were drinking or smoking that they left," McClelland said. "There weren't any fights when I was ever there."

McClelland added that between 100 and 300 teens attended concerts when Fanali was the promoter.

Board member Lee Fagot, like Miller, said there were no problems at Outhouse concerts that led the board to change the requirements.

"We just wanted to make sure that we were getting the right constituency," Fagot said, "just to make sure that for high-school-age kids that they're there with other high-school-age kids and not with older kids ... What we've identified and what we've read and what we've seen is there's a pretty big diversion in what happens with kids who are young adults as opposed to kids who are 15, 16, 17."

Though he said Loya and perhaps some students would be booking future concerts, Fagot said Fanali's work for the last three years was appreciated.

"Eric did a good job of promoting and supervising activities," he said.