Nickels Plays Hardball with Bars and Clubs Over New Regulations
According to a report in this morning's Seattle Times, Mayor Nickels has decided to play hardball in his attempt to get all Stasi on Seattle's nightlife. In what appears to be a blatant attempt to politicize Seattle's police force, according to the Times, "Seventeen bouncers, bartenders and other nightclub employees were arrested Saturday night for allegedly violating state liquor laws."
Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske and City Attorney Tom Carr used the sting to push for Mayor Greg Nickels' proposal to require clubs to have a special operating license, something the mayor believes would give the city more ability to punish clubs when laws are broken.
The five-day undercover operation targeted a set of bars and clubs that top pretty much anyone's list of nasty places liable to be violating the law. Two of the clubs, Sugar on Capitol Hill and Tommy's in the U-District, have both been the site of gun crimes in the recent past. Other bars where underage decoys were served liquor include such classy dives as Pioneer Square's Cowgirls Inc., J&M Cafe, and the Last Supper Club, and Belltown's Tia Lou's and Twilight Martini lounge, where, ironically, we were sitting uncomfortably early Friday night, dragged there by a friend jonesing for new locales to check out. The blatant display of security outside Twilight, who very thoroughly checked our ID's, merely confirms the sad suspicion, bolstered by the painful reality we see in the bathroom mirror every morning, that we are no longer the buff, underage sex toys the town's trashiest nightclubs like to bring in.
But we digress.
Nickels' might like to make hay of the fact he nailed a dozen or so clubs that any half-wit could tell you were bending the rules for the various boy-toys and sex-dolls that attract the big-spending middle-aged pervs and awkward twenty-something junior analysts desperate to spin their game. However, Nickels is making a bad faith attempt to smear the majority of bars and clubs that are doing their best to abide by the law, and thus institute unnecessarily punitive regulations on them.
We're not saying that there's any shortage of problems stemming from Friday night drunks on Capitol Hill, down in Belltown, or over in Fremont, to name but three prime destinations. However, we think that there's a few more proactive things the city could help with as opposed to mere draconian regulation. For one thing, the city could help bars with addressing the unclear smoking restrictions that came with last year's smoking ban.
The so-called 25-foot rule has clearly failed to keep people from smoking near buildings, as any apartment dweller near a bar or coffeeshop in Seattle could tell you. But the rule allows for the bar to held cupable if the smokers are on their premises, which has led to a counterproductive ban on smoking on outdoor decks. The downside is pretty self-evident: every night, bars are revolving doors as patrons wander out onto the sidewalk and out of the barkeeps' and bouncers' control to smoke. Hence Mayor Nickels' stipulation that bars should be held accountable for what happens off-premises but near their establishments.
Amending the smoking regulations or granting legal exceptions (for decks, people, outside!) would keep bar-goers on-premises and more under control of the establishment; if bars weren't penalized for posting ashtrays, we can cut down on massive amounts of litter; and with drunks off the streets, we can hopefully cut down on some of the shouting and a lot of fighting and hooliganism.
It's not a cure-all; we're not that naive. But a lot of people agree that the smoking ban went a long way towards exacerbating these problems. Back in March, City Councillor Sally Clark responded to an email protest of the mayor's nightclub regulations, writing, "It's no wonder we have more noise problems with the number of people outside smoking and the mixed message of wanting them a certain distance from the establishment while still holding the establishment at least implicitly responsible." However, she added: "I'm not sure how to reconcile this yet."
The hang-up is that the regulation 25-foot rule is a state-level rule, and thus much harder to amend. The city's power to grant exceptions for bars with decks is likely limited, and would face strong opposition from anti-smoking activists and the public institutions Philip Dawdy once labelled "the nanny state."
But while we're on the topic of sensible regulations that are completely politically unviable, let's propose something even more radical: eliminating the two a.m. closing time. It's a seemingly crazy proposal that's getting strong backing in England, where drunks pour out of bars much earlier than here. The idea is that it changes behavior: first, since drinkers aren't racing the clock, you don't wind up with as many people who are truly sloshed, since they have time to drink at leisure; secondly, by eliminating last call, you don't have everyone leaving bars all at once, creating the one-thirty noise-fest on city streets that we all so love.
These are but two options that would actually help both nightlife and help cut down on the negative externalities of living in a cool neighborhood. At the very least, you'd hope that Nickels would adopt the carrot-and-stick approach in order to negotiate a resolution acceptable to all and work to benefit clubs that play by the rules. Instead, he's making it clear that he only intends to support the sort of nightlife he and other members of our supposedly "liberal" local government approve of, which are more or less bland bars for the middle class on up, with live music no more threatening than a bad lounge act and definitely no colored people, unless they're more gay than ethnic.
The picture of the drinks by Laser Butter courtesy of Seattlest's flickr pool.
