good job dbth

AMEN!

name ONE city agency with the discrimination and resources to do something like this. DOB, DCA both are totally gridlocked, gutted of resources and under the thumb of city politics. would be good to get rid of the corrupt SLA, i agree. city licenses should be a matter for the city, not upstate ny looking for fees and graft. not the best system, i agree, but community boards are the only ones with the interest, the time, the resources and the local cred to get the job done. the real issue is noise. community boards currently overreact, but that's mostly because most club owners don't care about their neighbors (in it for a couple a years and then bolt) or do care but don't have the money to buy proper soundproofing and security. if club owners did a better job of eliminating noise at night, community boards would (slowly) accept more licenses. ask yourself why the boards deny so many licenses to clubs, but not to restaurants. it's because no one wants to live next to a club run by someone who doesn't care about them, and few clubs do. NY has far more children these days than clubgoers. fact of life. nightlife has to deal with this.

restless... i understand your point about clubs and club owners and agree with your argument there, but the truth of the matter is that especially in community boards two and three, there are few true nightclubs.. the community boards and the over zealous residents complain and reject even the most legitimate of operators, who are trying to obtain liquor licenses for restaurants, cafes, and bars. the power that they wield has become a blatant abuse of their power. i agree with dbth that there should be a set of rules put in place, applied universally and fairly. if the community doesnt want to have a nightclub with a cabaret license in a residential area than they should have the right to enforce it, but to have the power to tell a restaurant owner that he/she must stop serving at 11pm, or that they cant obtain a liquor license at all should not be in the jaded activist's community board members control. as for bars and restaurants that would like to serve alcohol until 4am (which is the legal state and city curfew for the serving of alcohol in on premise license establishments) there should be a set of criteria enacted to allow the well behaved and law abiding establishments to recieve new, or obtain transfer licenses. the cb's are effectively making downtown nyc a 2am license city, and thats for the lucky owners who get past the dissillusioned cb at all. then again writing comments on this site from the vantage point i am, is preaching to the converted.

Restless ...really most club owmers dont care ? i like to think thats not true ....i hope it is ...i care

seriously - i agree that community boards are not properly discriminating between the quiet restaurant that wants to keep its bar open until 4 AM and the bad-actor club that brings mayhem to the street at 4 AM when everyone gets kicked out. But there is history behind this lack of discrimination. Right now, when those nice, quiet restaurants start to miss, they look for other sources of revenue. Illegal club events are one very common source, and are a huge problem because the restaurants generally have little soundproofing, no experience with security, and are at the mercy of promoters who are only interested in packing in warm bodies. These are easy to hold when your license lasts until 4 AM, because the police won't enforce the cabaret laws (like they used to during the age of Giuliani). Worse, the restaurant may close its doors and transfer the license to a club operator. Transfers are much easier to accomplish than getting new licenses. If the license is restricted to 2 AM, that metamorphosis isn't going to happen. The problem here is enforcement. The laws currently on the books should prevent bad operators from disturbing residents' peaceful enjoyment of their homes, and allow good operators to flourish. But no one enforces them. The police do not, DCA (in charge of cabaret licenses) do not, and the SLA certainly does not. The way the community boards see it, the only effective cure is prevention: restrict the license to 2 AM and no problem will arise. That's why community boards are popular with taxpaying and voting residents. This sucks, because much of what makes ny nightlife worthwhile happens between 2 and 4 am. What's the solution? Dunno, because the city and state have no additional resources available to police nightlife. Pass a new regulatory scheme if you want, there is NO one out there to enforce it. Which is why taxpaying, voting residents will cling to the community board nightlife vigilante squads. Very unfortunate.

ano - they don't. not enough to cut into their own short term profits, which then results in a community backlash and no long-term profits. club owners are often very short-sighted. if you do, that's great. wish there were more like you.

one solution is the "paid detail". by hiring on duty cops to police the streets outside peace could be obtained. clubs would pay for a police presence. club security is often ignored by honking taxi's and unruly patrons because these people know club security has no power over them. the club community is generally in favor of the paid detail which is available to most businesses . places with liquor licenses are currently ineligible.