Remember that raid on Coco66? Turns out the cops had the wrong place (but the right owner).
Tag: nightlife
Williamsburg Residents Fight Bar
A club owner whose Lower East Side hotspot features an ice cage for chugging vodka and promises of free shots if you get naked is trying to bring the party to Williamsburg – but neighbors are battling his plans… Neighbors say they’re used to bars in the neighborhood, but are spooked because of how over the top his other joint is.
Over the top doesn’t begin to describe Mehanata. And from what I hear, SLA agrees – sources there say that the Lower East Side venue has multiple liquor license violations against it.
The plan for Williamsburg Manor is for a restaurant and “radio studios”, and the owner promises that his Brooklyn outpost will be much classier than his Manhattan shit show (but fret not Williamsburg, the plans presented to CB1 included an “Ice Cage”). Not surprisingly, he made very similar promises to the community board in Manhattan:
According to a letter from Community Board 3 in Manhattan, [the owner] originally claimed Mehanata would be a restaurant with daytime workshops and studio space, but hasn’t served food since 2007.
Too bad – the food looks so appetizing.
War on Street Life
Community Board #1’s “war on brunch” has now officially became news last week, having been picked up by both WNYC and the New York Times. Credit for originating the story belongs to Aaron Short at the Brooklyn Paper. Too bad they let a catchy headline distract them from the real story (and no, it’s not about gentrification, though that’s a catchy headline too).
Sadly, these planters – civic though they may be – are
probably illegal.
The big story here is that the “war on brunch” is really a crackdown on street life. The Community Board, upset at a few bars and restaurants, has chosen to use a hatchet instead of a scalpel. Restaurants and property owners are getting summonses and warning letters about sidewalk benches, sidewalk planters and the like1. As with dining al fresco before noon on Sundays, these targets of the Community Board’s ire are actually the kinds of things that make a neighborhood more livable and more enjoyable.
There is a reason why city planners obsess over things like bench heights, and it goes all the way back to the great neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs herself. Street life, be it seniors sitting on a bench or patrons waiting for a seat at an insanely popular restaurant, makes for better neighborhoods and better communities (or, as Holly Whyte put it, you can measure the health of a city by the vitality of its streets). Outlawing benches and planters isn’t going to make Pies ‘n’ Thighs any less popular (or any less good), though it will mean that more people – not less – are standing around waiting for a table and clogging up the sidewalk.
To be clear, all this wonderful street furniture is also illegal. But using laws against sidewalk furniture to go after a broad swath of businesses is a stop-and-frisk approach to a very specific problem. If the problem is that certain restaurants are flouting the laws about sidewalk cafes and creating an actual nuisance, go after those restaurants. If neighbors have specific complaints, the Community Board should (and traditionally has) acted as a broker, talking to the owners and the residents to work out a solution. If that doesn’t work, then use the relevant city agencies to crack down on the specific troublemaker.
In the long run, trotting out arcane, outdated blue laws is not an effective approach, if for no other reason than that it turns the target into a victim and the enforcer into a bully. The story now is not that some number of restaurant owners are breaking the law and creating a community nuisance, but rather that the Community Board, through City agencies, is using outmoded, ticky-tacky laws to bully a whole business sector (and in the process sweeping in private citizens who have rogue planters, benches and other contraband street furniture (lawns!!) in front of their houses). Ironically, the perennially bad neighbors on the nightlife scene haven’t been impacted by the crackdown, and may not be – most of their sidewalk cafes are legal, and they don’t open before noon on any day.
A nice place for seniors to sit or a public nuisance?
(Probably the latter – this bench looks to be on private
property
In other developments, Councilman Steve Levin is promising to introduce legislation to rescind the ridiculous prohibition on sidewalk eateries before noon on Sundays. Given that many of the neighborhood clergy – including Ann Kansfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church and Monsignor Calise of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (and a member of CB1) – have gone on record saying that Sunday morning eateries are not a threat to their religious observance, this is a good thing. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail on the bigger issue of the street furniture crackdown too.
1. It would be wonderful if this was the biggest issue facing our neighborhood – have we solved all our problems and are now ready to focus on this?↩
Bench Warfare
Seriously, don’t we have bigger issues to tackle around here?
Is This the End of Williamsburg Nightlife?
Short answer: no.
Metropolitan’s liquor license is resting on tenuously safe ground. The community board can only make recommendations to the State Liquor Authority — they don’t have the actual power to take away a bar’s booze.
Somewhat longer answer: Metropolitan’s liquor license is very safe (despite the fact that most of the patrons quoted in the article pretty much admit the place is a bad neighbor) – SLA has stated categorically that a liquor license is just like a driver’s license, perpetually renewable unless the license holder engages in some act of malfeasance (criminal activity, not paying (enough) excise taxes).
Old Bar, The Ship’s Mast, Discovered Decaying In Williamsburg
Gothamist (and Scouting NY) discover the remnants of the Ship’s Mast, once upon a time one of the only bars in Williamsburg (seriously, I think there were 4, maybe 5 bars between South 9th and North 12th).
Scouting NY posted about (and I commented on) this storefront a few years back, and (of course) got into the place to put together this follow up.
Williamsburg Bars Going to ‘L’
The constant weekend shutdowns needed to upgrade subway signals on the L line is taking its toll on the blossoming Williamsburg bar scene — with hipster hangouts reporting huge drops in profits.
Weekend closures are a problem if you have a business located near one of the City’s busiest stations on weekends.
Crackdown Hits North Brooklyn Bars
You wouldn’t know from reading Crain’s, but CB1 supports about 9 out of every 10 liquor license applications that come before it. (Proving Woody Allen right, the huge majority of rejected applications are for bars and restaurants that don’t even bother showing up.)
That’s some crackdown.
Skee-Ball Manufacturer Sues Williamsburg Skee-Ball Bar Full Circle
Regardless of the merits of the suit, this seems to be an incredibly stupid move on the part of Skee-Ball, Inc.
New CB1 Liquor License Rules
Aaron Short has the info on the new rules and guidelines that CB1 instituted for new liquor license applications. Most of the rules codify what CB1 has been looking for all along, and try to rein in the biggest sources of complaints, in particular outdoor areas – limiting hours of operation for outdoor spaces, etc. (the rules don’t require a full kitchen for bars with outdoor spaces, as reported, but they do require seated food service at all times). As Short notes, all talk of moratoriums and (worse) a ban on liquor licenses in “residentially-zoned” areas (which accounts for 90% of CB1) are off the table.
And for those concerned that the new rules will restrict nightlife, its worth noting that CB1 approved 9 (out of 11) new licenses this month, all of which voluntarily met the new rules (as have most of the applicants for the past year or more). The two rejections were no-shows.