(2008-11-11) Community Board Meet

I went to part of the local Community Board (Nyc Gov) meeting last night. Actually, it was just the public meeting of the committee dealing with liquor licenses (SLA = State Liquor Authority). (ceci n'est pas un beer)

I was there to support a new local East Village Restaurant that wants to upgrade their license from "beer/wine" to "full". It's not a huge issue to me, but Jihi likes a cocktail with dinner, and lots of other people do, too, so it seems ridiculous not to let a restaurant offer that.

The month before, a number of people from our building had been at the equivalent meeting to block the license of a new restaurant in the block behind our building. I signed that same petition. A big difference is that this place had a back area they would end up using, which would generate noise for the people on the back side of our building. But more generally, some people think there are too many liquor licenses issued in our area (11 "full" licenses in a 4-block area, or something like that). With that density resulting in smelly Garbage, loud noise, traffic, etc.

But it seems to me the key offenders are clubs (Webster Hall draws lots of non-local traffic) and bars (the Central Bar, the Village Pourhouse). How did the newer cases in that category ever get approved?

And note that Mike Bloomberg's no-SmokIng policies have the big Side Effect of driving smokers outdoors, where they yammer away at all hours.

One problem is that you can't micro-manage a license holder, once they have that license. And so a restaurant who starts out wanting to be able to sell drinks, later finds they have little dinner business, so promotes their bar more....