If San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors had
its way, many of this city’s bars would be open until
4 a.m. In a resolution authored by Supervisor Aaron
Peskin, whose district includes North Beach, the board
voted 8 to 3 on Tuesday to ask the state legislature,
which controls bar closing times, to modernize laws
related to alcohol closing hours.
What they mean by that is that the Board is adding
its assent to an idea put forward by San Francisco
Assemblyman Mark Leno that the city’s bars, with lots
of potential restrictions, should be able stay open
until four.
Why? The city’s nightlife advocates and club owners
are getting desperate over the declining attendance at
San Francisco’s once-fabled nightspots. Attorney Mark
Rennie, a lawyer for about 25 of the city’s clubs and
bars, says that the vast majority of his clients are
in distress. “I’m surprised more of them haven’t gone
bankrupt,” he said.
According to Rennie, San Francisco’s hotel
occupancy rates are down, way down, from their 88
percent peak in 1999 to 63 percent now. Even the
cabbies are hurting. According to Naiomi Little, the
head of the city’s taxi commission, in the first six
months of 2000 SF’s cabs got a total of about 2.47
million radio calls. Last year in the same period, it
wasn’t even 2 million, a decline of 20 percent.
Is it the economy, or is something else going on
here? Rennie says it’s mainly something else. He says
that it used to be that gay men from Los Angeles were
the largest single block of visitors to San Francisco,
and they came up here to go out. Now, he says, they’ve
stopped coming.
“Gay men are the proverbial canaries in the
mineshaft of the tourist industry,” Rennie said, “They
lead the rest of the business by five to six years.
It’s hard to believe they’d rather stay in LA, but
they are. And what about Miami and New Orleans?” he
said. “We’re getting killed.”
“We need to put the edge back onto San Francisco’s
entertainment scene,” said SF Entertainment Commission
Chairman Terrance Alan, at the Board’s City Services
Committee hearing last week when they took up Peskin’s
resolution. “We need to regain some of the luster.”
Tourism is San Francisco’s number one industry.
Alan says that San Francisco is almost alone among
major tourist destinations where the bars close at
two. Many other states, Texas, New York, New Jersey
and even West Virginia allow major cities to sell
liquor after 2 a.m.
At the City Services Committee hearing the
supervisors, Bevan Dufty, Fiona Ma and Michela Alioto-Pier,
heard from about twenty advocates for the plan, and
three dissenters from the Potrero Hill Boosters who
say that they fear bars on Potrero Hill will be open
late.
Peskin said that the plan, if it is implemented,
won’t affect neighborhood places. “I wouldn’t want my
neighborhood bar open until 4 a.m. either,” he said.
The Entertainment Commission’s Alan said that in order
to be allowed to stay open, first bars will have to be
in areas which are zoned for late night entertainment,
and then will face a public hearing when they apply
for a late night operation permit with the
Entertainment Commission. “It won’t be automatic,”
said Alan.
The advocates also maintain that late closing
actually decreases the risk of liquor-related traffic
accidents, Peskin said. “It doesn’t seem to make sense
when you first think about it,” he said, but if bars
are open later, it seems people rush to have a last
drink and then immediately get in their cars. He said
that, according to US Traffic Safety Administration
data, the accident rate goes down as the closing time
gets later.
Leno had originally suggested that the state’s five
largest cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego,
and San Jose should be able to decide when their bars
close, and his aides said there was some interest in
the idea, but he got about 900 e-mails from San
Francisco constituents supporting the idea, and much
fewer from the other cities. So he is limiting the
bill, which he will introduce by February 20, to apply
only to San Francisco.
|
