At 11 p.m. on a Friday, hundreds of twenty-somethings flood the five bars at the intersection of three Greenwich Village streets — Gansevoort, Greenwich and Little West streets. Most of them have just finished exploring one of the bars and are ‘bar hopping.’
When the loud music stops at around 3 a.m., they leave, many of them intoxicated. They tipsily look for cabs that honk their way into this intersection after having criss-crossed a maze of small streets. Residents of this neighbourhood are used to this weekend routine, so familiar with it they rarely complain.
Therefore, when Governor David Paterson recently signed a bill into law that tightens the reins on nightlife operators who routinely break the law, Village residents and bar owners had mixed feelings. While the law might help residents in many other ‘problem’ areas in the state, Greenwich Village, whose economy is driven by the nightlife industry, is negatively affected.
The law will enable the State Liquor Authority to revoke a liquor license after a nightclub or bar has incurred six or more noise or disorderly violations within a 60-day period. The authorities along with NYPD will develop the policy guidelines for this law. Senator Daniel Squadron, who proposed the bill, says he has no fixed date yet, but the guidelines will be out soon.
From 14th Street in the north to Canal Street in the south, the hundreds of bars and nightclubs in Greenwich Village are favorite destinations for the city’s nocturnal beings. More than 20 percent of Greenwich Village area has residences on top of commercial property, according to the City Planning Department. Therefore, one would expect complaints about noise, drugs and other ‘undesirable activities’ against these night clubs to be higher in this neighbourhood than in many others.
But numbers suggest otherwise. In fact, according to New York City’s Information and Telecommunications department website, only fifty four 311 noise complaints have been registered this year in this neighbourhood. However, under the new law, if any six of those complaints were against the same bar or nightclub, the liquor license could be revoked.
“In the past 7 months that I have worked here, I have had two complaints,” says Jerad, the manager of Jekyll and Hyde, a bar on 7th Avenue, who doesn’t use a last name. Judy Wessler, a resident on Bleecker Street for the past 20 years, says she has not heard of any complaints against bars, nor can she think of anyone who has.
Even the police say they don’t get a lot of complaints. Community Affairs Officer of the 6th Precinct, James Alberici points at the phone and says, “You don’t see it ringing all the time, do you?”
“When there is an occasional complaint we send our ‘cabaret team’ to the troubled spot and try and speak to the bar owners,” Alberici says with a smile, “We have very good relations with the bar owners, they are rarely unreasonable.” Cabaret teams are special teams that work from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. around the neighbourhood.
Despite all the talk of the police not having trouble with the bar owners, what brings this law into specific focus in the Village is the ongoing Chi Chiz case. In March this year, NYPD conducted an undercover operation and its legal department filed a suit against Chi Chiz, a bar on Christopher Street, after undercover officers in the Manhattan South Narcotics Division said they made three drug buys in the bar from the same person. The Christopher Street Block Association also supports this claim.
Over the past six years, the police say they had been getting a lot of complaints about drug trade in Chi Chiz that calls itself the only black gay bar in the city.
However, in September, a judge put off hearing part of that case until November, and told the bar to move forward with its own lawsuit that charges the city of being motivated by racial and anti-gay biases when the city sought to close the bar.
The law can therefore be a double edged sword. It can help those residents that are troubled by ‘problem spots’. It can also be cause complications in cases like that of Chi Chiz where the court ruled the suit to be racial and anti-gay.
“So a neighbor that doesn’t want a bar on their block can make a couple calls and then get a couple of other neighbors to call – complain about noise or a drunken patron. Then it gets shut down?” writes an angry resident on New York magazine’s website about the new law.
The few complaints that do come in, vary with the location of the house and of the bar. Most bars in Union Square face less complaints as most of the residents are New York University students who are also those frequent the bars.
“I have never faced a problem while at a bar,” says Elizabeth Webb, student of City Planning, New York University. ”There signs saying ‘be courteous to neighbours’ in most night clubs, people respect it.”
Away from the University, on the west edge of the neighborhood, the number of complaints are comparatively higher.
Another reason that residents don’t complain could be because many houses in the Village have windows that have two layers of glass, to keep the noise levels down, say residents of the Village. “Only sometimes during the summer, if we open our windows, do we hear some noise,” says Henry Strauss, who lives right across a pub on Jane Street.
While 44.9 percent of Greenwich Village residents are between the age of 25 and 44, the number of people who are older than 44 is also a sizable 31 percent. “There is an 80-year-old woman who lives across the street, she is the only one who complains against us,” says Kimi Pat a waitress at Garage bar on 7th Avenue.
“A women would call at least 3-4 times a week and complain about noise,” says Marisol de la Rosa who worked as a waitress for 6 years in Florent, the first 24-hour bar in the Meat Packing District. “But then, what did she expect?! She lived right above a 24-hour bar!”
