Breasts, Booze and Oakland’s party police
I didn’t even have space to get into half the details about the city’s no fun policies in today’s Night Owl backed up the “party police.” Sometimes Oakland seems to get in the way of its own success by making it hard for even its most popular venues to entertain us. First it was Oakland Metro, Oaklandish and 21 Grand that the Alcohol Beverage Action Team targeted. Last year, the squad cracked down on smoking inside and outside bars. Now it’s their attention to Mama Buzz Cafe that has people up in arms, even though the team tagged four other venues for combining DJs and dancing without having a $2,210.36 cabaret permit. It’s like we’re trapped in Elmore, Oklahoma in a scene from Footloose, as The DTO blogger Jonathan Bair put it. The situation is set to change because the law is too absurd. Even the city’s cabaret license chief Barbara Killey and ABAT’s rep agreed that something should change. (Maybe we should move fast because I heard the well-liked and respected Killey is set to retire.)
City Councilmembers, after all, changed the rule barring cabarets from operating 300 feet from a library, school or church (amen). They had to or else the Fox Theatre and Oakland School of the Arts couldn’t coexist and Cafe Trieste would have been banned from setting up shot on their spot on Piedmont Avenue. Of course, that has all been vented about on A Better Oakland. Now about the taxi problem here and that ordinance about breasts and booze…
Posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Under: A Better Oakland, Alcohol Beverage Action Team, Barbara Killey, Footloose, General, Jacob Graef, Jonathan Bair, Oakland nightlife, The DTO, night owl, party poopers | 1 Comment »