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Waste of time and money at City Hall
By adamg on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 1:10pm
This morning, the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing was scheduled to hold a hearing on the seven-stabbing closing at Ups N Downs in Dorchester in February. Assuming the hearing happened as planned, two Boston Police detectives would provide an account of what happened. A lawyer for bar owner Arthur Sutliffe would explain how Sutliffe plans to close the bar and sell the liquor license to the Boston Tea Party Museum. Another lawyer for Sutliffe would lead at least one bar employee through testimony on what happened. Other employees would be on hand, just in case.
I didn't attend that hearing. I didn't really have to, because I attended the hearing the Boston Licensing Board held yesterday on the same exact incident, where the two detectives testified and the two lawyers did their thing.
Perhaps there really is a good reason, as opposed to stupid inertia in dealing with a holdover from the anti-irish days of the last century, why Boston has two separate licensing boards, one of which focuses on liquor and food licenses and the other of which focuses on entertainment licenses. I've never heard it, but maybe it's like Santa Claus - it exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
In the meantime, though, establishments that have both food/liquor licenses and entertainment licenses (and you need an entertainment license if you have a TV wider than 42 inches) who find themselves with citations have to go through two separate hearings - which may have different outcomes. It's extra overtime for the cops who also have to go to both hearings and, of course, more billable hours for the lawyers, but it's a really stupid waste of time for everybody involved. Then again, it's probably too much to ask that these two boards hold joint hearings on identical incidents.
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Comments
On top of that
Why do you need to review their entertainment license over this? Are you going to somehow discover that the guy wasn't drinking at all, but when Sally Jesse Raphael came on the TV, he flew into a blind rage and started stabbing people? I mean, at least then you'd have a justification for why you might revoke the entertainment/TV license of an establishment that would be SO cavalier about putting Sally on when unstable people are around.
As it is, if the bar has its liquor license suspended, it's going to close...which means they're going to stop using their TV as part of the punishment too...even if they aren't mandated to close, but just not serve alcohol or something like that.
Has there ever been a time where a jukebox/radio/TV was somehow the proximate cause of a problem and NOT the alcohol ("Everything was fine, officer....We were all drinking tea discussing Proust...until that damned Nelly Furtado song started playing!")? If not, then why does the entertainment license need a review hearing at all?
Even more ridiculous
Although the Mayor's Office does have sole purview over such abhorrent behavior as letting patrons dance without a dance-floor permit, for something like this, they (well, she - I think only the commissioner holds hearings) will consider the same exact testimony as the booze-and-grub board on the same exact issue: The stabbings.
It's not juke boxes that cause trouble, it's POOL TABLES!
Trouble! With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool!
(EXPLETIVE) THANK YOU
So glad somebody in the media is stepping up and defending my industry.
Anti-Irish?
Any sources for the claim that Boston's multi-layered liquour license obstacle course was created out of anti-Irish bigotry? It's a claim I've heard elsewhere and I don't necessarily doubt it but it seems like the kind of thing that could be susceptible to apocryphal repetition. If I had to guess I'd bet plain old graft as a better explanation - more boards to appoint cronies to, more opportunity for shakedowns - but I'd rather not guess. A few UHub posts came to the top of a quick Google search.
City Hall
If you want to look at the watse of time and money look at the decisions by each of the boards. One ,Consumer Affairs, actually listens to the neighbors and disciplines when appropriate, while the other doesn't listen and allows the problems to continue.
By the time the current
By the time the current regulatory structure was put in place, the Irish had been running the city for decades. It's where the state has a hand in things that the old anti-Irish policies show up.
The change happened in 1885
A few months after Hugh O'Brien was elected the first Irish-American mayor of Boston. In addition to taking away control over liquor licenses (and to this day, the governor appoints members of the licensing board), the legislature took away the mayor's right to appoint the police commissioner.
Soooo
So about the same time this was happening, Doc was already back to 1885 and Marty was on his way to save the Doc.
If only there was something in 1885 that could reach speeds up to 88 miles per hour, they could be sent back to the future, back to November 15, 1985
(okay sorry lame attempt at a joke)
It all ties together
Since DeLoreans were made in Ireland (OK, Northern Ireland, but still ...)
Let's put it this way...
Concerning the so-called "anti-Irish" sentiments that led to the establishment of these regulations, a hundred years ago or so:
There was strong animosity between the "Boston Brahmins" (wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and the immigrant groups (generally non-Protestants) who resided in Boston outside of Beacon Hill and Back Bay.
By around 1900 the Irish immigrants and their descendants controlled most municipal politics in the city of Boston, with help from some later immigrant groups such as Italians and Jews in the North, West, and South Ends. The "Brahmin caste" still controlled the banks and major industries. Some of the Brahmins still lived on Beacon Hill and in Back Bay; others had moved to the suburbs or even rural estates. The upper-class WASPs were also in control of state government, allied with Protestant Republicans in middle-class suburbs and in rural areas. (The immigrants and Catholics were concentrated in Boston and a few other large cities across the Commonwealth.) Thus the Brahmins got the General Court to pass several laws and regulations restricting municipal powers -- rules that applied only to the City of Boston. Liquor licenses were just one example of how the state took over local affairs that would normally have been run by the municipality. At one point the Boston Police Commissioner was appointed by the Governor.
If you asked the ethnic voters and politicians of Boston, they would have said that these actions were based on anti-Irish prejudice. If you asked the Beacon Hill residents and officials, they would have said they were acting against graft and corruption. A large element of party politics (Democrats vs. Republicans) also entered the equation.
At the same time, the people who promoted the state takeover of municipal powers were the sons of men and women who'd refused to hire Irish immigrants as servants a few decades earlier. So the claim of anti-Irish prejudice probably has some merit.
There's an analogy to the project to fill in the Back Bay fifty years earlier. It had been the state government that led the effort to fill the bay. A major purpose of the project was to make land for new luxury housing, which would in turn allow wealthy WASPs to continue living within city limits. (Roxbury, Dorchester, and so on, weren't part of the City of Boston until after the Back Bay project was well under way.) The 1850s were well known as a time of immense anti-Irish prejudice, and one of the arguments for the Back Bay project was that it would keep Boston (for a while, anyway) under the control of a "native" electorate, instead of the great numbers of unwashed immigrants (at that time, nearly all Irish).
It was not until John Hynes was elected Mayor in 1949 -- defeating James Michael Curley in a landslide -- that Boston started to move beyond this ethnic-WASP rivalry in politics and government.
Great reply!
Thanks Charles for the information and context and analysis.
Guess You Weren't at the Hearing
Obviously you were not at today's Consumer Affairs and Licensing hearing when the licensee stated he is considering all options-but wants to remain open at this time..
So did he change his mind overnight?
Because at yesterday's hearing, his lawyer said he only wanted to stay open (and just on the first floor) until the license was sold.
And, yes, I was not at today's hearing. Said so right up front and all.
I haven't been there in a one time
But I do know some people (halfway decent people I should add) who have gone to ups and downs for some dart tourneys upstairs. I guess you could try to turn it into some sort of breakfast place or something.