34
votes
The 24-hour city: In a push to bolster nightlife, cities are changing laws to keep bars, restaurants and transit systems operating round-the-clock
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- Title
- Bloomberg
- Word count
- 77 words
In my city, all aspects of the nightlife have completely died in the last several years. It used to be that there were several all-night grocery stores and WalMarts you could shop at. Even before the pandemic, their hours were getting reduced to closing early. There were several all night diners or cafe's one could hang out in, but all except Denny's has closed down. 24-Hour Fitness is just a brand name at this point. All of them were beginning to close at 11 o'clock, pre-pandemic. No more midnight movies. Hell, many of the theaters around here now stop doing even late 9-10pm shows unless it's a Friday or Saturday night. Many of the bars that used to be open until 2am now close at at either 10 or midnight.
I think the two factors that influence this decrease in night time businesses staying open is the difficulty in staffing late night positions and the increase in homelessness and crime. Anecdotally, I heard the grocery stores and Walmarts were closing earlier because of the increase in theft during those hours. 24 hour gyms ended up having lots of homeless sleeping in their bathrooms. All night cafes would also be a spot for the houseless to loiter all night.
As for staffing: late night crowds are rough. Most of them are high or drunk and rowdy. The stress and violence that often comes with late night crowds is something that workers are not willing to put up with any more. As someone who does work the overnight shift, let me tell you that people get absolutely feral at night. You've been working for seven nights in a row, your Circadian rhythms completely out of wack while some drunk bitch who probably teaches toddlers during the day is spitting in your face because...I don't know, drunk bitch logic. Their equally drunken boyfriend wants to fuck you up because it's the quickest way into the drunk bitch's pants and the cops, even in a part of town with a responsive department, are always at least a half hour away. Overnights burn you out quickly. If you do it full time, there's really no way to have a second job that's not gigwork, and most overnight jobs don't pay enough to keep you in an apartment without three roommates. Hence, no one wants to work these jobs anymore.
The only difference between now and the 90's and 00's, when things seemed to be cooking 24/7 is the cost of living has shot up to crazy levels. Reduce the cost of rent, and you fix the homelessness and crime, and you get more people who are willing to work all night because they don't have to juggle several jobs and roommates who are awake during the day.
Both interesting and necessary. My city has a war on fun going on for over 30 years where bylaws were implemented to stifle nightclub concentration after a rash of bad fights along a single road.
Since then, the destruction of old buildings, a CBD that's zoned for office towers and a public that stops clubbing at 21 has left my city of 1.6 million with like 5 venues total.
At their own peril, I feel like city administrations do their best to focus on wholesome, daytime cultural events while convincing themselves that the speedier, nighttime scene isn't required.
That sounds similar to what happened in Sydney, with its post-2014 Lockout Laws.
After a series of deaths at King's Cross — once Australia's most prominent and famous nightlife district — the state government imposed heavy-handed legislation across the whole city centre and King's Cross, utterly destroying the city's nightlife.
All existing licensed venues — whether they were pubs, clubs, restaurants, beer gardens, live music or even karaoke bars — now had new curfews and onerous restrictions.
After midnight, there were heavy and arbitrary restrictions on alcohol: e.g. you can't drink scotch by itself; however, you can drink it with Coca Cola mixed in it, but you can't drink it if the Coca Cola was pre-mixed and put into a can...
Curfew (lockout) begun at 1:30am. New licensed venues weren't approved. Most ridiculously, the City of Sydney banned kebab sales after midnight... yeah.
Occasionally, police in riot gear with sniffer dogs will close off an entire street to inspect a venue. If drugs were found on a single person, everyone gets kicked out and the business gets a 72-hour operating ban. Three strikes and you're permanently closed. Yes, they did this with a 3000-person venue during the busiest weekend of the year (the venue failed). Yes, they also did this with pubs, restaurants and beer gardens.
Evidently, this wasn't sustainable. The conditions and economics to operate a nightlife business became very difficult. The result? Hundreds of licensed venues closed. The live music scene — decimated. Century-old venues — gone. As new venues were prohibited by the license freeze, the ones that closed weren't replaced. Many inter-dependent businesses that relied on traffic from these venues (e.g. convenience stores, McDonalds) have also shut down.
Funny Story
So, apparently Bruce Springsteen's manager once called a nightclub to organise a few post-event drinks for his band. The nightclub told them they were closing because of lockouts. The manager then asked where else they could go, and the nightclub embarrassingly had to tell them that they literally didn't know, as everything was closing or closed already.
My Thoughts
These types of responses are immensely disproportionate and counterproductive. Sure, you've stopped nightlife-related assaults and bad fights, but you've done so by killing off your nightlife. Similarly, you can also stop car crashes if you remove all cars from the road!
Continued Below (Click Here)
Sydney's Lockout Laws merely lasted 5 years, yet its legacy leaves a lasting mark on the city. King's Cross, the once-legendary heart of Sydney's famed nightlife, is now a shadow of its former past. Most pubs, clubs and bars are gone and the once-crowded streets are empty at night. It is now the haven of the gentrified, rich and boring, who live in apartments that tower the corpses of the old venues. (yeah... good luck reintroducing nightlife with these newcomers)
The better solution to dealing with nightlife-related violence is to ensure people make it home safe. This is what Sydney's southern neighbour, Melbourne, decided on. It relaxed liquor laws for smaller bars and venues, ensuring there was a more diverse mix of venues and patrons. It introduced 24-hour public transport on weekends, getting people off the streets after closing time, when it is most dangerous. It put police presence on every single one of its 200+ train stations after 6pm, ensuring human presence at lesser used stations after dark.
These are some examples how you can make nightlife safe. By actually making it safe. Not by getting rid of it.
Wow, that's one quality response and it sounds all too familiar. Zero tolerance responses from elected governments always suggest to me that a large enough block of constituents couldn't care less about the issue outside of how it looks on newspaper headlines.
Provincial governments involving themselves in city issues can be so infuriating, especially if it's rural slanted votes driving the decision.
Funny, in Vancouver people complain because there was an explicit push to concentrate nightclubs into a single zone. Can’t please everyone. Now we have a pretty rowdy, but well policed entertainment district on Granville Street, and I kinda like it this way.
I like it that way, too. I'm in Calgary and it's been a deadzone for fun for a good long time