Legal Battle Over All-Ages Concerts in San Francisco
The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that the Department of Alcohol Beverage Control is engaging in a legal battle with some of our city’s finest all-ages music venues.
Local venues like Bottom of the Hill, Great American Music Hall, Slim’s and Café du Nord may be forced to shut down unless they can meet the ABC’s requirement stating that half of their sales come from food. Although the regulations are intended to curtail underage drinking, club attorneys argue the legality of such measures and maintain that they are often unrelated to alcohol or safety issues.
Hopefully this will never happen, but if it does indeed come to pass, the real losers won’t just be those under 21. Closing smaller venues means less music for everyone. Places like Bottom of the Hill bring us the best up-and-coming acts for a fraction of the price — last night’s bill had Wavves, Vampire Hands and That Ghost for $8. Hell, I shook the hands of MGMT after their $18 show last year. Without these venues, you can bet that we won’t get nearly the range of acts at such an affordable price.
Thankfully, San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Senator Mark Leno are stepping in to challenge the ABC’s jurisdiction and authority. You can also do your part by purchasing a “Rock n’ Roll is Not a Crime” t-shirt. Maybe we should give Ian MacKaye a call, he’d know what to do:
For more, check out coverage from other Bay Area sources:
The Deli SF
The OCMD
The Bay Bridged
Okay, hold up: if this did pass, would these venues really have to close their doors? Couldn’t they just become 21+ venues? Not saying that it’s a good idea, but it doesn’t seem like the venues would _have_ to close, it would just shut out the kiddies…
Technically, but I think a lot of the bands that play these venues are up and coming and likely to attract an under 21 audience. It would probably mean that at least some of the venues would go under without having that market to sell tickets to. Remember, you’re even talking about excluding a majority of college students…
I agree, I think the issue is that the under-21 demographic makes up a huge part of the income for the smaller venues.
If they closed Bottom of the Hill or the Great American Music Hall, I’d have to go on a bitch-slapping fest at the ABC headquarters.
Worst comes to worst, they do the whole 21+ thing and ticket prices go up. I doubt they’ll close any of these venues.
Looks like a little positive progress is being made: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/16/BADS173668.DTL
Yeah, that’s quite an about face. I’m sure the ABC got a good deal of “encouragement” to play nice after that article came out.
[...] the legal battle over all-ages concerts in San Francisco? Unfortunately, it’s still raging on, and while the ABC continues to push its lame agenda, [...]