January 9, 2008
SF Nightlife Violence Summit
Violence at SF nightclubs has been all the rage this year - all nine days, that is - and now a summit is being held this month in order to curb the violent tomfoolery. A few choice incidences to refresh your memory: Marcus Pepper, 26, was killed on New Year's Day outside a Ninth Street warehouse SOMA party; Clarence Corbin 34, was shot outside Jelly's Dance Cafe in Mission Bay; Club Vessel was, well, Club Vessel; and much to no one's surprise, two women were attacked by two male Antiochians outside 715 Harrison this past Sunday.
Are you ready to party, San Francisco?
Well, the Entertainment Commission sure is. The powerful seven member commission - whose job up until now has been, as far as we can tell, to withhold entertainment permits and not streamlining Halloween 2007 - will hold a policy summit meeting on Jan. 17. (Time and location TBD.) Many issues will be discussed: violence happening too close to closing time, underage drinking, venues not responding efficiently to violence, issuing "citations" of some sort, out of towners, and more.
Ultimately, it sounds like a few clubs will have to close down, one way or another. (Or worse, more bottle-service chic transformation.) Any guesses as to who the first one down will be? We're hoping guessing 715 Harrison.
You can read more about next week's mysterious summit meeting here.
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Then again, it very well may be that the way to deal with an aggressive social atmosphere is not to pass more laws that cause clubs (owners, bouncers, etc.) to have to be dicks to their customers. It's aggro from the get-go in SF clubs.
HEY, YOU LOOK UNDER RETIREMENT AGE, LET ME SEE YOUR ID.
Factions should attend in gang costumes, a la The Warriors.
I'm pretty sure Halston is packing.
if we had more patrons like bianca jagger enveloped in the local nightlife scene, these kinds of things wouldn't happen. i'm sure of it.
An interesting comment in the SFGate article from the police spokesman was that most of these incidents seems\ to be happening around closing time - duh. Dump lots of people in various states of intoxication into the street at the same time, make them all compete for the 14 cabs that are available citywide, and then have them stand in line to get food at the same place and things will happen. When England liberalized closing times studies a year later showed that there was a drop in the number of violent incidents associated with clubs. Instead of throwing more cops at the problem, maybe the city should consider how violence at clubs is related to issues like a mandatory 2AM close and the increasing isolation of clubs in very sketchy neighborhoods that are rarely patrolled. Note also that, reading between the lines of this article, it seems like the police are trying to engage in a power play with the Entertainment Commission to get back into the business of regulating clubs.
This town has no "clubs". Just rooms full of knobs, dicks, slappers and hoochies from the nether regions of BART, Daly City, and the neighborhoods in town where the pop collar is still seen as fashionable. Personally, at this time of year I only go clubbing in Gstaad and Verbier. There are gangsters there, but they're Russian and and wouldn't waste their body guard's bullets on the riff-raff of SF. This city has always been pants, clubwise.