BART Cop Smashes Drunk Dude's Head Through Glass
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The Week Ahead: Bay Area Concerts 11/23 - 11/29
The Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, a malignant cancer attacking San Francisco's nightlife scene, has dropped its "ambiguous" suit against Great American Music Hall. It seems the ABC was upset at the O'Farrell venue, according to NBC Bay Area, for "operating more like a nightclub than a restaurant." (They serve food at GAMH?!) This creepy attack from the booz controllers goes along with similar complaints they have filed against clubs like Cafe Du Nord and DNA Lounge. On Monday, however, "the ABC dismissed its complaint against the Great American Music Hall after an administrative law judge recommended the charges be dropped because 'the regulation relied upon by the ABC was ambiguous.'"
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Nice! Now let's hope the other venues can get in on this.
They tried to pull this shit on the Broken Record bar too (they got Best of the Bay from the Guardian this year, btw, so obviously San Franciscans love the place). More often than not, it seems that their regulations benefit nobody but themselves (it costs a lot of money to keep the ABC happy), and act, at times, like their main motive of business is to destroy good local businesses. Why mess with the GAMH, or Cafe du Nord, or the DNA Lounge, or the Broken Record, etc, etc, etc, when these places are examples of actually successful and beloved local businesses? It makes me wonder if this is entirely a ploy to line their pockets, because you can't tell me they don't have better issues to tackle.
Ambiguous regulations tend to be unconstitutional because they vest discretion in a single person or administrative body, or because they are over broad, too narrow, or both. Not that that means anything in this situation, or that this regulation in question is actually any one of those things. But I'm not surprised an ambiguous reg is the legal tool in the War on Fun (stopthewaronfun.org).
Yawn.