Nightlife is part of the soul of our city. The Office of Nightlife will make sure it stays that way for generations of New Yorkers to come. pic.twitter.com/hUNIZOVBJv
— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) September 20, 2017
In case you didn't see this news from Tuesday night... when Mayor de Blasio arrived at House of Yes in Bushwick to announce the formation of the city's Office of Nightlife, where a soon-to-be-appointed Night Mayor will reign.
Per DNAnfo:
The new appointee will field complaints and mediate disputes between nightlife establishments and city and state agencies, as well as residents with complaints and concerns.
"[Nightlife] is part of the magic of New York City," said Mayor Bill de Blasio, flanked by former Ramones drummer Marky Ramone and jazz double-bassist Ron Carter, at the Wyckoff Avenue venue. "Where the culture happens is essential. Without the venues, the culture simply can't exist."
The administration is in the process of interviewing candidates for the job, which is expected to be filled by the end of the year.
The Office of Nightlife will have an estimated annual budget of $407,000, including $37,000 for office space, supplies and computers, as well as $370,000 to pay the Night Mayor and an assistant director of the office, according to a financial impact statement.
"The office will be led by who someone who will undoubtedly be more popular than me and will wield tremendous power," de Blasio said.
As those de Blasio fans at the Post noted:
Despite the presence of community boards and the city’s own Department of Small Business Services, the mayor believes another layer of government is needed to deal with quality-of-life issues and to help keep struggling clubs from going under.
Gothamist has more on the creation of this Office here.
38 comments:
For the strangest reason I get the feeling that this is not a good thing for the EV. EV bars and restaurants will want to apply for music and dancing permits and extending hours to attract customers late into the night just to sell booze. Not good. Not good at all.
Is this real life
A great start would be repealing the Prohibition-era cabaret laws which prohibit dancing without a special, expensive license.
Were nightlife establishments struggling more than small, daytime locally owned businesses? I don't think so. Smells like a push from bar and restaurant owners to swing the scales their way. Watch for the 500 foot rule to be changed to "If a block has 3 or less liquor licenses within 500 feet the SLA will mandate the addition of at least one more license to keep the party going."
Ron Carter for Night Mayor! #MakeAmericaBebopAgain
370K in salary for two people - fucking ridiculous. Cronyism at its finest. Lord knows what cronies will be handed these cushy jobs.
Night mayor? Really? When the Day mayor sleeps all day? Seriously what does DeBozio do?
This mayor is hilariously (and sadly) so out of touch.
Sounds like he has a friend that needs a $370k a year job and a $30k supercomputer
Nothing will come out of this except more drinking, less sleep for taxpayers unfortunate to live in neighborhoods deems "night life areas" and someone will be taking brides from those restaurants and bars. This Mayor is worst than useless he's part of the problem.
"Where the culture happens is essential. Without the venues, the culture simply can't exist."
I'm pretty sure there was culture before stripper poles were invented. Do we need more 'nightlife' culture? Yes, dark spaces filled with screaming drunks that stagger out onto the streets pissing all over each other in the early hours of the morning is exactly what I think of when someone says "culture."
Why do we need to help struggling clubs from going under? No one is helping struggling businesses from going under, struggling families from going under, struggling people from going under, but we're supposed to give a shit about the quality of life of booze peddlers? What is this? How many more phony baloney jobs/czars/commissars can the city gov. create?
What a salary - probably what this is all about.
Marky Ramone?!? That just shows how deep a joke this whole thing is.
This would be my dream job. Where do I submit a resume?
Ooooh, I get it now. It's the Nightmare.
Stupid; again. Waste of my tax dollars. I'm already barely making ends meet & don't think this city need this shit. Fix the homeless epidemic : problem. Less govenment more entrepreneurship needed
Truth. Bloated bureaucratic nonsense. This must be a reduntant or heavily overlappig position. Assault on taxpayer, misuse of the funds.
Can we get them to rotate the "nightlife" - the "soul of our city"! - to different neighborhoods every 6 months to a year?
I think the upper east side, esp. near Gracie Mansion, could use a little "livening up". Then try near Park Ave. in the 70's/80's, then Fifth Ave. in the same area, then CPW from 60th to 86th Sts.
I'm sure all those areas will enjoy the alcoholics as much a we do here in the East Village.
Oh, I love the nightlife, I've got to boogie, on the disco round, oh yeah.
This is bullshit and a waste of our money as taxpayers. WTF is wrong with DeBlasio?
Won't be surprised if the job goes to a socialite -- the likes of an Amanda Burden, someone in her social circle.
I can only assume none of the curmudgeons pooh-poohing this are not musicians or any other type of performing artist. This is needed to sustain venues and has worked well in Europe. Might even be a means of pushing back on the license-crazed SLA. And yes, repeal the racist, homophobic cabaret laws, please!
A $407,000 budget to oversee the nightlife in all 5 boroughs ? That's absurd.
Why 370K salary to employ two people? Waste of money.
On September 21, 2017 at 5:23 PM,Anonymous said...
Can we get them to rotate the "nightlife" - the "soul of our city"! - to different neighborhoods every 6 months to a year?
I think the upper east side, esp. near Gracie Mansion, could use a little "livening up". Then try near Park Ave. in the 70's/80's, then Fifth Ave. in the same area, then CPW from 60th to 86th Sts.
I'm sure all those areas will enjoy the alcoholics as much a we do here in the East Village.
Well, I'm sure a few people here are aware of the bar called "Barfly" on 20th street and 3rd avenue; that bar opened shortly after the Bukowski film Barfly—starring Mickey Rourke—had its run, and it's exactly a block away from Gramercy Park.
Truth to tell, the UWS is pretty well-known for its bars—both the "Killarney Rose" variety and the singles joints.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if the Nightlife Czar ran a campaign promoting sitting home and drinking alone.
hey you guys
send a copy of your comments to the mayor
and whomever you think might actually give a damn
De faustio basically does/ has done his job for 3 hours a day and I am being kind, since he spends his entire morning commuting through two boroughs to his fake workout routine in Brooklyn and taking naps during the afternoon. He spent his first two years at City Hall running a slush fund campaign involving his predatory developer, personal law firm and wormtongue consulting firm donors.
Interesting that he acknowledges how repulsive he is by saying the night mayor will be more popular than him. Well, why wasn't there a night mayor or even a day or morning mayor while people were getting priced out of their homes and neighborhoods?
And now there is this bullshit position, inspired by some hipshit coddling and pandering councilman from goddamn Brooklyn, because some shithead promoters were running nightclub venues without permits. Frankly, I find the asinine rationale that this will promote culture, well what kind of art or music as occurred in the past few years while these "clubs" were operating illegally? Where are the anthems of today or even something like the Velvet Underground. These artists and promoters that are begging for this legislation have produced nothing. Nothing. Well, except public drunkenness and wandering assholes
De Faustio only establishes that he cares more for the drunk, stupid and culturally bereft than for the citizenry.
On the bright side, this will bring a return of strip joints.
Very disappointed in Marky Ramone and Ron Carter. As for who will get appointed, probably some jackoff donor, a sellout artist, or maybe even a police lt. or captain, since part of the initial deal involves city surveillance cameras in these joints and de Fuastio's predilection for betraying those who support him, meaning everyone.
Commie De Blastio needs a treaon to $pend your tax dollar$.
This commie idiot should be term-limited out of office.
Bill
Yo September 21, 2017 at 8:52 PM, you probably assume correctly but so what? If you need to steal from people to subsidize your act maybe you should get a new act. No one owes you a lifestyle. I know you think you're unique because you play piano or recite poetry like Yoko but there a lot of people out there who are musicians, etc., and they're also the ones that fix your toilets and pick up your trash, i.e. provide some useful service above and beyond being daddy's special little angel.
P.S. Europe aint doing so well in case you haven't noticed. But at least they got dancin' shows.
***
Hey blue grass, are you on crack? J/K Check this out, I sent all our comments to the mayor and, boy, was I surprised when he responded immediately, and so apologetically! And I quote, "Holy fuck, I really hadn't considered what stupid fucking idea this is! Oh my god, now that I think about it, a lot of what I've done is just off the rails batshit fucking stupid! It's like, I shouldn't even be the mayor. Huh."
Then he got real quiet for a minute and I heard him talking to someone in the room with him. He spoke up again, told me Thank You for bringing all of this to his attention and "letting the light shine on [his] soul." He plans to resign today at noon. So watch for the announcement everyone, and good job EVG! You did it!
This is reminds me of when suburban housing expands further into farmland and wooded areas and then people wonder why there are so many deer, raccoons and other wildlife in their cul-de-sac. The loss of Manhattan's non-residential area's which were light industry blocks is where most nightlife lived. Since those areas are now filled with luxury condos, nightlife has invaded residential areas. The Mayor is correct people need place to blow off steam but he and his predecessors love for big developers are to blame for grafting night life into place where it does not belong. There is no way to do this without making life miserable for residents and curbing the amount of bars, clubs and in some cases loud restaurants from residential blocks.
At 12:53 PM, Anonymous said:
A great start would be repealing the Prohibition-era cabaret laws which prohibit dancing without a special, expensive license.
Omigod, dancing…you know what that can lead to…
count of the above comments: 1 for, 29 against
@12:20am Scuba Diva: I said what I meant and I meant what I said, specifically: we should rotate the "nightlife" right onto CPW itself, not to "the UWS" in general.
Similarly, one bar near Gramercy Park does not make that area a drunk-a-thon like we have here below 14th St.
But I would be in favor of promoting sitting at home - whether to drink alone (a bad idea, both for oneself and for the other residents in one's building), or to read a book, play with the cat, walk the dog, watch TV or talk to friends, etc. Of course, to the young of today, that would be called "adulting" and they don't have a clue about how to do it.
The idea that one must go out AND get drunk to "have a good time" is a falsehood that deserves to die out.
"to help keep struggling clubs from going under" HA HA HA HA HA! That is the funniest thing I've read in ages. Yeah, sure, we're surrounded by "struggling clubs" and bars - you can tell b/c there are lines of people outside at night waiting to get in, and they need bouncers at the doors. That's how much of a struggle the clubs are having.
@ 1:45 re:Ha ha ha ha ha
No doubt it's uproariously funny reading the verbal falsehood diarrhea coming out of the mouths of these beggars, but this new profligate waste position was brought out by this worm councilman named Espinal who represents East new York and Bushwick (that's him in that dorky pose during the signing in the DNA info photo) and ENY is a target of a massive rezoning project, one of 4, for de Faustio's luxury housing plan which will lead to sudden uptick in law enforcement so it will be safe for these lousy entrepreneurs to open up new spaces they lost because of various violations, fire codes and no liquor license,which was the real reason why their venues shut down, not because of the no dancing rule.
Another thing about this night mayor bullshit, de Faustio now can move his naptime to 6 p.m. and then go back home to Gracie and let his appointed lout take over. Why the hell is it called night mayor anyway? Why not call it what it is, niteclub mayor.
Bill saw the Clash in their prime, what does he want a balloon? He campaigned like "london calling" four years ago, but he runs the city like "combat rock", a big dumb sellout.
When Virginia Fields was Borough President she created a Nightlife Task Force which included liquor license attorneys and major bar and club owners - it also included a number of residents who were gungho on reigning in the clubs and bars. As meetings progressed the nightlife people - who were not going to get their way were clearly turned off.
There was a final report issued and a copy should be located in the archives of the Borough President's office. I assure you the current mayor would not like it.
To Anonymous at 9:12 PM on 9/22/17
Not entirely true. Virginia Fields was in the pocket of the nightlife industry -as Gale Brewer is today. The so-called Nightlife Task Force was a joke. According to the late Marcia Lemmon, the driving force to reign in bars in the 1990's and 2000's, she was the only community person on the TF, and most of the recommendations were pro-nightclub.
I think I have the report somewhere on an old hard drive. I know she was very disappointed with the TF and considered resigning (she might have done that).
This new effort will be much worse for areas where people need to sleep. Mayor de Blasio is letting the hounds loose with the so-called Night Mayor and the expected repeal of the Cabaret Law.
Residents should blame this party on Council Member Corey Johnson who supported it. Others did as well, but he wants to be Speaker and he's raking in money from nightclubs and developers.
Unfortunately, LES community groups are sitting on their ass doing nothing.
There is a 2000 Virginia Fields' Nightlife report online, at
www.manhattanbp.org/nlife.pdf
There are no findings in the report, which makes it less interesting/useful.
I skimmed the report and it seems that many of the recommendations were put into effect...
to 09/23/2017 at 12:31AM
Incorrect that Marcia Lemmon was the only community resident on that panel... way off base.
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