City Noisy Campaign Contributors
As Tom Francis has documented, developers Pryde + Johnson are planning a large (208-unit) condo development on a block of Capitol Hill that includes Linda’s Tavern, Bill’s Off Broadway and the War Room—three bars with outdoor seating and a young, sometimes rowdy clientele. Meanwhile, Mayor Nickels has proposed a new nightclub license that would require bar and club owners to maintain order and quiet on their own and adjacent properties. Among other provisions, the law includes a new noise ordinance that would allow the city to yank a club’s license if noise from the club is audible inside neighboring residences for more than 20 seconds. (Linda’s, though not a club, would fall under the new regulations because it has DJs.) The new regulations could mean the end of nightlife in Seattle as we know it. (As the case of Twist in Belltown demonstrated, it doesn’t take many angry neighbors to change the character of a bar for good.) Oh, and there’s nothing in the law that requires people who move into condos, like these, on top of existing bars to acknowledge that they’re sharing walls with nightlife.
Pryde + Johnson’s contributions to Nickels’s reelection campaign last year? $2,600.
If $2,600 is all it takes to buy city legislation these days, then why don't we take up a collection? Surely The Stranger and its readers can go double that amount.
I've told club owners, I've told bar managers time and time again that they needed to take what residents of these areas are saying seriously because sooner or later someone with law-changing powers on the city level would do just that. The response I got back was a resounding "FUCK YOU WE WERE HERE FIRST OUR CLUBS OUR RULES."
And now that what I said would happen has happened, the gnashing and wailing and the OH MY GOD WE NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD EVER HAPPEN... well, it's hard not to be smugly amused. It's hard not to say I told you so (so I don't try not to say it).
In the end, it doesn't matter who was first but who's standing last. Pity a lot of clubs have to find that out the hard way.