News Yesterday’s Nightlife Task Force Meeting
Erica will post a lengthier hit later, but I wanted to make a basic observation about yesterday’s Nightlife Task Force meeting at city hall, where task force members like club owner Jerry Eberard (Neumo’s) and community members (DSA’s Kate Jonas) squared off with the mayor’s point man on the issue, Jordan Royer, as they went over the mayor’s draft legislation.
(Here’s Erica’s original article on Nickels’s condescending draft legislation.)
My observation of the meeting is this: Royer, and by implication the mayor’s office, has not done their homework on this issue. First of all, the meeting shambled for a good twenty minutes, before a frustrated Eberard took over from Royer and started going through the legislation point by point. Up until then, Royer was awkwardly trying to talk around the substantive issues.
However, after Eberard took over, the task force members started absolutely grilling Royer on the wisdom or legitimacy of all the new regs the mayor is proposing, including hilariously subjective noise guidelines based on a “plainly audible” noise. Royer’s consistent unhelpful response was something like: “we’ll have to discuss that more…”
Royer’s least impressive moment was when Jeff Steichen from the Showbox raised questions about the mayor’s demand that a phone is always staffed at clubs during business hours—so they can field noise complaints. Steichen raised all sorts of practical problems with the requirement, and Royer said: “Well, that’s the way they do it in San Francisco.” (That was another one of Royer’s repetitive rejoinders.) Steichen persisted: “Well, exactly how does it work in S.F.?” Royer didn’t know, and said he’d call some S.F. clubs to find out. “Good luck getting them to answer the phone,” Steichen quipped.
But seriously, it’s unacceptable that Royer hadn’t even done the basic research into the S.F. laws that the new regs are supposedly based on, and that he couldn’t even explain the proposals to the club owners on the task force. Totally sloppy. Totally embarrassing (as the whole meeting was). And it sends an insulting message to the club owners that Team Nickels doesn’t feel accountable to the task force.
Which they don’t.
Do your homework next time.
Yeah, especially with Steichen in the room. He's a smart old cat and will nail you to the wall in a heartbeat. I wish I had witnessed that.