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In this season of giving, the neighborhoods of SoHo, East Village, and Lower East Side are giving the development of new bars a run for their money. First, in SoHo, the City Council has agreed to change a zoning law that allows for development of various commercial and residential properties on old parking lots, but not the development of bars. Residents are thrilled, as is the SoHo Alliance tells the Post, "We don't mind boutiques or galleries, but if you have 30 bars on your block, you're living in hell." A critic of the alliance, the council to the New York Nightlife Association, says, "If the SoHo Alliance had their way, they would build a wall around SoHo and you would need a passport issued by them to go into the neighborhood." Interesting! Is that because there are so many tourists, especially Eurotrashy ones, in the neighborhood?
Then, in EV and LES, residents are upset that laws are not enforcing the "oversaturation of bars" (which is a very curious concept to Gothamist). Apparently, the law says there cannot be more than three bars within 500 feet of each other or 200 feet from a school or church, so that must mean about 80% of the bars in Manhattan violate this rule. Many complaints involve noise and quality of life, but some are using the "we miss having the dingy bodega instead of the bar serving $15 cocktails" argument. Which makes how expensive it is to rent space in the area very interesting: According to one bar owner, ten years ago, it cost $14 per square foot; five years ago, $30 per square foot; and today, $80 per square foot. Talk about nails in the coffins are the mom & pop establishments. But maybe residents are just sick of incidents like this: Three men were fighting over a woman at Negril Village on West 3rd Street, and one was shot twice, another was stabbed five times, and the third had his head sliced open by the a bottle.
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For f---sake, why would you live in the LES or EV if you were bothered by all the nightlife?
Or, maybe I'm missing the point here ...
More to the point, is Soho actually oversaturated with bars? Are there any Soho blocks with 30 bars on them, or even as many as are found, say, on Orchard between Houston and Stanton, or even Bleecker between La Guardia and Thompson? I remember when I first moved to New York, everybody was very excited about Spy and Wax. But now? The only hip bars I can think of in Soho are in hotels. Bar 89's past it, as is the Merc Bar, and I can't imagine that even the Soho Alliance would object to Fanelli's.
Believe it or not, Deb, most of the people in the EV/LES have been living here before "all the nightlife." The apartment buildings that you and your drunk screechy friends pass by in the wee hours of the morning are filled with long-time residents and families. It wasn't always the frat boy/hipster/UES post-graduate playground that you see now.
Deb's too young to recall when the Lower East Side and East Village were wholesome, family oriented neighborhoods: http://members.tripod.com/Fighting9th/History21.htm
It seems the problem is an unbalancing of the collateral benefits: Hipsters/artists/whatever benefit when they move into "emerging" neighborhoods (which the EV, LES, and Soho all were at one time) from an availibilty of space at a low price, and as an area gentrifies (and bars, boutiques, whatever, move in) the long-time residents, whether they would like to admit it or not, benefit from a safer, busier, more prosperous neighborhood. BUT, there's a tipping point, of course, when the oldtimers get priced out or annoyed out by the nightlife, etc., and I think it's safe to say that Soho has definitely passed that point, the EV probably has, and sections of the LES definitely have too. Is this kind of change, once begun, inexorable? Or will a rabid increase in street crime stem the tide (a la the Williamsburg "hipster-bashings")? And is there a way to have both? I dunno, I'm just bored at work...
Obviously, smoking ban sidewalk loitering is ratcheting-up neighbor hostility to bars and restaurants. According to some, the smoking ban is also reducing the operating margins of bars and restaurants, which is probably forcing some to shutter, and acting as a drag on total commercial activity. Since the spawning of new bars and restaurants is a part of the gentrification process, Bloomberg has probably reduced the rate at which neighborhoods improve. And since an increase in empty storefronts is associated with neighborhood decline, Bloomberg has managed to accelerate the rate at which neighborhoods go to seed.
To this day, I've yet to hear a coherent, much less convincing, argument why smoking should be banned in bars.
Definitely true. Bar activity is usually a good thing for residential neighborhoods (see Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities), because it means people coming and going at all different hours, and that kind of foot traffic makes streets safer. When that bar activity turns into drunk people clogging up sidewalks standing outside smoking, then going inside to find their seat taken and half a drink gone, then going back out for another cigarette, ugh. The smoking ban is so ridiculous on so many levels; only an overzealous quitter (like Bloomberg) would come up with something like that. It's like your mother telling you to put on a sweater because she's cold...