At one point in the 1990s, I nearly plotzed with shock as I was carded at the door of a bar. This hadn't happened for quite a while; most night spots didn't card at all, and besides, I was rapidly approaching middle age. But it was the Giuliani era, and some venue owners were starting to realize how strict they were going to have be to stay in business. No chances could be taken when it came to the law, even if my ID was practically an AARP card!
I'm all for making New York City nightlife safer and more livable. But I'm not in favor of sucking all the life of it, so it becomes a terrified place full of people minding their Ps and Qs while looking behind them to see if they're going to get busted for having fun.
As mayor of NYC from 1994 through 2001, Rudy Giuliani demonized nightlife as our city's bastard child, trying to smooth it over in order to make things safe for tourists and co-op owners. Ignoring the fact that nightlife pumped money and creative excitement into the city (which many tourists and co-op owners would have loved), he steamrolled over the industry, at the same time taking the porn out of Times Square and making it ready for people in Mickey Mouse costumes.
Squashing nightlife was part of the mayor's broader initiative to reduce crime and improve the city's so-called "quality of life." To that end, he used both new and existing regulations to monitor nightclubs, including taking the cabaret law—a bit of archaic legislation that decreed there couldn't be more than three people dancing in a boite without a cabaret license—out of mothballs and using it to punish places full of happy feet.
Read more on Thump
Advertisement