Definitely feeling this vibe

I think it's because I'm nearly the same age as Atrios but this throwaway bit about not always having the juice to make a blog post every time something happens does hit home a little. Although I think for me it's less about feeling like I have to have something interesting to say and more about being exhausted that the same things keep happening over and over regardless of what we say about them. 

Still, the reason I put stuff here is so I'll remember what happened... even if the temptation to fade blissfully away into oblivion is stronger every time a new city council trots out yet another draconian ban on neighborhood bars because of a crime panic, to pick one example.  The same stuff keeps happening in cycles. But every time it comes around again, things are one degree shittier than they were the last time. The rent is a bit higher, the land is a bit lower relative to the sea, the cops and cameras are a bit more aggressive, the mayor is a bit stupider and meaner. The usual things, except moreso every time. And no one is coming to help. 

Anyway, for some reason I still have this compulsion to take notes. And so that's what I'm still doing.  For instance, if Billy Nungesser says this and I don't write it down somewhere, how will I know it happened?

At Washington Mardi Gras, @BillyNungesser reiterates that @AGJeffLandry is "not a good person."

"He personally reported me to the FBI three times." #lalege #lagov

— Julie O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) January 25, 2023

 

Similarly...

Watch @mayorcantrell defiant response to a reporter's question on allegations she had an affair with the head of her security detail. "accused of sleeping with half the city of New Orleans, both genders and all pronouns. I'm known as Teedy sometimes and Teddy other times." pic.twitter.com/j8QZ8TepV3

— Down For Whatever (@emersonspop) January 25, 2023

More of a shared burden

 Makes sense to me. 

Susan Brooks runs a string of four bars under the Igor’s name as well as Brooks Seahorse Tavern by the Fair Grounds and the legendary Uptown dive The Club Ms. Mae’s, which she bought last summer to preserve a local institution.

She has kept all of them closed since the city’s last rule changes in December, and they will remain closed for now, foregoing even go-cup service.

“It seemed like the responsible thing to do,” said Brooks

However, she said it is demoralizing to watch customers lining up to visit other businesses still continuing under looser restrictions.

“I do wish that it was more of a shared burden, if everybody was doing the same thing we would bend the curve a lot faster and we could all get back to business,” she said.

We could have all agreed at the beginning of this that we'd all get back to business faster by sharing the burden. We could have locked down every lock downable thing and paid everyone to stay home and be safe. We could have preserved just about everyone's job. We could have saved every city and state government from bankruptcy. We could have protected every homeowner and renter from eviction. We chose not to do these things because the bosses and banks and landlords preferred to win the pandemic.  And now look where we are. 

Anyway, we're not going to change tactics now.  It's already clear the new Congress and President aren't going to send us the kind of relief bill that would help us share the burden.  This weekend the city is going right back into its chaotic pattern of shifting rules and blame according to whims and political alliances.  Because local powerbrokers are in position to win the pandemic too. Or at least they will get to pick who shares the burden and who reaps the benefits. 

We could have licked this thing a long time ago. But to do that would have meant truly behaving as though we were all in it together. But no one with the power to make these decisions actually believes that.

Just get used to it

Apparently that was always the plan.   

On Friday, the carriageway doors to Pat O’Brien’s will swing open again, and staff wearing the bar's traditional emerald green jackets and new face masks will welcome people back to its famous French Quarter courtyard.

Three blocks away at Bayona, chef Susan Spicer and her crew will soon start cooking sherry mustard sweetbreads and smoked duck sandwiches, firing up a culinary gem that's been closed since March.

The two businesses usually have little more in common than proximity in the city's oldest neighborhood. But now they share one compulsion: the need to get open again, somehow. 

“At this point, we just feel like we have to do something,” said Shelly Oechsner Waguespack, president of Pat O’Brien’s.

It's not safer to do any of this now than it was back in March. The virus is still active and as dangerous as ever.  It isn't spreading quite as rapidly because more people are at home by default and when they do go out they are careful about distance and mask wearing.  But distance and mask wearing isn't a solution. It's a way to limit exposure when people have to be out for "essential" purposes.  Going out to have drinks at Pat O's isn't essential. 

It only begins to feel necessary because, despite the federal government's capacity to do so, it has refused to reimburse businesses for their losses or pay workers to stay home.  Although there is no vaccine yet, we could have this thing safely contained by now if the will to take the necessary action had been there. Instead we've chosen to test how much stress the system will bear if we deny people any option but to just go out there and get used to it. 

Now though, Waguespack said a limited return is better than staying closed altogether. With no end to the coronavirus crisis in sight, the business has to find a way to carry on, she said.

That’s a sentiment shared by many across the New Orleans hospitality sector now, especially around the French Quarter, where the shriveled travel business has had a staggering impact.

Who knows how many small businesses will survive the pandemic now?  Back in May a reported 100,000 or more had already been permanently closed nationwide.  It's no surprise that business would slow with customers staying at home. But relief, most notably through the convoluted Paycheck Protection Program, has been elusive. And commercial landlords continue to demand rent. So the squeeze is definitely on.  But since this is a situation that so easily could have been avoided, we have to ask if it is intentional. 

It may be true that a lot of independent businesses are going under now. But consider that also means the economy that emerges at the end of the crisis will be dominated by fewer but much larger firms with deeper pockets. 

The Covid-19 pandemic will likely leave us with an economy in which larger companies play an expanded role, representing a higher share of both employment and revenue. The stock market illustrates the phenomenon: the biggest firms have seen smaller stock market declines, on average, than smaller ones have. It’s the corporate version of the Matthew effect: the strong get stronger.

This shift began before the pandemic came along. From 1995 to 2013, the share of U.S. workers employed by firms with 10,000 or more employees increased to about 28%, from 24%. McKinsey has found that “superstar” firms (whose average revenue is seven times the median) raised their employment share to 30% in 2014-16, from 28% in 1995-97. There’s been much debate over why this is happening, especially the role that higher productivity plays. The International Monetary Fund recently concluded that “technology-driven changes in the structure of many product markets” have made a bigger difference than have individual countries’ regulations or antitrust policies.

The real plum for the oligarchs left standing after the mass burn off of mom-and-pops is the most desperate and compliant workforce in generations. I believe this is by design. I'm running out of ways to say this by now so I'll just repeat the mantra I've been on since March when it became apparent that Congress would refuse to help.  The bosses have won the pandemic.  

It's not just me saying it anymore. A couple of weeks ago, Libby Watson made the case plain in The New Republic.

We’re left to wonder why Washington isn’t doing anything. But why aren’t we doing anything, either? How is it that Mitch McConnell leaves his house without being pelted with rotten tomatoes? How can our leaders, and the people who work for them, continue to show their faces in public? When is the fire going to reach them? What has to give? And why hasn’t it happened yet? One answer may be that the rich, including not just billionaires but the ordinary affluent of America, are not in anywhere near as much peril. And our politics is tuned to their frequency, whatever’s happening to the poor.

She puts an even finer point on it, though. It's not just The Bosses... as in, like, people at the Bezos level... who are coming out on top here, but probably your boss in particular is doing much better than you are by comparison. 

But there’s a divide that’s been more difficult to talk about: The one between Americans earning about the median income or less and Americans who earn two or three times that wage. Life is vastly different for people who earn $30,000 and people who earn $300,000—not on the same scale as the distance between the average American and Jeff Bezos but distinct nonetheless. Life is also significantly different between people who earn $30,000 and people who earn $130,000.

These people are likely to have a good, if not perfect, situation going: They have decent jobs and are probably able to work from home. They have health insurance through their job, which also gives them paid vacation and sick leave. They have retirement accounts, though these might fail the CNBC test. They don’t know what it’s like to apply for Medicaid or low-income housing. They don’t live in food deserts. They can make frequent use of the services provided by our app underclass, getting food, groceries, or whatever they like delivered to their door.

It's been a rough year. But, really, it's only been rough for most of us. Relatively speaking, it's been less rough for a fortunate minority with access to the levers of power. And it's setting up such that the post-pandemic world will be a net plus for that small but politically dominant group. Insofar as it can be said that there has even been a coherent policy response to the pandemic, the purpose of that response has been to protect the position and wealth of the ruling class. Whatever conditions that policy imposes on the rest of us, our only option is to just get used to it.

All of this scales down from the national to the local level.  Maybe your neighborhood bar isn't going to make it through the crisis. But the odds are pretty good that Brennan's will be okay. And, in the same way that the political class in Washington only responds to the needs of the billionaires, so too does the local leadership only care about the local gentry.  Which is why our first reaction to the crisis was deferring Mardi Gras sales tax collections.  It's why we've chosen this moment to turn over land use policy to short term rental executives but hardly lift a finger to stop anyone being evicted from their home. (Besides raising money through a private non-profit scheme to pay landlords, anyway.)   It's why we're going to look the other way as a politically influential private university accelerates the spread of the virus through its own selfish and irresponsible decisions...  Jeff Asher's attempt to cover for those decisions, notwithstanding.

It's why we're sending everyone's kids back to school now too. That's the general reason, anyway.  Specifically, the private schools are open for in-person instruction because they have to demonstrate to tuition-paying parents that they can deliver the exclusive value and sense of social superiority implied in that price tag.  The public schools are motivated by a different version of that prove-your-worth mentality too. But, also, if we're going to force parents to work under dangerous conditions, then we have to tell them they can put their kids somewhere.  

And so there are elaborate plans to make everyone feel like what is happening is normal. Last month OPSB announced the return to in-person learning would be phased in according to grade level. How that makes it any safer is unknown.  But that, plus a number of hygiene theater type measures create just enough of an impression that caution is being exercised. Of course, any of these safety guidelines can be discarded the moment we think they may become inconvenient.  

The NOLA Public Schools district will no longer require a sustained decrease in daily new COVID-19 positive cases to determine how it will reopen for in-person classes. The change is due to expanded testing in local universities, which is expected to lead to a higher daily case count, the district stated in a Thursday afternoon release. 

Up until now, district officials have said they would need to see two or more weeks of fewer than 50 new cases per day and a test positivity rate below five percent to reopen school buildings, a metric that was endorsed by city of New Orleans Health Director Jennifer Avegno.

Now, as schools approach a phased in-person opening beginning Sept. 14, district officials say that has changed. The plan calls for the youngest students to begin first, with older students starting in October. But when officials announced those plans, they said both would be dependent on the data on infections in the city. 

“With large increases in testing it is expected that the number of new cases may increase,” the statement said. “Our focus will remain on the city’s positive test rate and ensuring that it is at or below 5 percent, regardless of the volume of new tests.”

Since the mid-summer spike, the rate of new cases in Louisiana has been in decline.  But that's not the same as saying the thing is under control.  In Orleans, there has even been a bump up over the past week or so.  Still the schools and colleges are set on returning students to class. And with the state preparing to go to Phase 3 of its "reopening" protocol this month, the number of cases is almost certain to rise again. But we're well past the point where anyone is going to make a good faith effort to stop that.  Just be ready to keep getting used to it.

Too much world burning down at once

Sorry this space has been a bit sparse as of late. I took the whole weekend to just try and catch up on various projects and got zero of them accomplished. I'll get it all straight soon. I think. I did prove that a person can get drunk on a Saturday night despite there being zero bars in operation so that's something, at least.

Seems like a useful skill to have in the coming weeks when all hell really starts to break loose.

Kudlow, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," said the 70% wage-replacement formula would be "quite generous by any standard."

But Pelosi predicted that the need for an individual calculation of benefits for each jobless recipient would quickly gum up states' unemployment systems, already groaning under the weight of 20 million to 30 million jobless claims. In many states, including California, workers have waited weeks to start receiving benefits.

"The reason we had $600 was its simplicity," Pelosi said. "So why don't we just keep it simple?"

They don't want to "keep it simple," though.  The bosses are trying to win the pandemic.  The more thoroughly they can destroy any sense of security in what's left of the social safety net, the bigger the win for them.

The whole point is to keep as many workers as desperate as possible. Without a true system of public benefits to rely on, workers are at the mercy of the boss for whatever wages and terms of employment there are to be had. And when there are none, they have nowhere to turn for aid except to... "philanthropy" outlets under the private management of the same class of bosses they're already begging from.  Is it really any surprise to find such offerings inadequate to the need?

"We have been leaning in to raise the money and get it out the door as quickly as we can," Greater New Orleans Foundation CEO Andy Kopplin said. "But it’s impossible for philanthropy to close the massive gap that would come from the expiration of federal unemployment assistance."

The philanthropic group has raised more than $3 million for low-income families and the nonprofits who serve them since the pandemic began, but Kopplin said that's a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

Of course it's a drop in the bucket. That's the whole point. There is no one coming to help. We're just supposed to get used to it.

That and the evictions. August is always the shittiest month of any year. This one is gonna be one for the record books.

We need to kill the term "culture bearer"

I cringe every time I see it used. A "culture bearer" is not some separate class of person.  We're all culture bearers. All of us here participating in society together, whether we like it or not, are creating a culture together. Right now it's not a particularly healthy culture. In part this is because of our failure to understand what is happening and to whom. What's happening in Treme is a crime. But it's not just something happening to "culture bearers." It's happening to all of us.

Like the second lines that pass through the neighborhood, those who used to call Tremé home say the culture has become transient. Leaving it with no sense of community.

“All the juice, or the oxygen rather, has been sucked out of the room,” says Al Jackson, owner of the Tremé Petit Jazz Museum. “The culture, oxygen, the children, the raison d’etre that we once woke up in the morning and lived for. It’s gone.”

Jazz Vocalist John Boutté says the community was effervescent. You could hear kids playing and laughing, you’d see people talking on the steps and everyone said hello.
Today, Boutté believes he’ll never see that part of Tremé again.

“The folks aren’t there anymore and unless you bring those people back, you’ll never have that part of Tremé again,” Boutté said.

What's happened to Treme is a crime of capitalism. It is the same crime that is happening to every neighborhood to some degree. It is the same crime that is happening to most cities.  Land is hoarded by real estate speculators. Housing prices and rents are artificially inflated. Wages and benefits are stagnant for most working class people so they can no longer keep up with the escalating cost of living. People take on second jobs or part time jobs or jobs where schedules are unpredictable so their time for leisure (or "creative labor" if you prefer the more commodified term) is limited. 

Meanwhile, the aforesaid real estate speculation encourages the city to crack down on institutions and mores that might disrupt profits such as substandard lawn maintenance, corner bars, and outdoor musical performance. So not only is time for creative leisure reduced but so are the physical spaces where it formerly flourished are also taken away. Those that remain are under increasingly intrusive police surveillance which further intrudes on our social space to think and act creatively.  These are sinister processes meant to commodify basic human freedom.  Everyone has the right to be creative. Everyone has the right to spend their leisure time appreciating or conversing with, the fruits of that creativity. It is our collective creative leisure, the act of creating but also just enjoying what others create that generates authentic "creative culture." 

Despite what the oligarchs who control the extractive tourism economy would have us believe, that isn't something they can put that in a bottle and sell in a shop. They can't manufacture it at New Orleans & Co. no matter how much public money the city dumps into their hands. "Culture bearer" is a term they encourage, though, because it conjures a specific product they're already primed to profit from. It isolates a bland branded and frozen version of New Orleans Culture and limits it to something they can control.

We all bear the culture. It is ours to share, to replicate, to elaborate on, and, most crucially, to evolve. But we can't do that when the marketers, hoteliers, land speculators and the homeowners association product who is currently our mayor conspire to steal what we've already created and deny our right to continue as before.  That's what's happened to Treme. And it's going to keep happening until we recognize that a threat against a "culture bearer" is a threat against us all.  A good way to start is to dispense with using that term at all anymore. 

Aggressive enforcement

What is a nuisance bar? Nuisance to whom?

The proposals often have pitted bars and their owners against nearby residents and other businesses, with bar operators contending that the new rules will hurt an industry that's important to tourism and the city's easygoing culture, while their opponents want more city actions against nuisance bars that disrupt neighborhoods' quality of life.

The contours of the most recent fight were set in large part under Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the previous City Council. In 2017, former Councilwoman Stacy Head put forward new rules, supported by Landrieu, that at one time or another included a requirement that bars install exterior surveillance cameras tied into the city’s crime camera network, a ban on outdoor seating, and rules that would have prevented a bar counter from being within 10 feet of a business’ door, among other provisions.

A lot of the time this just means there is activity in the neighborhood after dark. Some people have a very low tolerance for that. Not everyone does.  But the assumption when this comes up is invariably that everyone shares that same low tolerance.  Some of us actually kind of like it when, say, the laundromat across the street is hosting a late night all ages show. It doesn't have to be something we necessarily want to participate in. It's just kind of neat to see that someone is enjoying something. I'd say that's good for my "quality of life."  But our use of that term also is loaded with the fears and hostilities shared only among a specific class of property holders.

Our city government will always act to protect this class first. Yesterday City Council moved closer to passing a set of rules that will grant the Chief of Police, the Chief of the Fire Department, the ABC board, or the Department of Safety and Permits "emergency" powers to unilaterally shut down a bar deemed to be.. well.. a nuisance according to the prejudices of the protected class of property holders concerned about "quality of life issues."  The delay now is only about what the appeals process might look like. Originally, there wasn't even going to be one.

One thing worth remembering also is that these rules are left over from a process begun under the Landrieu administration. They were designed with input from attorney Scott Bergthold who Mitch brought in specifically for his expertise in shutting down strip clubs across the country. The purpose of these laws is to have a little due process built in as possible. The city has already decided whose side it is on.  Right now they're just figuring out how aggressive they can get away with being.

And we can expect that to be, well, pretty darn aggressive.  At least that is what LaToya Cantrell said during her budget town-phone-ca-hall thingy this week. 

After a French Quarter resident complained about a lack of public bathrooms and a lack of enforcement of laws against public urination, Cantrell said she was looking to "retool" the French Market Corp., though she didn't provide specifics. She also suggested a crackdown on quality-of-life violations in the tourist district.

"We will be enforcing the laws on the books relative to the quality of life. This is going to be more aggressive as time goes forward but also more consistent," Cantrell said.

Now one could read a question like that and consider that maybe it's the actual lack of public bathrooms and other such support for the city's homeless that is negatively affecting their "quality of life."  But we know that isn't what LaToya is talking about.  Her solution is "more aggressive" enforcement of  "laws on the books."  Because the law already favors the side she cares about.

The bars are still open after 3

They deferred a vote on the much dreaded ABO overhaul. It's still not great. But it does sound like certain aspects of the rules under consideration are moving in a better direction.

The ordinance has been in the works since former Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration. Landrieu’s controversial proposal included a provision requiring that all businesses with alcoholic beverage permits install cameras linked to the city’s Real-Time Crime Monitoring Center and another that allowed for the emergency suspension of a permit, without a hearing by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. That proposal was dropped last year, before Mayor LaToya Cantrell and a new council took office. 

The current City Council revisited it in November 2018 and introduced a new ordinance the next month. That proposal called for cameras at certain “nuisance bars” as an alternative to license revocation and kept the language on emergency suspensions. Since then, it has been rewritten and repeatedly amended to address the concerns of the hospitality industry and local culture advocates. 

When taking into account a package of proposed amendments introduced on Thursday, the new rules would be much looser than originally proposed, meeting many of the demands from advocates and workers. 

But we're still not quite there. Commenters at the meeting still aren't happy with a provision that would give ABO the power to revoke a bar's permit simply by declaring an "emergency."  There is still a bizarre prohibition against issuing licenses to anyone convicted of a felony within the past five years. (Although this might actually be a state level problem depending on how we interpret things.) 

The good news is they seem like they've removed something I was especially worried about when this process got started. 

The currently proposed ordinance also omits many of the more controversial aspects of the ordinance as introduced in December. One example was a “neighborhood compatibility” section that stated that if five or more residents within a half-mile of a bar submitted written complaints, that bar would be presumed to be a “nuisance” or “detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the community.”

They can't just shut you down because some Nextdoor freaks got together and did a letter writing campaign.  So there's some progress.  But let's keep arguing. 

We love our cameras

Cyndi Nguyen and Kristin Palmer are bringing last year's narrowly scuttled mass surveillance ordinance back to life.

Less than a year after a similar measure was dropped, a proposal from members of the New Orleans City Council could require "nuisance" bars, clubs and liquor stores to install live-streaming video cameras inside and outside their businesses, part of a proposed ordinance that tightens restrictions for businesses that sell alcohol.

The proposed ordinance — which mirrors parts of a scrapped plan from former Mayor Mitch Landrieu — also gives the mayor’s office or New Orleans police superintendent the ability to revoke or suspend an alcohol license, if the city or its Alcoholic Beverage Control Board determines that the business “directly endangers the health, safety and welfare of the community.”

I still don't understand the universal enthusiasm for sticking cameras everywhere. Particularly since it obtains among a set of elected leaders who profess often to care very much about social justice. It's possible they all suffer an acute case of cognitive dissonance. Although Occam's razor, as always, suggests they're just full of shit.

More to the point, they're predisposed to be full of shit on account of the fact that so many of them have a personal interest in or close association with the real estate business. Which is why, for one thing, this ordinance is being carried by Palmer and Nguyen. More importantly it is why its major point of the ordinance isn't just about installing cameras. Rather the cameras are one piece of a plan that is really more about shutting down as many neighborhood bars as possible. 

Bars and music venues also can’t be built within 300 feet of a playground, church, public library or school — unless the owner has a sworn affidavit from 75 percent of property owners within a 300 foot radius.

They’d also be forbidden within “residential or park area,” and would grandfather in existing neighborhood bars, unless there’s a six month lapse in their permits and licenses.

MaCCNO also warned that real estate speculators and developers, including short-term rental operators with multiple listings, which proliferated in recent years, could abuse the complaint process to shut down area bars.

“This is an aggressively pro-gentrification ordinance and presents a clear and present danger to every small grocery, pharmacy, bar and music venue in the city,” MaCCNO said.

This ordinance is slated for committee discussion  on January 31. Between that and the Jan 10 motion on STRs, it's going to be a busy month.

#CityOfYes we are shutting down your bar

This says that a lot of these are about unpaid taxes. Insofar as that is true, I guess it's fine. At the same time, we've watched this board become more and more aggressive over the course of the past decade. So it's especially alarming to see the new board members described as unusually "punitive" in comparison even to that.

Ethan Ellestad, executive director of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, follows Alcoholic Beverage Control Board hearings closely and said he cannot recall an instance of its members rejecting a consent judgment in favor of a harsher penalty. Tuesday's decision raises questions about the future of small businesses, especially those that serve as "incubators" for the city's live music scene.

"Skip Gallagher is clearly very punitive and seems to be taking a punitive approach ..." Ellestad said. "For us, it's certainly concerning."

Gallagher is a Palmer appointee. 

Whose bar is balanced?

Last week, the Winter Council deferred hearings on a controversial ordinance modifying the rules around obtaining and maintaining ABO permits.  The law had became known colloquially as a "surveillance ordinance" because of one especially scary provision which would require businesses to install NOPD monitored security cameras. It is primarily the controversy over this matter which has brought about the deferral.

But there's a lot more than just the cameras involved. Even without the surveillance measure, the ordinance furthers the move to shut down certain kinds of neighborhood corner bars, groceries, and music venues which has gathered momentum in the post-Katrina years.  The Louisiana Restaurant Association identifies some of these concerns in a recent T-P article.

So, as we already mentioned, we're starting to suspect the surveillance provision may have been thrown in as a distraction, or at least as a bargaining chip with which to buy off further opposition.  Eventually they're going to pass something.  Having the fight over the cameras now only serves to make whatever they do pass look like reasonable compromise. Or to put that in LaToya Cantrell's verbiage, they will say they "listened to the community" and figured out how to "find balance."  Balance being a still very shitty crackdown on ABO permits.

Cantrell, who was previously quoted by WWLTV beaming over the NOPD facility meant for monitoring the proposed cameras, has been less vocally supportive as of late. Her most recent comment, issued through a spokesperson, defers the matter entirely.

David Winkler-Schmit, a spokesman for Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, the mayor-elect, offered no objections to putting off the surveillance and strip club proposals. He said Cantrell deferred to Landrieu on his surveillance plan and to Councilwoman Nadine Ramsey on the strip club issue because Bourbon Street is in her district.

Way to show some leadership on a controversial issue, Madam Mayor.

Eventually she'll have to take some sort of position. When that happens, it's not difficult to imagine her falling back on her familiar appeal to "balance" we've been listening to her make for years now. If the new ordinance passes, who determines which bars need to be shut down in order to find the balance?  Well, that will be LaToya, of course.

The ordinance contains an emergency suspension provision, allowing the mayor, the police chief or the ABO Board chairman the ability to suspend a permit. That suspension would occur if any of those three people believe the operation "endangers the health, safety and welfare of the community."

And how will Mayor LaToya unilaterally determine which businesses "endanger the health, safety and welfare of the community?" I'm willing to bet it won't be any of the businesses currently paying rent to her contributors.

Ok they're writing about it again

Here's a NOLA.com article published this morning about opposition to the surveillance ordinance. It turns out the matter has been deferred from the city council agenda at the last minute which is pretty typical for a late breaking controversy like this.

One thing worth noting here is the Louisiana Restaurant Association raises concerns about the ordinance that extend beyond just the camera issue. 

• Many of the concerns the LRA have about the ordinance involves changes to the community complaint process for alcoholic beverage outlets, and the way the city could go about enforcing violations. For instance, licensing and regulation would be moved under the umbrella of Safety and Permits from the Department of Finance, which the LRA said would give the department "access to your business revenue and other financial information."


• The ordinance contains an emergency suspension provision, allowing the mayor, the police chief or the ABO Board chairman the ability to suspend a permit. That suspension would occur if any of those three people believe the operation "endangers the health, safety and welfare of the community."


• The ordinance changes would make it easier to shut down businesses based on neighbor complaints. The city requires 10 complaints from neighbors within 300 feet currently; the new ordinance would require five complaints from neighbors within a half-mile radius.


• To see a full list of the LRA's concerns, scroll to the bottom of this page.

It is very likely that the next move for councilmembers sensitive to the uproar will be to strip out the camera requirement but move forward with the rest of this claiming to have reached a compromise and "achieved balance" as LaToya likes to say.  But this all looks like a pretty draconian crack down on liquor licenses with or without the Big Brother factor.  Is it too far to speculate that this was how they wanted it to play out from step one?

Who makes them? Who paid for them? How much do they cost?

None of those questions are asked by this article. Not enough room with all the stupid, I guess.

Trucks and taxis clattered across a 20-foot steel mechanism on Bienville Street in the French Quarter Tuesday (Feb. 21), less than a block from Bourbon Street. The device, which stretches from curb to curb, includes a deployable wedge-shaped wall that is meant to block traffic when it's raised, and protect pedestrians from possible terrorist attacks

Enjoy the security theater.  Meanwhile, we're "keeping you safe" by restricting your movements, putting you under surveillance, and making sure there's no reason for you to be out past, say, 3 AM... or midnight if we can help it.

Owners of Verret's are looking to sell, and they have a potential buyer, but the consent degree is holding up the sale.

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

Potential new owner is asking to have consent decree (particularly security requirement & security camera system) altered/removed

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

Interesting to note that 2 major points of Verret's consent decree are a security camera system and 3AM closing, match current security plan

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

City attorney's office does not want to let Verret's out of consent decree even with new owners.

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

New owner of Verret's says if they take over business, patio would close at midnight.

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

Thanks to MaCCNO for paying attention, at least.  Apparently nobody else is.

Another important note: There is literally no one else in Council Chambers reporting/ watching what the ABO Board does. pic.twitter.com/JtURdaZIMm

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

It's bureaucratic processes like these that can end up having outsized impact on the culture without anyone realizing it.

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 21, 2017

"We're worried about all of it"

Solid crowd of concerned #NOLA citizens at tonight's info/action meeting re: the city's proposed security plan. pic.twitter.com/7jxwrYi4Mp

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 10, 2017

Tonight I sat in on the MaCCNO community meeting in Treme to hear people's concerns about the mayor's recently unveiled $40 million "security plan" focusing primarily on the French Quarter but also affecting nightlife throughout the city.   I wrote a bit about the plan a few weeks ago.  We also talked about it on the most recent Hunkerdowncast.

The meeting was at Candlelight Lounge. There were probably between 50 and 75 people present. Among them were tour guides, bartenders, street performers, musicians, along with concerned citizens and neighbors. The mayor's office sent a representative to listen. I believe Councilman Williams sent someone also.  I took some notes. I didn't write down everything so these aren't entirely comprehensive but it's a pretty ok outline of what went on.

• MaCCNO's concerns begin with the "vagueness" of the sort-of 3 AM curfew and street sweeping activity. The worry is that it can serve as a pretext for aggressive harassment by police and/or arrest based on little or no cause outside of racial profiling.


• In a similar vein, MaCCNO expressed concern about stepped up surveillance. Cameras installed outside (or possibly inside) every bar and plugged into a network under police custody is intimidating enough on its own. Add to that the suggestion of (not clearly defined as yet) FBI cooperation in context of the current national political climate and there are even darker implications.


• MaCCNO's third major point was that the plan appeared to consist of hobby horse beefs the city has held for ages against street performers, tarot card readers, etc. lumped in opportunistically. It seems like they're using the "language of fear" (MaCCNO's words) to push through some long controversial agenda items. I had the same impression a few weeks ago. I said at the time the plan looks like what would happen if Jackie Clarkson wrote the Patriot Act.

The MaCCNO hosts had a few more things to say. After that, the floor opened to comment.  A lot of it either repeated or elaborated on what I've already noted above. Here is what I jotted down of that.

• Tour guides and tarot readers confirmed that they feel they've been targeted unfairly. Some noted that intimidation has already increased against them from the various and confusing security entities who patrol the Quarter. Some reported being asked to show permits even though permits are not required for street performers. On one occasion a Port Authority officer threatened to arrest a performer for wearing a mask. (Might have gotten the idea from the fallout over this recent protest incident but who knows.) A big part of the problem is it isn't clear which security force has the power to do what to whom under which laws. Nor is it likely the security personnel themselves understand this. The situation is ripe for abuse and intimidation generally.  MaCCNO's website has a form where you can report such incidents if you witness them.


• It was suggested that the 3AM closure rule is related to NOPD's continuing manpower issues. "There aren't enough officers to cover third shift," were the words I heard.  Sounds a bit dubious to me. But it's plausible the city believes it even if it isn't true.  A lot of dumb policy gets made because of lazy thinking about how many police are actually needed. But that's a wider scope debate.


• Another little understood aspect of the 3 AM rule is that it is intended to apply citywide. This could mean a camera on (or in) every neighborhood bar in the city.  So the centralized surveillance network could be pointed at your house. When Mitch Landrieu unveiled this plan, he bragged that, "Everything you do on Bourbon Street will be seen." What if that also means everything in your yard?

The final note was about next steps. The "plan" such as it is, isn't actually something that gets passed or rejected in one motion.  There are aspects of it that would require city ordinances and others that are implemented as budgetary choices through the mayor's office. So it isn't clear when or in what form public feedback occurs. City Council contact info was posted at the meeting. Everyone is free to offer their input that way at any time, of course. In any case, all of this is certain to factor into the municipal elections this fall.

MaCCNO representatives stressed the importance of maintaining solidarity across the various concerned parties. There are parts of the plan that affect bar owners and patrons, other parts affect artists and musicians, and still others concern those most vulnerable to police intimidation and harassment. Taken together that's a rather robust coalition. So it's important not to peel any one concern off. "Which part of the plan are we most worried about?" MaCCNO's Ethan Ellestad concluded, "We're worried about all of it."

Cesspools and monuments

It's been a difficult blog day and your correspondent is very tired at the moment.  Here's the latest Hunkerdowncast to fill the gap.

"Putting aside the merit of the amendments..."

The above is the key phrase in this AZ post about Nadine Ramsey which raises all sorts of questions about who she does favors for as well as how obscenely dishonest she is apparently willing to be about it.

In the Robinette show at the 26:45 mark Garland presses her on who wanted the amendments pushed through, she answers that it was the Louisiana Restaurant Association. The caller on the line then asks her about the "liquor lobbyist" (Chris Young) and she responds "I'm not aware of....the person I worked with being a liquor lobbyist....I don't know who the liquor lobbyist is."

She doesn't know that Young is a liquor lobbyist? How is that even possible? It's not possible...she knows exactly who he is.

There's obfuscation and then there's just damn....^^^that.

So here it looks like we have a councilmember pretty much acting as an agent for the usually pretty despicable Louisiana Restaurant Association and ignoring the objections of neighborhood groups in the process.  That's bad. I want to be clear about that.

But in this particular case, it may not be such a tragedy since the issue at hand is those neighborhood groups and their outsized prudishness over liquor laws. 

Opponents of Ramsey's amendment – including Councilwoman Stacy Head, French Quarter Citizens, Vieux Carre Property Owners Residents and Associates, and the Preservation Resource Center, among others – said that the current language provides protection against restaurants closing their kitchens at 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and operating as bars for the rest of the night.

"It scares the hell out of us," said French Quarter resident Albin Guillot. "Even though 99 percent of our family restaurants in our neighborhoods are good there's always going to be the guy who's going to do his hamburgers and then he's going to turn into a disco every night in the middle of a family area."

The majority of the opponents to Ramsey's amendment asked for the issue to be deferred so they could work out a compromise with business owners, though Calvin Lopez was more direct. He said that "under no circumstances" should restaurants be allowed to sell alcohol without a "legitimate meal."

These guys are just going to have to get over their irrational fear of having bars in neighborhoods. Bars aren't what's causing the "quality of life" problem in New Orleans right now.  The skyrocketing rents, on the other hand are.  Hilariously, though, Stacy Head told us this week that she doesn't think the city can take decisive action against the short term rental plague exacerbating rents because that would be  "like prohibition."   Apparently Head's commitment to actual prohibition remains as steadfast as ever.

Getting back to Jason's post about Ramsey, though, it's worth taking the dynamics into account regardless of the specific issue at hand this time.

Putting aside the merit of the amendments, it's become painfully clear Councilperson Ramsey is catering to monied interests at all cost. The question...what is that cost? District C neighborhoods are by far the most volatile and threatened in "New New Orleans", it doesn't appear they have a sympathetic ear with their current councilperson who was willing to circumvent public discussion and the democratic process in order to jam power brokers' agendas, like Chris Young's, down our throats.

Not good.  

Wars of NOligarchy

Sometimes the great powers go head to head.

Local developer Kishore "Mike" Motwani outbid Sidney Torres IV on Wednesday (July 22) for the ownership rights to the Oz, agreeing to pay $8.175 million for the Bourbon Street dance club.

Motwani must close the deal and pay in cash by Aug. 15. If he fails to do so, the rights go to Torres whose final bid was $8.125 million.

Motwanivania is an empire of downtown and French Quarter T-Shirt shops, restaurants, hotel projects, and ATMs. It's hard to draw on the NOligarchs map because there's so much overlap with the other kingdoms, especially with Torreszonia which Oz, it seems, very nearly fell to here. Anyway, here's a rough approximation.

New New Orleans

Live music is out. Small plates are in.

It might seem like Mimi's, 2601 Royal St., gave up more than it received, its attorney Justin Schmidt said. But since the bar was first sued in Civil District Court in April 2013, Dykes revamped her business model, converting the upstairs space where bands and DJs played into more of a restaurant than a live music venue.

"Where before she depended on having live shows to draw people in there, she's actually getting more customers now without the live entertainment on a regular basis," Schmidt said. "To that extent, she really wasn't giving anything up. So this seemed like a no-brainer so far as a bargaining chip to get out of this whole thing."

More importantly, Dykes no longer has to operate under the strict sound restrictions the court imposed as a result of the lawsuit or fear that she could be shut down at any moment.

Nostalgia

1984. New Orleans. Warehouse District.

Twenty-five international exhibits introduced thousands to sushi (at the Japanese Pavilion) or an IMAX theater (the Canadian Pavilion). A 10-car monorail circulated overhead. A walk-though “Kid Wash” did for overheated humans what automated car washes do for cars.

There were nightly fireworks shows and dozens of places to eat and drink, with regular music-inspired silliness like the recurring mass “chicken dance” at a German beer garden.

Kinda pricey, though.

2015. New Orleans. Warehouse District.

As patios and outdoor dining areas proliferate across the downtown restaurant and bar scene, a new project taking shape will bring an indoor beer garden to the Warehouse District later this summer.

Tchoupitoulas Beer Garden is scheduled to open in mid-August at 840 Tchoupitoulas St. as a year-round, Oktoberfest-inspired drinking hall, with 22-ounce steins, brats and bar games among other features.

The address was previously the wine bar and restaurant Bouche, and the same owner, Joseph Logreco, is behind the new venture. But Tchoupitoulas Beer Garden is shaping up as a much different concept.

Modeled after traditional German beer gardens — though in this case under a roof — it will spread across some 4,400 square feet of brick-lined space, trimmed with Bavarian banners and awnings. There will be a pair of beer bars, a kitchen serving sausage, pretzels and other traditional German street food and seating at the sort of long, narrow picnic tables common to beer gardens.

I'm sure it won't be cheap either.  But you can pay in "tokens" for.. some reason.  Only thing missing is a monorail.  

Manufactured nuissances

The smoking ban, in and of itself, is fairly obviously the correct thing to do.  At least if you care about healthy working conditions for service employees, it is.  But the external problem it's going to cause is.. well, it's going to be a problem.

Snake and Jake's, however, is a different story.

"I have nowhere to tell people to go outside to smoke," Clements said. "People tell me, 'It's no big deal. They can just go outside.' My bar gets busy from 2 in the morning until 7 or 8 in the morning, and I'm in a residential neighborhood. Even in the backyard, there are houses that butt right up there. It might be fine for Carrollton Station, which has a back patio. For me, it's going to be a real  problem."

"The locals, they're going to respect our neighbors," Rogers said. "When we have tourists in town ... those locals are going to remind people, if they get a little bit loud, to keep it down. They'll police themselves quite a bit. If that doesn't happen, we'll take steps to make sure people are aware."

Bars labeled a "nuisance" are subject to heavy fines and penalties from the city's Alcohol Beverage Control Board, and the Landrieu administration has cracked down on them several times during the mayor's two terms in office. A 2012 press release from the city boasted that while only 32 violations had been prosecuted in 2009, "due to a successful commitment to better enforce nuisance establishments, 287 prosecutions have occurred since the beginning of 2011."

Unless we come to some reasonable solution to the ongoing sound ordinance debate... and unless the ABC board suddenly decides to stop its crusade against neighborhood bars, (don't hold your breath in either case) this is going to cause more trouble. 

Double dip theft

Bar and restaurant managers already get away with a kind of theft via their exemption from federal minimum wage laws.

So when it turns out that they're also stealing tips on top of that, well...

Two bartenders who filed a lawsuit claiming that Pat O'Brien's managers stole from the tip jar and withheld overtime pay scored a victory Wednesday (Feb. 4) when a federal judge gave their case collective action status. The ruling allows other former and current bartenders to join the lawsuit against the French Quarter bar.

Tourism Matters, though, so I guess we shouldn't poke it too hard.