I myself am a resident of San Francisco, do not work in the entertainment industry, and I personally testified in favor of this legislation. Uniform enforcement benefits everyone by leveling the playing field. Its a very good idea.

as for clubs=violence, I myself live on the 24th street corridor that has seen three gun murders in the last 4 months, all of which happened in broad daylight, and two of which happened the same weekend. These shootings were not associated with clubs or club-goers. You can’t make clubs a scapegoat for crime in this city. Its the economy, and crime has gotten worse all over town.

The two-part legislation, first, allows for the creation of a massive “early-morning” entertainment industry, 2-6:00 a.m., in our densest residential mixed-use districts, including South of Market, the Mission, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, Chinatown, and North Beach. Besides ensuring annual increase in permanent “early-morning” permits, it establishes a new temporary One-Time Event Permit, which might be used for a dance, an underage dance, or event, 2-6:00 a.m., even in open outdoor spaces next to residences, for which no advance notice to the neighborhood would be required. A cap system proposed on such permits has loopholes sufficient to allow unlimited ongoing issuance of temporary events citywide.

The legislation finalizes the entertainment industry’s takeover of residential San Francisco neighborhoods for intensified commercial use round the clock.

As anyone familiar with the issues will tell you, the clubbing industry couldn’t thrive in the residential districts it’s targeting, without dominating the resident population—a fact understood by any legitimate legislator or enforcement agency.

The legislation secondly allows the Entertainment Commission (EC) to capture the appeals process for denial or suspension of entertainment permits, under the guise of giving the EC more power to discipline problem clubs. An appeal could be heard before the EC (not the independent Board of Appeals), creating a leverage mechanism potentially based in kickback, the efficacy of which might depend on EC anticipation of what the market can bear and how much cash the EC needs.

Any new suspension authority for permits is mitigated, such that the public safety could not be immediately protected. Minimum notice of eight hours is required and appeals provisions could postpone suspension proceedings up to 25 days or more.

Provisions of the legislation eradicate resident voice and minimize police influence in the permitting process.

Of extreme concern is that the “early-morning” entertainment industry particularly targets youth, the most likely market for club activity in venues that cannot sell alcohol after 2:00 a.m. Against all logic, the legislation protects persons with relatively recent criminal backgrounds from full public disclosure. Not only is the window of disclosure shortened from seven to five years, but also the disclosure need only be made for offenses committed in relation to operations of an entertainment venue.

The combined factors of youth, potential felonious events sponsors, and business operations, 2-6:00 a.m., threaten the public morals. The subtext of the legislation appears to support criminal intent.

Moreover, this legislation ignores a crisis of violence and clubbing acknowledged by the media and un-addressed by City Hall.

Mayor Gavin Newsom sponsors this legislation, which prolongs the crisis or violence until 6:00 a.m. and ensures victimization of residents.

If Gav wants to be Gov, he’d better be prepared to show the state that he can deal with basic law-enforcement matters, such as permitting nightclubs, in some manner other than criminally stripping vulnerable populations of their homes and neighborhoods.

Tom Ferriole
Citizens United for Neighborhood Planning
(tomferriole@yahoo.com)