CA ABC sets band size limit for a venue

Hi,

Between "agent", "owner", "going country", "conditional license", and "2 person musical performances", something sounds very odd. Most club owners and a lot of agents can get their facts mixed up, sometimes on purpose. Sorry you lost out on your gig.


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

 

Sounds bogus to me too. More like you're being handed a line because someone hasn't got the courage to simply say they won't pay enough for a full band.

I couldn't find anything in the ABC web site either, but a google search mentioned that some cities (e.g. Oakland) require a "cabaret" license if the venue features live music with alcohol. No idea if there are different classes of those local licenses.

 

Hi,

Once the city government cronies get involved and the "good old boy" network takes over, there's no telling what kind of twisted ordinances they are liable to come up with. The business owners suffer as well as employees. It's a shame.


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

 

I've run into it out here on the EC.

The was a guy who had a local beach venue on the bay, outdoor tiki bar, etc. Ran it for a couple of years, the folded/sold it to another operator.

Turns out that though he had run open mikes there, and some small pickup bands he did not actually have an entertainment license.

In this state, the state authorizes how many licenses of each class, retail, club, beer and wine only, private club, one time event licences can be issued per municipality based on population. The actual licenses are applied for, approved and issued at the local level, and need re-application periodically.

In his case, his license did not cover 'entertainment' which here was defined as more than one live performer. The entertainment 'upgrade' to the license has to be applied for seperately and a public hearing held for approval allowing abutters etc. to object or voice their concerns. There is a plump fee for this to the town. A dive bar 3 doors down that was one of the loudest I have heard was operating with little or no noise complaints from the hood, so he should not have had a problem.

Then he (the new guy) went ahead and had the entertainment in, and ran into the legal problem and got shut down. It's one thing if you go and apply in advance, but if you decide to do it illegally and then apply later, they have a whole different attitude on the town council.

Or your guy may have decided not to pay for the licence, etc. So there is more than meets the eye than just the state.

 

Either the club can't have you, or they don't want to have you. Either way, may as well move on. Sucks. Especially around here where the music scene is so bad. But, I have never had any good come of trying to persuade a venue to have me back after I've been there and they have already decided not to.

 

SN&R is a horrid publication. That article interests me but I don't feel that I can read it. Were their conclusions actually fact based?

 

Your first assertion requires a reason, what is it? One article does not a publication make. I got through it okay and it was the same old he said she said stuff that infects pretty much every other newspaper, but it seems to me to have a director of planning, redevelopment and housing telling the owner what to do with his property is a bit much. A restaurant may not be feasible at the location now even if it was in the past.

We've had redevelopment people in Sacramento get a bit power mad and raze properties that were considered "nusiances" when they were anything but. One of those razed properties is now and has been since razing an empty weed-choked lot. The city ended up paying a fat settlement to the owners of the razed property, btw, as there was only one complainant in the entire neighborhood, and that complainant was looking to purchase the lot. :scowl:

 

Their yellow journalism, drug culture glorification, and horrible, horrible advice column. Plus I don't like the handjob shop ads at the back of the paper. It's tasteless and unnecessary.

 

If its anything like the counterculture paper out here, the adult section pays for the free distribution.

We used to have the 'advice column'. It wasn't as good as the 'Dear TB, I need love advice' that you find in TBOT.

 

The last time I tried to read the advice column in SN&R I had to put the paper down.

There was a guy asking what he should do about a woman he was dating inviting him over to stay the night, cuddling and kissing him all night long, but balking at going all the way. The columnist told him not to push her past platonic behaviors, and then tried to paint him as some pushy chauvinistic jerk. It blew my mind man.

 

I've read SN&R intermittently for a very long time and while it was never very interesting IMO, I have found good, well written articles there. If one wants to get moralistic about some of the content, that's your prerogative. Alternative "counterculture" papers are all like that. The old Bay Guardian would give a few here the vapors from what I'm reading. The most poorly thought out and written article I ever saw at SN&R was one of the most celebrated in its early days. Rachel Leibrock was the perp. She wrote an "I went back to high school undercover" story and I never saw how she springboarded that one to more lucrative writing gigs. It was pretty darn bad.