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Council rejects bid to regulate music choices at Dinkytown bar
Minneapolis City Council Member Diane Hofstede
An attempt to dictate what style of music a Dinkytown restaurant can play sparked a lively debate on free speech at Friday’s City Council meeting.
Third Ward Council Member Diane Hofstede sought to amend a liquor license agreement between the city and the Loring Pasta Bar that would stipulate that any live music played at the bar on Mondays and Tuesdays would be the same style as that which is performed there the rest of the week. But that struck 10th Ward Council Member Ralph Remington, who represents dozens of bars in the Uptown area, as unreasonable.
“Can we regulate this?” he asked city attorney Jay Heffern. “It seems like a constitutional question to me.”
Heffern assured Remington that it was within the city’s rights to dictate the sort of music a bar can feature, because it’s related to the bar’s operation. “I think it’s appropriate,” he said.
Hofstede explained that she was only trying to provide the sort of atmosphere the neighborhood would prefer, noting that the restaurant’s owner, Jason McLean, had agreed to the stipulation. But Lisa Goodman, whose ward includes downtown, said it would create a dangerous precedent that would affect hundreds of bars. “This takes us down the road to a very slippery slope,” she said. “I can only imagine the trouble I’m going to have downtown now.”
Goodman suggested that any concerns about the type of music played at a bar should be addressed through the city’s noise ordinance, and not as a condition of a liquor license.
Hofstede offered to drop language referring to the style of music performed and stipulate instead that any “substantial” change to a bar’s entertainment would be subject to city approval, but that, too, was a nonstarter, as council members argued it was too vague to be enforceable.
With little support among her colleagues, Hofstede agreed to send the matter back to committee for more discussion.
Comments
Our tax dollars at work.
Our tax dollars at work. :-)
Seems to me it’s in a bar owner’s best interest to “provide the sort of atmosphere the neighborhood would prefer,” (and to do so without violating noise ordinances and the like). It also seems to me that the neighborhood can speak for itself regarding its preferences. If the proprietor picks up on grassroots demand for Polka Tuesdays a few years from now, why should scheduling it be subject to regulatory interference?
Does our city council have
Does our city council have nothing better to do than to try to control what kind of music we listen to?
This is so disgustingly
This is so disgustingly appalling it is almost unbelievable. But then again, this is the city that always seems to want to ruin a good thing. I still can’t believe that they were actually considering regulating the type of music a bar can have. Not whether they can have live music at all (a zoning issue), or whether it can be amplified or not (as in the current conflict the city is having with the 331 Club), but what kind of music can be performed. This is downright wacky. And the city attorney thinks “it’s appropriate” that the city can dictate the type of music a bar can feature!!? What!!? Are you kidding me? So the city, according to the city attorney, can tell First Avenue they can’t feature death metal acts anymore if they wanted to? or at least not on tuesdays? What planet, or better yet, what country are these people living on? in? anyone?
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