If you live in the Triad and you don’t want your local bar, restaurant or club venue to morph into a Donutland and shut down overnight, do yourself a favor and read this announcement I received from the venerable Kathy Clark:
Some of you may have heard that the City of Winston-Salem is trying to pass a “Night Club Ordinance” that would severely impact a lot of venues financially, ultimately forcing them to close down. The story is long and involved, but basically in response to the shooting of a police officer at a night club, the City proposes to make all night club owners hire off duty police officers as security guards at a rate of $25 an hour. The number of officers would be based on the capacity of the club. For a club the size of The Garage, four officers would need to be hired.
There is more to the ordinance than just this. City officials would ultimately have the final say on who can perform in Winston and where they are allowed to perform. All this is designed to reduce violence in Winston-Salem.
The ordinance does not address such issues as the fact that Winston-Salem has a higher percentage of rape than the national average. Shootings occur in apartment complexes, at shopping centers, not just night clubs. And domestic violence is a much larger problem than night club violence.
Very soon, we could have a totally different nightlife - one devoid of new and interesting music.
Your support matters. Please help. And please forward this to anyone that may care: a music lover looking for great live music, a musician looking for venues in which to play, people interested in downtown revitalization. This will impact us all.
I’ve been to The Garage. It’s not very big. I can’t imagine how they’d be able to pay acts to perform with $100 flying out the window each hour. Do the cops also perform doorman duties at that rate? How about bar back?
It’s a ridiculous broad stroke proposal to thwart the potential repeat of a terrible, yet isolated incident.
You don’t even need to live in Winston-Salem to help. Here’s what you can do:
- Sign the online petition opposing the proposed “Night Club Ordinance”
- Join the Facebook group, Save Live Music In Winston-Salem, and spread the word to all of your friends
Thanks.
There is too much litigation and regulation in yalls city. Yall have a rain tax, you spend millions making public housing look like resort housing, and the only companies receiving breaks are billion dollar or non profit ones. I went to the garage on New Years Eve. Saw a great group Boxwine. I wanted to stay and see the other groups but didn’t want to drink a drop because of the hundreds of police cars buzzing in the area. Hell, they don’t need security. There were cops parked in dark alleys and parking lots all along those bars and streets around the Garage.