Closing Time
My friendly neighborhood Mount Vernon Triangle blog points out that the DC City Council has passed a law allowing bars and clubs to stay open 24 hours a day during inauguration week. I recall from over the summer that St Paul did something similar for the Republican Convention.
The thinking behind this sort of thing escapes me. The basic idea seems to be that we should allow extended hours during these kind of “special” weeks because demand is high. But if during normal weeks the demand for late-night bars would be low, then why the need to prevent the bars from staying open? And if bars should be allowed to stay open longer when demand is high, why not let bars stay open as long as they want all the time and let market demand determine closing hours? I grew up in New York where things are open all the time, and miss that kind of 24 hour service. I imagine that a place like DC (or St. Paul) wouldn’t be much of a 24 hour city no matter how you regulated it. But why not give it a shot and see what happens?
37 Responses to “Closing Time”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
December 5th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Re Matthew’s comment “But why not give it a shot and see what happens?”
————-
Ah, I see Matthew is picking up the gangsta rapper and NFL approach to maintaining social order.
One would guess that 24 hour nightclubs in Washington DC would increase the already high homicide rate in that “gun free zone”.
Although liberatarians –and maybe Steve Sailer — would point out that it’s a self-correcting problem.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
PS Don’t get me wrong — I LIKE the idea of 24 hour bars and “must issue” gun ordinances.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Here’s the logic: 24 hour bars let us exctract more money from out of town visitors, about whose health and safety we don’t really care.
It’s similar to cities levying special hotel taxes.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:59 am
I am a big fan of 24 hour drinking. I’ve lived in Latin America a long time and many of the problems associated with coordinated closing times don’t happen here. I was recently in San Francisco for work and was amazed to see the problems that occur when 100s of drunk people spill out onto the street at the same time all wanting taxis, pizza, and girls. I saw more drunk fights on one street in one night than I’ve seen in years of partying in Latin America.
Sure this is anecdotal, but the UK is also experiencing similar results with their 24 hour experiment.
I expect that DC will experience a lot fewer incidents with the instated 24 hour drinking than it would have otherwise.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
But why not give it a shot and see what happens?
A pun intended?
December 5th, 2008 at 9:07 am
New Orleans, of course, has 24 hour drinking – and no open-container laws. So we also have 24 hour drinking *outside.*
It’s pretty grand.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Seriously the single worst thing about DC is the lack of all-night diners. How can you even call this a “city” without one? (And no, that piece of Disney yuppie-philia “The Diner” does not count). Even Peoria manages to support a damn Denny’s. Amazing as it may seem, there are some non-firearm or hooking-up related things people like to do after 2 am.
Also it is cute to read people who apparently think people no longer drink/fight/shoot each other after the bars close in DC (uh, of course they do). If anything, you’d think avoiding the horrifying death march out of Adams Morgan would be a pretty big public safety benefit.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Well in NY the liquor licenses only allow you to serve until 4 am but even in the city that never sleeps that’s late enough for most practical purposes. Meanwhile the picture Don Williams paints is the precise opposite of what actually happens: because the closing time is set so late, people trickle out and go home whenever they feel like it. You never get a big crowd of drunk strangers pushed out onto the streets at once, which is the sort of situation that leads to trouble. That and the pervasiveness of mass transit makes NY by far the safest place to drink I’ve ever been to.
By contrast, the licensing regime in St. Louis, where I grew up, seems tailor made for disaster. The vast majority of bars are only granted licenses to serve until 1 am, but a handful have 3 am licenses. The obvious result is that at 1:00 every morning entire barfuls of drunk patrons get in their cars and drive en masse to the 3 am bars. Complete idiocy.
Of course the effects of England’s former 11 pm closing time for pubs are well known.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:36 am
December 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Having lived quite a while in Germany, I’m used to everything closing at ritualized times. Lots of saints day holidays, and strict closing times even in Munich. The effect is not what you are saying.
1. In terms of having fun, having days when the rules are different heightens the joy. It’s like the difference between ritual meals and everyday supper. Or really, more like the difference between a feast day and eating all day long every day. In the latter you don’t even taste your food.
2. In terms of locals getting sleep. No one minds living next to a tavern if it closes at a preset time because you know exactly when it’s going to get quiet. And no one minds the half dozen exceptions to that rule each year because they are all written on a calendar a year in advance and they know exactly when the noise is coming.
3. In terms of having small businesses, not having to staff a place 24/7 actually helps families run businesses without losing business to huge chains who have to operate at the same time.
4. It’s very inconvenient in terms of shopping or drinking.
You have to live on the same schedule as everyone else. But that has some advantages.
5. Sleeping in a city with skyscrapers may be easier because the noise may not carry past a few floors. I don’t know. I’ve never lived in New York.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Big Libertarian Matt.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I think the fundamental flaw in your thinking here is the belief that closing times are somehow related to the desires of bar patrons. Closing times exist for the good of the neighborhood as a whole — many people do not like bars in their neighborhoods, and do not like drunken activity late at night.
I grew up down the street from a cop/firefighter bar in Brooklyn that served beer in 32oz to-go containers. Needless to say, it was a pretty loud place, and every night ended with a couple of guys getting on their choppers and really roaring down my very residential street. Obviously, you want laws in place to limit the nuisance aspect of bars. If you don’t, people will have an even easier time blocking any and all attempts to grant new licenses.
Additionally, as others have pointed out, there’s the demand on public services. If DC bars were open 24 hours, the Metro would need to be 24 hours as well.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:11 am
One of the key arguments I would think of is the consideration of law enforcement costs. The police (and paramedics) need fewer officers on duty when the bars are closed. Some of these costs are variable with the number of bars/drinkers, but others are fixed or are difficult to apportion. So it makes some sense to force all bars to close beyond some threshold point at which enforcement costs are greater than tax benefits.
And let’s be honest, it makes plenty of sense for DC bars to stay open late during Inauguration weekend because DC’s going to make millions of dollars in extra tax revenue from doing so.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
My best guess on why a city would temporarily suspend this rules is nothing about supply and demand. There is probably a need for increased policing in periods where more businesses are open and more people are on the the street. During special events, there is going to be a 24/7 increase in the on-duty police force, so allowing businesses to stay open later isn’t a big deal.
Note this doesn’t conflict with the complaints about increased crime at closing times. That might require a robust police force around 1:00AM, but not much afterwards.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:40 am
every night ended with a couple of guys getting on their choppers and really roaring down my very residential street.
Ugh. The real problem there is that choppers are irritating and obnoxious at any hour…
(More generally, the problem is underenforcement of noise and nuisance laws, not bars.)
December 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am
“But if during normal weeks the demand for late-night bars would be low, then why the need to prevent the bars from staying open?”
Igloo come on! This assumes that the only rationale for legislating regular non event closing times is monetary…it’s not.
k1
December 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I just heard a report on NPR about the DC bar closing law. They are reporting that it allows bars to stay open till 5 am. This is all night but not 24 hours.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Re alli’s comment “New Orleans, of course, has 24 hour drinking – and no open-container laws. So we also have 24 hour drinking *outside.*
It’s pretty grand.”
————-
Except on those occasions when you drunkly notice water rising up around your waste. And try to figure out if it might have something to do with that strong breeze you noticed earlier.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Correction: “WHen you drunkly notice water rising up around your WAIST”
December 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The logic right or wrong is that during these events basically normal people want to go to bars late at night. However during normal times most normal people don’t want to go to bars late at night, while abnormal people who do want to go to bars late at night should be protected from themselves.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
As someone who finds the idea that new bars in New York are mostly only going to be licensed to 2:00, rather than 4:00, I nevertheless think this post doesn’t show much thought about the topic. Or, in econ lingo, since we’re talking about demand, the externalities of allowing this at one time differ in kind from the externalities of offering this at all time.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’m generally in favor of very late closing times (like 4am in NYC) and against government paternalism, but there may be localities where forced closings make sense. In the small city where I went to college, the closing time was 3am on weekends. The bars were pretty much packed until closing, and the streets would fill up after closing, but a mild police presence seemed to prevent any real problems.
I’m not sure how late people would’ve stayed out if there hadn’t been a closing time, but I suspect a lot of us would’ve been drinking until daylight. And yes, many of us just went to continue drinking at someone’s house, but at least we had to get some fresh air and take a short break from drinking to do so. Also, we would’ve had to purchase supplies beforehand because stores couldn’t sell beer after 3am either.
December 5th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Why not have differential taxes for drinks at different times of the night? I think it’s fair that you have to pay an extra dollar to the treasury for each beer because somebody in your group is inevitably going to wake me up puking on my sidewalk.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
It is my plan to write a self-improvement guide, “How to binge drink responsibly”. I think that comments supply a wealth of useful advise.
For example, perhaps one should leave the bar 15 minutes before the closing time to avoid driving when other drunks (those who do not drink responsibly) are also on the road.
Even so, I am somewhat puzzled: how many hours are needed to get drunk?
Concerning Germany, I think that different cities have different ordinances. In Bonn, internet cafes would close around 10, and the coffee swilling laptop holders would get ejected, with the following choices left: phone-call/internet places for migrant African workers and bars. Some bars were closing as late as 4. Afterwards the only way to continue drinking would be to go to a gas station (one of the VERY few still open), buy booze (which seemed cheaper than gasoline) and go to a bench on the bank of Rhine River.
Unfortunately, in spite of bottle deposit of 50 Euro cents, some bottles were being crashed, resulting in the punctures in my bicycle tires. So, responsible binge drinkers: please do not crash bottles but leave them intact.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Mr. Yglesias,
We are in a time of deep recession. The government needs to be encouraging Americans to work more and save more, not to drink and party. Allowing bars and clubs to stay open all night simply encourages alcohol and drug abuse, loud noise, crime, and casual sex. These things will all have bad effects on public health.
I am from Boston, though i live in the Midwest now, and I think that our rules about par and club closings are very fitting and appropriate. It’s perfectly fine to cut loose and have an all-night party now and again, but the appropriate place for that is in private residences. Public spaces after 2 A.M. are for sleeping, unless you’re unlucky enough to have to work a night shift.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
If you don’t understand econ, then don’t comment. If you want to raise economic output, you want people to be spending money and boosting aggregate demand. Saving in such a situation, like Japan in the 1990’s, lowers demand. Spending money on drinking raises aggregate demand immediately. The ill effects of drinking on public health are felt years afterwards.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:46 am
viagra
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 1st, 2009 at 6:39 pm
cialis
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 11th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Great site. Good info
March 14th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
xanax
March 17th, 2009 at 2:28 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 am
tramadol
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Great site, Good info viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
The topic is quite hot in the net right now. What do you pay attention to when choosing what to write ?
April 16th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Hey. There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
I am from Taiwan and also now am reading in English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Go airlines cheap maui flight to kahului island of hawaii.”