I grew up when New York was a quintessential haven for small business. Their presence defined neighborhoods. My first apartment was close to St. Marks Place in Manhattan. In the 1970’s and 80’s St. Marks Place and it’s surrounding streets were a home to historic bars, little cafés, artist’s quarters, book stores, 100 year old theaters, concert halls, and punk shops like Manic Panic and Trash &Vaudeville( which miraculously still survives). It was a mixture of vintage clothing stores, junk shops and stores which until recently kept all things "kitschy" alive, like “Love Saves the Day”.
There were (and I am sure still are) great places for a bite, Ukrainian all night eateries like the “ Kiev”, and the first sushi bar which opened in 1984 on Avenue A. At Brownies you could hear the latest rock band, and diagonally across the street at King Tut’s WaWa Hut, you could mingle with all sorts of people and dance until you dropped. There was the Ritz on 12th street, where I got to hear Stevie Ray Vaughn, The World Disco which had three floors of music, ranging from Reggea to Punk, to classic Funk, on first street and Avenue B, and at 14th street and first there was a blues bar, where I used to go hear some of the best musicians in the city play an open jam on Sundays. Hell, I got to jump in on some of those jam sessions! The streets were alive with music.
The East Village was a definitive place where individuality flourished and where music played an integral part. There were historic places to go hear live music too, like CBGB’s and the recently closed, Continental. You could hear live music, because that was as much a part of the city as a bagel is. And, you didn’t have to pay $25 dollars to do it, because it wasn’t a franchised place, it was a part of the neighborhood.
You didn’t have a number like 3-1-1 where everyone who dials it can have their own personal bitch fest and rat out their neighbor, whining about the “noise”. Don’t get me wrong, I like sleep. But I am not talking about late night screamo bands playing at 1, or 2 in the morning on a weeknight. I am specifically talking about a single guitar on a Tuesday at 8pm in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens. Now, they rat you out for that. Maybe the 80’s was a more innocent time, a more tolerant time for nightlife in the city. But Since 2002, when “Operation Silent Night” came into existence, 3-1-1 has been the killer of all businesses that are not consumer oriented. . If you can’t “eat it, buy it, or wear it” , you’re simply run out of Dodge.
( For those of you who live in other places, and are unfamiliar with the terms “Operation Silent Night” and “3-1-1”, they are the Mayor’s pet projects to “quiet” the city. 3-1-1 can be called to “complain” about everything from a neighbor’s garbage not being recycled to red flag a construction site which is illegally jack hammering in the middle of the night.).
3-1-1 was a co-conspirator in the murder of my small performing arts business and its’ creator Mayor Michael Bloomberg is still the bane of my existence. His ticketing campaign against citizens, but especially small business, is legendary. Who else can ticket you and force you to pay the fine, even before you get the chance to appeal and not be charged with extortion?
It is this memory of what I went through, that I hold up against the current Mayor’s campaign. I cannot help but to contrast the blatant falsehoods against the reality of my experience as a past owner of a small business. Small businesses have been under siege before Bloomberg stuck his flag in and laid claim, but he virtually wiped clean and sanitized neighborhoods. It is his brand of politics which helped the big guy, and put the small guy under foot. He cleaned it up, but to this New Yorker, it is unrecognizable, a squeaky, shiny corporate wasteland of a few big named brands. It all feels and looks the same. The Mom and Pops are now retail chain stores. The live venues have been torn down, or converted into designer hotels or condos, and shi-shi boutique stores named after top designers have replaced anything eclectic. New York is not “a small business friendly” city.
Yet, now that the “American Dream” has been threatened, and a lot of people are out of work, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tune has changed. Don’t you believe it. It’s really business as usual for Big Britches Bloomberg. He may say a whole lot of what he knows needs to be heard, but then, turn around and do whatever he pleases. Let’s not even discuss the term limit situation and how he is now running for a third term, despite our voting against it.
His current platform is that he supports small business, and that he especially supports women in that venue. But, that’s not how I experienced it and I put up a damn good fight.
I opened my business in the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn four days before 9/11. I had no experience with running a business but I understood a little about supply and demand. I had also worked for 12 years in the city’s clubs and restaurants. Eight years before, I had moved from Manhattan, much to the utter dismay of my friends and family and had taken up residence in Brooklyn, when it was considered risky to do so. Cab drivers wouldn’t take you over the bridge because they couldn’t get the fare back. The year? 1991.
By 1998, I made a decision that the arts needed to be closer to home.. There was nothing going on in the Heights, or Cobble Hill, or Carroll Gardens. The most interesting event was if a bar had a pool table. No, open mikes, no comedy, nothing really different to do. I thought it was ridiculous that Brooklyn-ites had to cross the bridge in order to get an artistic fix, and I yearned to bring a little of Manhattan to the neighborhood. So, I rented a loft in the commercial area of Livingston Street, spruced it up, and The East End Ensemble was born. We offered acting and writing classes for adults and kids and began a monthly art exhibit. Our artistic salon brought from 70 to 200 people together. We called it FNAWS; the Friday Night After Work Series. The idea behind it was to bring all different types of performers together for one night and really “create” something that was unique. While the performances shifted from one to the next, patrons could view the art on our walls. With free wine , a zero cover, and the talent, first rate, even the staunchest Manhattanite came over the bridge. But, after two years, I wanted to move to a place with more foot traffic and decided to add beer and wine hoping that this would cover the costs of my vision.
On September 7th, 2001 I opened my doors on Smith Street. It was called Boudoir Bar at the East End Ensemble and every night of the week we had something interesting going on.
Smith Street runs parallel to Atlantic Avenue, and had once been a neighborhood feared for its’ violence and drug dealing. But that year, it began to be called Brooklyn’s little Soho, and it gradually changed from having empty store fronts into a beautiful array of individual vision. There were shops which sold garb made by local fashion designers , goods from South Africa, little eateries offering sustenance from France and the Caribbean, to Cuba, and a place to have a coffee while shopping for vinyl as a live DJ spun the flavor of the day.
In 2001, Smith Street was truly original. Every venue had a distinct flavor. I rented a dilapidated , dusty framing shop and converted it into a retro “speak-easy” styled wine bar with a velvet curtain for the stage and an outside lounge area for the smokers. On Tuesday nights we screened indie films. Wednesdays were poetry slams, Thursdays became our infamous open mike, and Fridays continued to be our “Friday Night after Work Series”. On Saturdays, Larry Getlin ran our comedy night, and after 10 of his hand picked cream of the crop, left the stage, we hosted a small burlesque show. Life was good, and despite the tragic circumstances of 9/11, we seemed to be hanging tough. We felt that we were an important and necessary addition to the local landscape.
Then, the Mayor decided that the city needed more revenue, because by 2002, New York had only received a portion of the money promised after the September 11th attacks, and his solution was to increase the ticketing and gain what was needed from all of us.
I do not remember which year it all began, but after it began, it did not let up. It started with the smoking laws. Because we still had clean ashtrays behind the bar, we were fined $100 per ashtray. We were fined $1,000 dollars for having our “ice scoop” off the hook. We were made to get food handler licenses because “ice” is a food. Yellow tape closed our doors with the words “Department of Health and Mental Hygiene”. I still don’t know what “mental hygiene is” and I don’t really want to find out. This happened because after the ice scoop incident, they found a petrified mouse downstairs in our storage room. The poor thing had probably been there for 50 years. The DEP became our biggest enemy.
There was a woman in the neighborhood, which had once been a big wig with them but had since retired, and it seemed that whenever it was in her power to do so, she pulled the strings to get them to come knocking. Operation Silent Night had a war to win and they took no prisoners. We were laughing too loud. They could hear a live guitarist playing inside from the street. We were breathing.
Mayor Bloomberg did something that is nothing short of tyranny. He took away the sound meter. The DEP’s noise Gestapo does not need them. Basically, it is your word against theirs. He also resurrected a law which had been set up in the 1980’s specifically for stores and businesses which once blared music from loud speakers to get people interested to come in and shop. It is called the 220b law and it is what eventually put the last nail into our coffin. 220b states that you cannot use any electronic device to “lure” people into your place of business. This includes an acoustic guitar attached to an amplifier. It includes a CD player.
Our upstairs neighbor had been a patron. Then she got pregnant and complained about the “noise” .The cops would drive by and grin. Our bartenders wore vintage lingerie and I was often seen outside the front door smoking a cigarette in a pink sheer peignoir. NYPD liked us but they had to follow the 311 trail protocol. First the 311 call is made. After a certain amount of those calls, the cops must make an appearance. After a certain amount after that, the DEP shows up. We were loved by a lot of people but there were a few that thought of us as being a bit too risqué. There was a rumor that floated around that we were an S & M bar. I laughed about that. I wanted it all to work, and tried everything to appease those who did not like us. I went to Board 6 meetings, took suggestions and implemented them. I put in sound proofing. I shut down my back yard at 11pm.
But the tickets kept coming and eventually, I felt terrified. To violate the 220b law, cost $750 dollars upfront. It could go up every time that a business owner, did not cease “amplifying”. I began to live at 66 John Street (the place where tickets are addressed). I saw dozens of business owners asking to appeal and they were told that they would have to pay the ticket and only then could they appeal. In two years I had shelled out more than five thousand dollars. GO ASK ASA from Channel 2, did a piece for me on the evening news, as did the New York Times.
Smith Street is a commercially zoned area. The bus roared by, and the subway underneath shook the building. The whole street was abuzz with people and open cafes and music spilling out from their CD players. Yet, the DEP came for us and it appeared more for us, than anyone else.. Yes, others were getting tickets as well, but we were the bee in their bonnet. It makes no sense even now. We were a wine bar. We never had brawls, or made trouble. We actually closed before most of the bars on the street. A late night for us was 1 AM. I believe that after a time, even if the “noise” was actually coming from some other place, we were the scapegoat. After all, we were the bar with the live music
and the lingerie.
By 2005, the strain was unbearable. We had been ticketed once for ashtrays, once for the ice scoop, shut down a full day for the petrified mouse, once for our sandwich blackboard being ¼ of an inch too close to the middle of the sidewalk, and 3 times for violating the 220b law. We did win once. But the court dates, and the red tape, and all of it together, became too much for me. I knew that I had been beat. Despite all of my efforts to work with the DEP, to work with the city and their call for “silence” ,to appease that nasty old lady who once worked for the city, I had failed.
The New York Times could not save us. Channel 2 could not save us. In a last ditch effort, I asked the neighborhood if they wanted us to stay or go. I put out a ballot box so that people could “vote” anonymously. There were 77 “stays” and 13 “go’s”. Someone in the 13 had connections . Democracy was dead. Exhausted, I closed my doors after the final curtain, in August of 2005.
The city that I love with all of my heart, the one I was born into, had betrayed me. I get angry when I hear that Michael Bloomberg supports women in small business. Michael Bloomberg supports small businesses? How? I want the list of his so called “support”. He is a ruthless business man who has set everything up within his own particular guidelines. He runs the city without a heart. Either, fit into his cookie cutter vision or be run out of town. Obviously, his vision does not include live music.
I am not the only small business that was ticketed out of existence. No one at 66 John Street gives you a fair shake because they are not meant to. All of the officers from parking to the noise police have quotas to fill. The Mayor puts the pressure on them, and they put the pressure on us. The whole thing stinks. So, I have this to say the current administration: Stop ticketing small businesses to get revenue. We actually employee people. You shut us down and 1-10 people are out of a job. We shouldn’t have to pay the fines of what we are accused of before an appeal can be heard.
My Epitaph for a small business reads like this:
Here lies the Boudoir Bar-
Once a gold and glittering star,
Strangled in the city’s red tape,
14 placed it’s head on a stake.
No more music, dancing or fun
Boudoir Bar
Over and done.
R.I.P?
Never.
