Friday, August 13, 2010

Protest March at Bar-Closing Time Early Saturday

"A group is organizing a rally outside of Park 6 early Saturday morning. The crowd will then march to City Hall. Organizers are opposed to city efforts to revoke Park 6's liquor license, as well as the license for Ginger/Sticky Rice at 337 Main St. They're also upset over a city committee's decision to deny Joe Harris a liquor license for a jazz- and blues-theme bar at 1111 Washington Ave."

http://news.racinepost.com/2010/08/early-morning-march-to-racine-city-hall.html

I was going to wait for the announcement today before linking to this story, but I'm out of time. If "the group" makes an announcement later, I'll add the link.

I don't know what to make of this. I think the effectiveness of the protest will depend upon the behavior of the crowd. All I know is that I'm not staying up late for it.


Edit: The Journal Times has now added this story: http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/article_b6c30e64-a708-11df-a41f-001cc4c002e0.html

According to the above, the night of the protest is unsure. I think that Saturday night/Sunday morning would ensure the biggest crowd.

The Journal Times also says that the protest is being organized by Thomas Holmes, owner of Park 6.


Edit 2: Now both stories are reporting that the protest has been cancelled.

4 comments:

SER said...

Racine taxpayers spent a bundle of money to rejuvenate 6th street. Now we have business owners who cannot control their patrons and are crying they may lose their licenses.

When the police department parked their surveillance vehicle on 6th street in was in front of some woman’s business. She complained it made her business look dangerous to go to, but yet she closed at 5pm, she is not open until bar closing time.

So the police cannot win. If this guy cannot keep his business in check...pull his license!

There is no reason Racine taxpayers should have to pay for extra police patrols on 6th street.

If I was the business owner and my licenses was in jeopardy of being revoked, I would hire off-duty police or sheriff officers every day.

SER said...

To give you an idea of another place, “The Warning Track” on Washington Ave.

Friends and I use to stop there during the day. One night we stopped, it was a WHOLE different crowd! You could ‘smell’ trouble in the air. We stopped a couple weeks later during the day, and the day crowd changed for the worst.

We stopped going there about 6 months ago and sure enough, a customer was shot and killed IN the bar!

OrbsCorbs said...

From what I read, they already have Metro (private) police on duty.

The Racine Post has updated their story to say that the protest has apparently been postponed.

I've been wondering about the wisdom of the protest as planned. If everything went well, it might be a great symbolic success. But if something went wrong, it might backfire terribly.

If the issue is control of the bar's patrons after they've left the bar, would a planned protest exert enough control over them? I haven't been there at bar-closing (and don't intend to), so I don't know what it's like. I assume some nights are worse than others.

OrbsCorbs said...

Oh, I know, SER, I spent plenty of time in bars. I know that the owner/bartenders set the tone.