Am I the only one that remembers the yellow police tape used at the Ranch Bowl to divide the room into an all ages area in front of the stage (away from the bar) and the legal-age bar area? If you wanted to enter the bar area you had to show ID and get a wristband. There was only one entrance into the over-21 world manned by a bouncer to check for wrist bands on all who enter.

Seems like reasonable precautions a club owner would choose to take if he wanted to responsibly mix underage youths (Did you just say ‘yoots?’) with those of legal age in a nightclub environment to present live music that appeals to both audiences.

By combining both demographics together, turnout is larger, enabling a club owner to book bigger name acts, as well as unknown bands because of the larger available potential audience.

This had been happening in the metro for more than 20 years and now City Councilman Jim Suttle is trying to assist and protect the efforts of the Slowdown, just named club of the year by Esquire magazine, and One Percent Productions and its Waiting Room venue by clarifying the city’s position and allowance of the mixing of minors, bars, alcohol and live music.

Saddle Creek’s storefront/showcase and downtown Benson’s live music capitol can easily be credited with igniting revival in their respective neighborhoods and it’s in the best interest of the city to have a relationship with any responsible business that is spawning development in our city.

Of course, it is certainly reasonable that a municipality would seriously consider such an ordinance and not just rubber stamp.

Does anyone have any factual evidence that shows allowing under-21s into bars after 9 p.m. for live music has previously caused any problems? Since it’s already been occurring we can easily check on police reports for the Ranch Bowl. Yes, there may have been problems at some area clubs but these instances didn’t involve the mixing of these two defined-by-elixir audiences.

Don’t you think that if this was a problem 20 years ago, or even two years ago, the Omaha World-Herald would have extensively covered the subject?

One of the arguments against the ordinance tries to draw a distinction between live music bars whose main business is the sale of alcohol versus outlets like the Qwest Center, where families and alcohol mix at sporting events or the local bowling alley or pizza parlor.

How does that matter really? Alcohol and youths. Same room. Same bat time.

This place over here has three cases of liquor while this one over here only has one case so it’s OK at the latter room but not the former because of the sheer supply?
Or am I missing something here?

Much of this without-merit controversy is being driven by activist groups birthed from tragedy chartered with educational objectives who sometimes become active legislatively with the best of intentions.

How many think .08 is over doing it? Point one-zero seemed an appropriate line-in-the-sand and those that kill with cars while intoxicated are usually WAY over .10.
It was the lobbying efforts of MADD that drove Congress to force states to adjust the threshold lower to .08.

I can understand the passion of the groups trying to right wrongs or bring awareness but when they choose unyielding and sometimes radical positions they only end up marginalizing their own charter.

Anyway, it’s this same myopic position some local organizations have adopted in selecting relative arguments when using “primary business” as some kind of argument against.

Aren’t we grown up enough to allow responsible businesses to act responsibly and punish those that don’t? No, I guess we should assume a problem and dictate a solution.

Many of the arguments for allowing minors in bars involve the influence being able to see live music in bars as a youth has had on area musicians and fans and shaped the development of Saddle Creek, One Percent and a lot more.

Rah-rah, but I still come back to, “show me evidence this has been a problem and now must be shut down.”
There has been a ton of blog and message boards chatter on this topic. Let’s hope our councilmen look at the issue from an educated standpoint, considering the positions of all sides and do the right thing.