Support late night food in Davis Square

[olszowka.livejournal.com]

I moved to Somerville 21 years ago and since that time appreciated the fact that the Golden Light restaurant was nearby and offered food late at night (1-2 am) when most of the Boston area closed down at 10pm.  I grew up in the Buffalo, NY area and there bar closing time is 4am and most popular bars have a restaurant nearby where the late night clientele go for a bite AFTER the bar closes.

Despite the fact that Golden Light has been keeping these hours for decades and has a huge sign in their storefront stating they stay open the latest in town, the Somerville Board of Aldermen has recently decided their license allows them to remain open only until midnight on weekdays and 1am on weekends.

If you want to tell these Puritans to stop trying to run our life, please support this restaurant's bid to remain open later.  You can sign a petition at the restaurant or come to a meeting at city hall, 93 Highland Ave., at 6:00pm, January  15, 2009.

Comments

[ron_newman]

Sure, I'd be happy to sign that. I see no good reason for the city to regulate business hours at all for non-alcohol-serving establishments.

[joyfulkel.livejournal.com]

man, I miss having more late-nite and 24 hour stores. And wegmans. I miss wegmans.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

I'll happily sign the petition, but this DID already come up on here.

the big W!

[cthulhia]

of course, I still had to drive an hour (to Syracuse) for it.

They are trying to build one in westwood, (which would still end up being an hour, due to traffic).

[olszowka.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to search the contents of posts of an LJ community? I couldn't figure out how and wanted to do that before I posted.

[krazykarot.livejournal.com]

as another western ny transplant: I miss wegmans! ever so much.

Also, I'll sign the petition. I'm a little late to the game but I'm glad I know they're open so late for now.

[ron_newman]

I added the tags to this post, so if you click on them you can see old posts. This is probably the earlier one that thetathx1138 referred to, but it's three months old. Your post has new information and is certainly relevant here.

Edit: A little discussion here as well, but that's also three months old.

[unferth.livejournal.com]

I dunno; while I would certainly support a general bid to keep food service available later in the evening, the Golden Light's history is apparently one of ignoring the law in hopes it would not be enforced. As far as I'm concerned, they should follow the same laws other businesses do; if they can stay open past 1:00 (and I think they should be allowed to do so if they think there's enough business to justify it) so should other area businesses.

In other words, petition to generally extend food service hours, yes; petition to give Golden Light special treatment, no.

[jodi.livejournal.com]

ignoring the law in hopes that it won't be enforced is what most people do on a daily basis. every time someone speeds in their car or crosses the street without waiting for the light, they are doing just that. i can't find fault in an institutional application of this practice.

that said, i am in agreement with your conclusion that late night food should be allowed and that special treatment is not the point, but a more reasonable system of repression by local gov't is desired.

[jodi.livejournal.com]

as a non-native of the boston area, can anyone speak to how somerville's puritanical seeming laws compare to other towns/suburbs around boston?

for example, do any other municipalities require such strict business hours, have no all-night businesses, and limit alcohol licenses with such an iron fist?

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Limiting alcohol licenses with an iron fist is a popular sport around here (see also: ridiculous flamewars on the Arlington list a few years ago about the, what? five? alcohol licenses, all beer-and-wine-only, allowed in a town with a major restaurant sector; the Wilkerson bribery case; the fact you couldn't even buy alcohol on Sundays until a few years ago; the lack of alcohol in most grocery stores -- alcohol licenses are site-specific so chains can only get them one location at a time, which makes them generally not worth the hassle). I can't speak to the others.

[alphacygni]

Excellent Marv icon!
Wow, I didn't realize there were so many of us.

[pensivewombat.livejournal.com]

Wegman's! Oh man, how i miss Wegman's...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

heck, it was only about 20 years ago that most retail businesses were finally allowed to open on sunday.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

How about the fact that alcohol licenses are doled out like hackney licenses, meaning there's a cap and trade system in place and the number is set artificially low? The discussion in city hall and the state legislature makes it sound like the privilege of serving alcohol is a luxury that only 300-someodd restaurants in Boston should be able to enjoy.

Of course anyone in the restaurant business could tell you that opening anything that's not a pizza parlor without a liquor license is competitive suicide. Thus a cap on beer and wine licenses is really just a cap on fancy restaurants and, because the licenses can be traded for money, a boon to those who already have them.

Given that almost any discussion on the downsides of serving liquor revolve around bars and not restaurants, I don't see how limiting beer and wine licenses (and, by association, restaurants) benefits ANYONE other than existing license holders.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Yes, virtually all of them do. No one municipality wants to be the town that everyone can go to to buy liquor when the other cities in the area stop. It was a big deal recently when Cambridge finally repealed its ban on restaurants serving alcohol on the sidewalks in front of their establishments.

Re: the big W!

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

Really? Their website doesn't list it under future stores. I hope it is true!

[smammy]

+1 Wegman's

[ron_newman]

The number of alcohol licenses in a city is set by the state. Somerville's regulation of these seems similar to Cambridge's.

[ron_newman]

The lack of alcohol in most chain grocery stores is because any chain can get at most three package-store licenses, statewide. So if you're Shaw's or Trader Joe's, only three of your stores can be licensed to sell alcohol.

[ron_newman]

Arlington has lots and lots of beer-and-wine only licenses for restaurants. It has very few full liquor licenses, and only recently has allowed any package stores.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

A lot of the bribery scandals in the state government right now (Dianne Wilkerson, Chuck Turner) involve people trying to get liquor licenses. It's definitely a statewide issue.

[ralla-del-sol.livejournal.com]

I have to say, in moving up here from NYC it was the hugest shock to not have 24-hour diners where I could go in the wee hours to study or just get some coffee. And I really missed Duane Reade for a hot minute.

I thought Wegmans was petitioning to open a store in Massachusetts, though I haven't heard any more about it since. Why, oh, why can't there be a Wegman's nearby? :(

[jadelennox]

Ridiculous flame wars on the Arlington list are a popular sport around Arlington.

(As far as Arlington and alcohol, I wish I had the exact quotation from Arlington town meeting a couple of years ago regarding allowing alcohol licenses to smaller restaurants, in which a town meeting member claimed that said change would *gasp* make Arlington more like Somerville and Cambridge. Heavens forfend! They also speculated that the reason Precinct 3 voted for more beer and wine stores even though most of the new beer and wine licenses were already in Precinct 3 was because Precinct 3 didn't understand the question. Oh, Arlington, how I love you.)

[jadelennox]

They were allowed to open on Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning they had to show that they were closed for religious reasons another day of the week. In other words, as long as you spend at least one morning of the week in a religious service instead of working, they were allowed to open. I have no idea when they got that relaxed, but that's what it was like about 20 years ago.