Dancing fools: you can do just about anything you like in Gotham - except dance in bars

National Review, March 23, 1998 by Deroy Murdock

Mr. Murdock is an MSNBC columnist and Senior Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va.

MANHATTAN

'NO DANCING," says the sign above the stage at Manny's Car Wash, the legendary blues bar at Third Avenue and 88th Street. Directly below this admonition, guitarist Hiram Bullock and bassist Will Lee are jumping up and down onstage like V-8 pistons.

But the sign is not a joke, like the ones at some bars that read: "Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women." It is a command, based on a 1926 law that forbids revelers to dance in bars and restaurants that lack cabaret licenses. The dancing needn't be elaborate, Rockettes-style musical numbers. A pair of patrons twirling to a love song can get a bar fined -- or worse.

I ask Manny's manager, Mike Winters, how much dancing it would take to get his place busted. "This much," he says, pointing to the crowd of about 180 youngish patrons swaying back and forth as Bullock and Lee sing gleefully about "a bean burrito, black beans, and rice." A few of them are snapping their fingers or clapping their hands.

"Even if we didn't have live music and were playing CDs on the stereo, we could get nailed if customers did this," Winters says, bobbing his head up and down. That means Mike and his brother, Brad, who opened Manny's in 1990, have to be as averse to dancing as the strictest Ayatollah: "I don't encourage dancing and don't allow bands to talk about dancing," says Brad.

Now that New York City's violent criminals are on the run, the New York Police Department, the Department of Consumer Affairs, and local community boards are conducting a War on Dancing. Unlike much of the city's successful quality-of-life campaign to reduce noise and calm midnight madness, this particular effort seems to have been hatched by Captain Queeg.

"It doesn't matter if you have a jukebox, a radio, or a singer," says Sergeant Timothy Sikorski of the NYPD's Sixth Precinct. "If you have people dancing and you don't have a cabaret license, that's illegal."

According to Sikorski, who enforces cabaret laws in Greenwich Village, the mere act of dancing, independent of noise or any other nuisance, is enough to trigger a response. The NYPD hands over information to the Department of Consumer Affairs so that it can cite establishments in violation of the law. "If Consumer Affairs cites them twice," Sikorski adds, "they can close the place."

Consider Cafe Iguana, a since-renamed restaurant on Park Avenue South where a 16-foot-long crystal iguana named Ava Gardner once dangled over the bar. This mighty reptile proved no match for Mark Green, then New York City's Commissioner of Consumer Affairs, now Public Advocate and a U.S. Senate hopeful.

Accompanied by journalists, Commissioner Green personally padlocked the place after several patrons were spotted dancing near their tables back in April 1992. Fines and two days of lost business cost Cafe Iguana over $10,000.

More recently, Consumer Affairs targeted Hogs & Heifers, a bar in Manhattan's meat-packing district where patrons traditionally have stomped their boots on the bar to the country music from the jukebox.

In October 1996, Hogs & Heifers got a $100 fine for "unlicensed cabaret." Owner Michelle Dell says she and her late husband posted "No Dancing" signs and asked bouncers to discourage patrons from responding to the music. But there was just so much they could do. "What do you do, call 911 and say, 'I have a guy in my place dancing'?" Mrs. Dell asks. "The police show up and say, 'We're not your personal security force.' You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

After undercover Consumer Affairs officials observed yet more dancing, they returned on a Thursday night in February 1997. "They had firetrucks outside and six police cars. They definitely were coming to shut us down," Mrs. Dell recalls. "They were very aggressive and extremely hostile. You would think this was a drug raid.

"They padlocked us. We had to pay for the padlock and they weren't going to let us open over a three-day weekend . . . We paid a $3,000 fine and had to sign a release saying we would not fight this with Consumer Affairs. Your doors don't get opened until you win. So what do you do? You plead guilty, pay the fine, and re-open."

That's about when the Dells decided to get a cabaret license. "When all is said and done," Mrs. Dell says, "this cost us about $150,000 between the expediting fees, the legal fees, the fines, renovations, architectural fees, and licensing fees."

It's a point not lost on bars that already have the license. "It's common knowledge that anonymous complainers often are competitors" of offending establishments, says nightclub attorney Robert Bookman. "People who have cabaret licenses don't like that their competitors without licenses have dancing and are getting away with it."

There are much more straightforward ways to address quality-of-life issues than through this Prohibition-era relic. If a ruckus at a bar creates a nuisance for neighbors, the police should be able to enforce a reasonable noise code and, if need be, cite rambunctious patrons for disorderly conduct. Otherwise, patrons should be free to sway, nod their heads -- and even move their feet.