Let it never be said that your buddy Hal was afraid to tackle "the issues."
There’s some alarming noise coming out of Hoboken City Hall lately, and it has everyone from the cynical bar owner to the apathetic young, urban professional up in arms. They’re messing with our bars.
This was the same type of hit-’em-where-it-hurts repression that motivated the slackers of Faber College’s Delta House to act out against their administration. And now that the whole town knows it’s on "Double Secret Probation," perhaps it’s time we all let the Dean Wormers of Hoboken know that we’re not going to stand here and listen to them bad-mouth the institutions we hold dear.
Because contrary to what some of our neighbors are saying, the bars of Hoboken are NOT frat houses carrying on toga parties and tossing beer barrels out the window every night. These are small businesses that employ scores of people and, in turn, stimulate the local economy at various levels.
The owners of these establishments buy hardware from the local hardware store, fruit from the local fruit stands, beer and liquor from the local distributor, and so on. They have paid ridiculous amounts of money to the city for their liquor licenses, and they pay hefty rents or mortgages on their storefronts. Plus they hire local people.
Those local people that work there, after shelling out $100 to the city for that slap-in-the-face, blatant municipal moneymaker of a bar card, in turn shop at local markets, eat at local restaurants, patronize other local establishments, pay local parking tickets, and shell out obscene amounts of money for their rent.
And of course, let’s not forget the patrons. They eat at the local restaurants, pizza shops, delis, fast food joints, etc. They visit these bars and feed those owners and bartenders who in turn circulate money through the local economy. And on occasion they pay fines to the city for public urination or drunk and disorderly citations.
Like it or not, Hoboken, these bars make money for your town. So go easy, and think about the overall economic impact of driving them out of business. People move to Hoboken because it’s a fun place to live. Take that away and less people will want to live here. People come to visit Hoboken because it’s a great place to hang out. But ask any single guy who’s tried to get a girl to come over from Manhattan just how difficult it is to get some people to cross the Hudson. If we start enacting "Blue Law" legislation and give visitors the impression of a town full of Puritans, they’ll be even harder to get to come back.
I’ll admit this town can get raucous, but that’s part of living in a city. To come down hard on a hospitality industry that does so much for this community makes absolutely no sense.
A lot of people say the bars need to do more for the city, but I say they’re doing a lot already. The money spent on liquor licenses and bar cards should go toward increasing the police presence on the street – a police department that most bars can’t even call if trouble breaks out because they’ll more than likely can get fined.
The hypocrisy has to stop. If you want to fine bars for having lines outside, fine the fast food joints and pharmacies at the south end of Washington Street for having panhandlers standing outside their establishments aggressively accosting passersby. If you want to close the bars at 1 a.m., close the pizza joints and delis too, because they have loud people walking in and out as well. Don’t complain about "horror stories" from one pub-crawl (which had no arrests and raised $12,000 for charity, by the way), but then have a sale on green t-shirts outside your store for Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s Day.
And last but not least, don’t appeal to the young people of Hoboken to get you elected, then turn around and threaten to disrupt their lifestyle because some small group of squeaky-wheels starts preaching about their "Quality of Life." As one bartender put it, "it’s like when JFK used the Mafia to get him elected, then he immediately turned on them right afterwards."
The flaw in that comparison is that the bar community is not the Mafia, but legitimate "legitimate businessmen." However, if you start driving them out of business and those that support them out of town, who knows what you’ll have taking their place.
Bitch all you want about Yuppie-scum "ruining" your town, but the fact is that notion couldn’t be further from the truth. Face it folks, Yuppies have done a lot for Hoboken. They make a lot of money in Manhattan and then they spend it here.
I think on the whole Hoboken is a terrific town. Granted, there are a lot of things about this town that bother me. But I guess I resigned myself to the fact that IT’S A CITY!!!
There are going to be other people doing other things that I don’t agree with, but that’s part of life in a city. I can either deal with that, or I can leave.
If the city of Hoboken, instead of thanking me for my patronage, keeps telling me I shouldn’t be here, then maybe I’ll start spending my money elsewhere. I’m sure the mayor of Jersey City wouldn’t mind.
If you know how I can effectively waste $50 in the metro area, please write to:
"Hal Wastes His Wages"
c/o The Hudson Current
1400 Washington Street
Hoboken, New Jersey 07030
Or via e-mail:
Current@hudsonreporter.com