Dear Editor:
The City of Hoboken and the Hoboken bar owners have been creating, advertising and actively encouraging an attractive nuisance that is resulting in a great deal of human misery.
This year’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities in Hoboken resulted in people passed out on the street, public urination and more than a dozen people with lacerations to various parts of their bodies. The radio and other types of advertising leading up to this event are more intense than the ads for the Art and Music Festival. The bars employ a cover charge on only one day of the year. At least one Washington St. restaurant removes its tables to make more room to accommodate those out to get drunk. Personal responsibility is, of course, non-existent but there also must be responsibility from the bar owners and the city government.
No effective means of reducing the violence has been employed. In fact, the city facilitates the madness by adding celebrities to the parade, providing public toilets and condoning the overcrowding and drunkenness in the bars. While house parties are closed due to overcrowding, I have not seen one bar shut down. What about the business of serving the visibly intoxicated? Is that not against the law? Where is the enforcement? The “Hoboken Hospitality Industry” certainly carries some clout in this city, but enough is enough. In closing, the bad practice of assessing $2,000 fines one day of the year is ineffective, unfair and not good law. Our city should not be proud of the St. Patrick’s Day spectacle and should not support politicians who continue this sad tradition.
Bob, a Hoboken resident