Every few years, some downtown restaurant or bar plays music way too loudly way too late at night. Citizens get angry, a result of the ineffective noise ordinance, and City Council finally agrees to do something about it. The restaurant gets upset and says it’s not fair that they’re being targeted. Then the restaurant capitulates — or goes out of business — and the ordinance never passes. Repeat.
The cycle has begun anew. This time, as Dave McNair writes for The Hook, four businesses’ noisy nights have led the city to consider tightening up its noise ordinance. The Buddhist Biker Bar, Outback Lodge, LaTaza and Saxx have all annoyed enough of their neighbors with late-night music that the city figures they should just enact a blanket nighttime decibel restriction on restaurants and bars. The plan is to stick with the existing 75db limit, but make it run from 10pm-6m, seven days a week, rather than the narrower window that varies by day of week that’s the existing standard.
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