Posts by Simon Grigg
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Gym must be the barman
Actually I was involved with a club night in South London years back called exactly that, but Gym was one of the DJs
What do you think of the suggested policy whereby people can't go to a new bar after 2 am (or 3 as I believe they are trying in Chch) but the bar can remain open.
The problem is not the club travellers or marauders, it's people who get drunk. There are laws in place right now which say a)you cannot serve drunks and b) you cannot allow drunk people into a licensed premise. The issue is that both are being flaunted. From my experience the overwhelming bulk of people in a club at 4am or so simply are not drinking that much, they're there for the social activity, the dancing, the talk and the music. If you've pushed the limit drink wise any responsible venue will have long since ceased to serve you and sent you home.
Club life comes alive in Auckland around 3 or 4, and largely it's peaceful and very non-aggro. The problems are not with the places serving the drinks at 4am or 5am, but with the drunks on the streets, the kids and the afterwork stragglers who are not in the places that are acting responsibly
So what do I think of it? It's a non-starter to solving a much bigger problem.
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Is it possible that those who decry his efforts need some protection for their own drinking habits?
No
He may be a fine chappy but, as a person who's never had an issue with my own consumption of booze (but has had to deal extensively with the problems others have with the stuff) and has some experience as a licensee, albeit a few years back, and a late night habitué of licensed venues, shutting bars at 2am is simply going to aggravate a messy situation.
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Third, spend a bit of time at A and E tonight - or in a cop car - if you want to see what he's getting at.
I'm not sure that changing licensing hours is gonna make a dent in any of that as much of the problem drinking happens well before the early hours and has happened that way for decades. As Craig says, enforce the laws we have now before trying to fix something that often isn't broken.
Sir Geoffrey may not be as out of touch as many think but I'm wondering what his experience of many of the inner city clubs at 5am is? Mostly, and I've done a fair bit of this, they pretty happy controlled places. The real issue is the stuff going on outside and much of that comes from a) a failure to enforce the laws NZ has in the hours before 2am, or b) drinking on non-licensed premises.
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I'm told it was far worse in the days of six o'clock closing.
I owned a busy licensed venue which was trading during the transition from 3am closing to 24 hour licensing. When the law changed we rushed out to get our extension (I think it was about 94) and were given a 24 hour license without much problem as we were told we were on a well-behaved list kept by the police and licensing folks. We decided to go to 6am nightly (and no more) and rubbed our hands in glee at the idea of all that extra turnover.
The problem for most clubs is that they need to do a whole week's business in two nights a week (Weds and Thurs are simply hit and miss and often don't break even but you have to do them to remain credible with your crowd), so to be able to extend that bill paying window from 8 hours a week to 14 hours a week was very attractive.
But the reality was that the bar take simply didn't change much...people came out later, and stayed longer but drank the same. Where we made money was by getting more people wandering through and paying the door charge but it was minimal compared to the wage bill.
But it was very much a more controllable, more pleasant crowd who had longer to drink pretty much the same amount and it meant you were offering a pretty decent value for the dollars paid on the door which made people happier to pay it. It made our lives easier.
Of course none of this did anything to prevent the real drunkeness that plagued (and still plagues) Auckland's CBD...the after work power drinkers who roam the inner city legless by 9pm
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I guess it's a matter of where your reference points lie but after a few years in Asia, I've been in a state of joyous bliss over the driving in Auckland. So polite, so gracious, and there is so little of it.
Apart from Ponsonby Rd that is.... (where there is still little of it but they drive like fucking maniacs).
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Simon how did the Box/CC night go?
Rather well actually. As someone said, we emptied the Lawn Bowls clubs and Bingo Halls that weekend.
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It was used as a reason for making CDs MORE expensive, even though they were cheaper to produce and distribute than vinyl.
AFAIR the rationale at the time was the cost of developing the technology, which was also used to reduce CD royalties to artists by 75%
Because at the time they were no easier to copy than tapes or vinyl. It was several years before the first burners became commercially available.
Very true. The first Cd copiers were Cd to cassette. Until the early 1990s it was home taping that was killing music.
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Ta David, that really moved me, and knowing you, made me smile a lot too..
And ta for making it. The world is a much better place with you still around.
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I know it's blowing our own trumpet somewhat but I just had a copy of the Greg Churchill / Ron Salmon Box CD arrive in Bali and it's rather fucking good. The wash of nostalgia....
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Oh good, *someone* apart from me likes the new EC album
No, no, I do too. I like Elvis when he goes all plastic Americana, most especially the slow stuff.
But it ain't as good as the last one, the instant noodle album