This is nothing more than a piss poor pr stunt. The problem isn't kids in clubs, the problem is uneducated/poor youths with zero moral perspective in the clubs. Do they really think its gonna change when they become 18???????

There's a couple of points missing off of this. My post is going to be a wee bit long but I hope people notice it:

(1) Graham's apparent drive towards some kind of tiered system of licensing is going to create a new level of bureaucracy in an already convoluted and expensive process that will make it damn near impossible for new clubs to open and sequester clubs into separate categories. He kept speaking about "good clubs" vs. "bad clubs" and that concerns me since really, how the hell can you decide which is which when ABRA and the police were apparently already unable to notice that Club 1919 was being piss-poorly run. He kept going to great pains to cite the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club as "responsible" venue owners (and, btw, congratulations to them for showing up and sitting through that 7 hours of hell. I really enjoyed hearing from both of those individuals), but then turned and said they weren't really nightclubs but venue owners, regardless of their license class, so this wasn't really about them since he was after nightclubs. Divide and conquer.

(2) My biggest concern is this ditty from the Washington Post article that came out this morning:

"...[Graham] wants to restrict the renting of venues to outside promoters. That was the case Saturday morning at Smarta/Broadway, also known as Club 1919, on Ninth Street just off the bustling U Street corridor."

This is a really serious point, although it has yet (like anything else) to be clearly articulated in a firm proposal. This alone could seriously disrupt any future development of underground music that has no firm foothold.

It should be noted that the owner was trying to push the blame for the incident onto the band, claiming that the band booked the club and was therefore responsible for security (according to Graham's statement of what was related to him by the club owner). The band member that testified yesterday responded by simply claiming that was complete crap and they've yet to receive any of the door.

This kind of behavior, as I've learned from years in the rave scene (which often relies on booking events at venues for a single night and then moving on to new venues), is pretty much de rigeur for a lot of club owners--i.e., dicking over promoters raw. The idea that promoters are somehow an outside source that need to be regulated is absolute nonsense and would effectively wreck the ability of music scenes that have no established, consistent venues to go out and find new spaces.

For an example of what this would do: With the loss of the Navy Yard clubbing district (Tracks, Edge, Nation), the rave scene's options for venues shrank considerably. We have FIVE, which is one of the only 21+ venues that lets us consistently in, but is owned and operated by a guy who cut his teeth throwing parties at the Edge for years (and, for anecdotal fun, borrowed my Atari 2600 for a party in 2000). Buzzlife, which was housed in Nation for over a decade, has been forced to jump from venue to venue to venue, and has relied on club owners who operate clubs that are normally 21+ (like most clubs in DC--as the owner of the Rock 'n Roll Hotel noted after the hearing, it's economically difficult to open new all-ages or 18+ venues), to kindly change their policies for the evening and allow an 18+ event (such as the upcoming event Buzz is doing at the Rock 'n Roll Hotel and another one happening at Avenue).

If you start trying to restrict that, you're going to essentially kill the ability of music scenes that rove like that to be able to find a home. Imagine if the indie rockers that mostly read this site didn't have the Black Cat? You people would be FUCKED and you know it.

(3) My last point is of the idiocy of any kind of new, blanket policy. While Graham was going to great lengths to point out how great the Black Cat and 9:30 Club were as licensees, he neglected to point out that neither of those venues (or any of the traditional rock venues) require pat-downs at the door.

ALL the clubs I go to for raves or house or whatever events that are 18+ require that at the door (admittedly, they aren't looking for weapons but, well, you know). Introducing any kind of age restriction as some sort of (illogical) means to prevent violence at an event that ALREADY checks for weapons makes zero sense.

Yay. Long post.