Social Dancing Banned In New York

"You can assemble. But once you start dancing, the jackboots call the cops and you get a ticket. You should have heard the people calling into the local radio station."

Get a grip.

There are over 400 establishments with dance licenses in NYC.

A license costs about $600 -- and it's good for TWO years.

This isn't quite the end of the world.

Sheesh.

What you posted at 80 sounds reasonable. But, how it is being used, is not. It isn't about me getting a grip. People (whom I referred to as jackboots) are calling police about people dancing and the police are ticketing them.

A state court on Thursday upheld the city's Prohibition-era law that bans social dancing in bars, restaurants and certain clubs

ROFLMAO!!! Whats gonna be next, smoking?

A) It's the bar owner who gets ticketed.

B) There are two (2) inspectors for cabaret licensing who cover the entire city.

I doubt that it happens all that much.

The callers to 101.5 said they, dancers, got ticketed.

Somebody phoned in a perv the other day in my Internet cafe. He was downloading kiddie porn onto a CD. The cops came and took him away, and later the very impressive-looking Computer Crimes Unit came. They took part of the computer, then the next day came back and took the whole thing.

I was surprised but GLAD that someone would report this to the cops.

Now there are signs all over the place reading "Do not view, access or download illegal material on these computers!!! Violators will be subject to arrest by the NYPD." The signs have everyone scared of even looking at the legal stuff (most people don't know the difference).

Well, that is good. I support that.

POST #7 LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

That's very unlikely for a number of reasons.

Check the internet. See if you can find any news reporters of dancers being ticketed.

It doesn't happen. It's the bar owners who get it.

To my understanding from the coverage and the call ins, this is why 101.5 and 1010wins did the story in the first place. The callers were sending in their stories as tips about getting ticketed. This is why the articles were posted. I went to post mine and found the thread. I added my article to the thread.

Dance activists file lawsuit to reform cabaret laws

By Johanna Petersson

Like a conga line that got lost, the dance liberation movement took a hiatus for a year or two, but, like Tony Manero at 2001 Odyssey, they just couldn’t stay away.

Norman Siegel, former head of the New York Civil Liberties who is making his second run for public advocate, has gone to court to defend the right to boogie in bars. Two weeks ago, Siegel filed a lawsuit against the Department of Consumer Affairs, Department of Buildings, City Planning Commission and the city of New York challenging as arbitrary the city’s zoning restrictions on dancing, as well as claiming that prohibiting people’s right to dance is unconstitutional.

Siegel has teamed up with law professor Paul Chevigny, a New York University law professor who 13 years ago won a case in State Supreme Court that partially changed the city’s cabaret laws. Representing the musicians’ union, Chevigny succeeded in getting abolished the musicians’ clause that prohibited more than three musicians from playing together — as well as drums and horns being played — in live-music venues without cabaret licenses.

The plaintiffs in the current suit include Meredith Stead, a social dancing teacher who instructs in such styles as waltz, foxtrot and Latin; John Festa, a West Coast swing dancer; Gotham West Coast Swing Club; Bryan Cox, who teaches house dance; and Ian Dutton, a social dancer in the goth/industrial community.

In New York, the city that never sleeps and often regarded as the nightlife capital of the world, it is currently illegal to move one’s feet from side to side, get jiggy with it, shake one’s booty or move in any other way that might be interpreted as dancing in a restaurant or bar that doesn’t have a cabaret license.

There are at present 212 cabaret licenses issued in the five boroughs, and they are restricted under the city’s zoning to areas zoned Use Group 12, such as manufacturing-zoned areas.

But Siegel and the dance advocates are not down with that — and say people should be able to get down freely. Restricting social dancing is a restriction of freedom of expression, the lawsuit argues.

“The time has come,” Siegel said, “to let New Yorkers fully enjoy their constitutional right to dance.”

Siegel and the cabaret law reform advocates say the current laws have nothing to do with dancing but were revived during the Guiliani years as a way to control noise and overcrowding, issues they say should be addressed through other means.

A couple of years ago, then-Consumer Affairs Commissioner Gretchen Dykstra expressed hopes that a new system of nightlife regulations on noise, unruly crowds and dirty sidewalks would replace the laws against dancing. A public hearing was held, but since then Consumer Affairs has been silent on the issue.

According to nightlife industry sources, the Bloomberg administration was reluctant to push Dykstra’s cabaret law reforms after only just recently having instituted the smoking ban — mainly because operators feared the administration was going to push for a 1 a.m. closing time, and were ready to revolt. Dykstra has since moved on to head up the World Trade Central Memorial Foundation.

“This issue has just dragged on for years and years,” Chevigny said, “and now we came up with a theory of challenging it as an issue of free expression under the state constitution.”

Plaintiff Dutton is a pilot who lives in Soho and is a public member of Greenwich Village’s Community Board 2. He is a founder of Contempt, a nonprofit collective that sponsors goth/industrial dances.

“We have had problems finding a place because places with cabaret licenses prefer events with big spenders,” he said. “My friends and I don’t order bottles of champagne — we just want to have an event where our kind of music is played. Also, we have had problems in the past with having to move places because of the cabaret license laws and inspectors coming in.”

Dutton and his friends organize a monthly dance club at a location in the Village which doesn’t have a cabaret license. The trouble with challenging the Cabaret License Law, said Dutton, is that some people feel the community is loosing out on deciding what kind of bars and restaurants are opening up in the neighborhood. But he feels the community board by advising on liquor license applications gives the community full opportunity to voice its concerns.

“Just because people might be dancing, doesn’t mean that a place is good or bad,” he said. “I live on Sullivan St. and we have had a bar that played loud music, and often with its windows open — no one was dancing there — but they were still not a great neighbor to have.”

Dating from the Prohibition era, the 1926 Cabaret License Law requires any nightlife spot that wants to host dancing to hold a city-issued cabaret license. A D.C.A. spokesperson said the department has no comment on whether it is considering changing the current cabaret laws. “The Cabaret License Law is currently in force, and we enforce it,” the spokesperson said. “We received the complaint in this action and we are preparing our response.” The parties were to appear in court on June 29 to schedule the submission of both sides’ papers to the court.

Dancers get down on cabaret law at marathon protest

By Randi Cecchine

Bob Holtzman remembers dancing in the 1940s and ’50s in New York City, when on any weekend night you could go ballroom or cha-cha dancing at a variety of hotels and clubs. A devotee of ballroom and swing, he sees dancing as a healthy way to bring people together and encourage community and self-actualization.

“The whole idea of dancing with a partner has to do with learning to accommodate oneself to someone else,” he said.

Two weekends ago, the 75-year-old Holtzman could be found schooling young people in Madison Square Park, within sight of the Flatiron Building. He wasn’t running a course, however. He was advocating to repeal what he and others view as the city’s outdated cabaret laws, as part of a 24-hour dance marathon sponsored by Metropolis in Motion, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 by New York City residents who believe that the right to dance should not be restricted.

If the mass of twirling bodies braving the cold at the marathon was any indication, Holtzman is not alone. A total of nearly 400 people participated from noon Friday to noon Saturday, seeking to raise awareness of the laws, which curb dancing in any public establishment that lacks a cabaret license — meaning many bars and small clubs that find themselves priced out of dancing.

Shaking her tree on Saturday to D.J. Tarquin spinning a style called breakz, Elia Masur vented her frustration with the law.

“I love to dance, but clubs are expensive, and people are there to see and be seen, sipping cocktails and being self-conscious,” she said. “The feeling of moving your body and moving with other people is very important. We are distanced from each other without that.”

Metropolis in Motion members trace the most recent crackdown on dancing in small establishments to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who created the Nightclub Enforcement Task Force in 1997 to enact his quality-of-life campaign. Ever since, according to the pro-dance group’s Web site, the city has been waging a war against nightlife culture and industry, using its most lethal weapon: the Prohibition-era cabaret laws.

Norman Siegel, one of several attorneys present at the dance marathon, explained to the gathering on the event’s first day that the laws date from 1926, when they were used to limit “colored people dancing with Caucasians.”

Metropolis in Motion’s Web site says the law defines dancing as “three or more people moving in synchronized fashion” and that in 1960, there were 12,000 cabaret licenses in the five boroughs; now there are 200.

Abner Greene, a First Amendment expert and Fordham University Law School professor who attended the dance marathon, said, “Dancing is expression, and is thus presumptively protected by the First Amendment.

“Totally disallowing dancing unless the establishment has a hard-to-get cabaret license is a classically overbroad ordinance and is unconstitutional,” he said.

Metropolis in Motion is helping to draft a revision to the cabaret laws with City Councilmember Alan Gerson, who argues that the cabaret license should continue to be required for venues that can hold more than 200 people, but that licensing is unnecessary for smaller clubs, where the enforcement of existing zoning, noise and occupancy laws address potential safety concerns.

David Rabin, owner of Lotus nightclub on W. 14th St. and president of the New York Nightlife Association, said NYNA concurs. The nightlife association, he said, supports an incidental dancing exemption “whereby if a venue is not a dance club per se, but is just a bar or lounge or a live music venue and 20 or fewer people are moving to the music or a couple is dancing in a corner to a jukebox, there should be no penalty. It is ludicrous in that scenario,” he said.

John Libanati, owner of Brite Bar at W. 27th St. and 10th Ave. in Chelsea, has felt the chill of the Police Department breathing down his neck. He tells of a fellow Chelsea bar owner who was ticketed when the police discovered a few patrons dancing after investigating an unrelated noise complaint.

Libanti personally has stopped patrons from dancing in his bar in order to avoid violations. But he said, “If a group of people are standing around, grooving slightly to the music, I won’t stop them.”

Rabin, too, expressed concern about overregulation, because it discourages good operators, while at the same time encouraging “churn and burn” owners who open clubs for a short time before moving on to the next.

“If they overregulate, they run the risk of discouraging good operators from opening in New York,” he said. “I know of plenty of good operators who threw up their hands in frustration and opened clubs in Las Vegas or Miami instead.”

At the same time, Rabin is concerned that eliminating cabaret licenses altogether would indirectly penalize operators who have incurred considerable expense to get licensed. He hopes that if the law is changed, it will include a sunset provision to allow licensed operators time to recoup costs.

While the cabaret license itself is not expensive, it demands investment in a higher level of building code and safety compliance than State Liquor Authority licensing.

Libanti noted that if the cabaret law were repealed, bars and restaurants would jump at the chance to set up a D.J. booth to bring in extra revenue from cover charges. He worries that capacity limits and other safety measures wouldn’t be followed.

Meanwhile, John Mercury of Metropolis in Motion says his group hopes to work with NYNA in getting a law that’s acceptable to everyone.

“Clearly, more collaboration between community interests and the industry is needed,” he said.

At the dance marathon, attorneys Siegel and Paul Chevigny reiterated their position that the cabaret law violates state and federal constitutional protection of free expression.

“No one believes that in New York City, the world capital, the government stops people from dancing unless the government says it’s O.K.,” Siegel said. “When I grew up in Brooklyn, we had a term for this kind of scheme: It’s called cockamamie.”

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I'm a Pole dancer.

Can I dance at your house?

Elaine was a liberal slut, wasn't she. Nasty sometimes too. No wonder she was single.

That episode where she is going on and ON about the Kennedys is pathetic.

lol!

I didn't see the other Polish comments until now.

"In Rochester, NY, circa 1850, there was an old article about church members who decided to go to a dance. The church actually kicked them out calling it disgusting."

Rochester hasn't changed much in the last 157 years. It is still a Blue Nose town.

That's okay, you can dance at my house any time. :-)

Thank you for so graciously salvaging my lame joke!

:-)

Get it? "Lame"? A dancing joke? *nudge, nudge*

;-)