Fine dining establishments with such a policy often have a selection of jackets and ties somewhere that they will loan to a patron who arrives without one or both. They don’t really care who you are or how much you make (as long as you can pay the tab and tip, as Sampiro notes), but they do want to create a certain atmosphere in the dining room. So they make it easy for a patron to comply with the dress code by having the required items available.
Those jackets don’t always smell so good.
I think you’re potentially being more than generous – I think many do care what you make, as a proxy for your ability to pay and tip well (and, to know “how things are done” in establishments of a particular social stratum). Even if I know a given poor guy isn’t going to dine and dash, and has saved up all year to afford my lavish prices – he’s still not necessarily my ideal audience. I’m going to be making certain assumptions about his ability to tip, to order high end wine, to spring for the lobster at M/P, etc. – all the things that make restaurauters and servers rich (in their fond hopes). It’s an overstatement to say that every establishment wishes it had fatcat customers, and I know plenty of folks who made a lot of money selling Coors Lite to idiot white frat boys or 40s to their Omega counterparts, but on the whole, your average establishment will say “more and higher” when it has latitude to answer the question “do you want your clients to have more or less money, higher or lower social status?”
Reminds me of an Alexei Sayle joke…
Since when has dressing smartly been a good judge of moral character?
“Hilter ? Mussolini ? Come on in! Lookin’ sharp tonight! Dig the uniform”
“Jesus ? Gandhi ? Piss off! No sandles!”
how yer diddlin?
ah…sod yer then.
One thing to consider is how these rules are selectively enforced. In one of these articles, a black would-be client switched his “too baggy” pants with a white friend. That friend had no problem entering the club.
It’s pretty common for someone looking to discriminate to make a rule against something common that many people are going to have, precisely so that they have some “legit” excuse to kick someone out arbitrarily.
That’s not cool.
In school dress codes, I do think there is a tendency to see black styles as “threatening” and white styles as “quirky”: for example, schools tend to come down harder, IME, on bagging jeans and tall Ts than on goth/emo styles or skater styles. Whether or not it’s the intent, it creates an atmosphere where the black kids feel a lot more harassed and constrained than the white kids.
Hoodies and baseball caps are banned in many places in the U.K as some people wear them to remain faceless on high mounted cctv., before you get all civil rights on this, they wish to remain anonymus because they are either intentionally or oppotunatly out to commit crimes.
Usually theft or mugging, sometimes just a thrill seeking physical assault on a stranger.
Sorry I don’t know if “Happy Slapping” occurs in the U.S…
Maybe he’s fuck-ugly?
Yeah, but keep in mind that many bars and clubs are trying to cultivate a particular image. If you don’t want a particular subculture frequenting your establishment, you just ban the more common affectations of that subculture. Hats, piercings, sloppy panys, wifebeaters, whatever.
When I lived in Boston in the 90s, a lot of the bars had strict dress codes against wearing jeans, cargo pants, sneakers, and untucked shirts. And Boston’s a pretty homogenious city anyway.
Perhaps millions of non-criminal British kids wear hoodies and baseball caps, because y’know they’re fashionable attire for that particular set. Were you a teddy boy? 
Well, I’m only racist against all colours, creeds and beliefs(!), but I can tell you with some certainty that if I owned a venue I too would filter out the baggy pants, underwear exposed, grim reaper-hooded top clad frumps.
In the same way as I don’t have anything against nudism per se but that there’s a time and a place for people to be strollin’ around with their junk hanging out, so too is there a time and a place to look like a Boyz In Da Hood extra… and my club would not be it.
Now, if it were a gang banger themed club I owned, well…
NB: I think it has something to do with safety also, in that it’s obviously a lot easier to hide a firearm in typical gang banger get-up (go figure!) than it is in reasonably fitting slacks and a shirt.
But that’s the problem. I’m not trying to look like a BITH extra. I’m just wearing the newest, latest. Back in my partying days, the early 90s, it was Cross Colours and Karl Kani. And everybody wore it.
I can see that rationale for caps, hoodies and baggy jeans. But Timberlands, sports paraphernalia, Do you really care what brand of shoe you get stomped with? And that Pistons jersey stands out quite nicely in a crowd. I really have a hard time believing a lot of these doormen are trying to be Steve Rubell. It seems like they’re relying on the need to prevent ruckus to limit their diversity.
In the second link the kids were obviously not gang affiliated; still couldn’t get in. I was going to post that link in the recent Rand Paul thread.
Plus I’ve seen plenty of thugs in a Gordon Gartrelle*, dressy slacks and shoes.
*Cosby Show reference
That’s fine if the image you are going for is “classy” but not fine if the image you are going for is “white.”
It is mighty suspicious if the only clothes you find too déclassé for your club are strongly associated with black culture. And no, not everything that is popular in black culture is automatically gang-associated or dangerous. Are his new Timberlands really trashier than my beat-up Converse? If all trashy clothes are banned, that’s one thing. But if you are letting white homeless people walk in and rejected black people in new, expensive clothes then that is a problem.
An associated problem is when you have a dress code that basically everyone is going to violate (say, “no watches”) but the only people you enforce it on are black. If your dress code is just a legal cover for excluding people based on illegal reasons, it’s not cool.
The thing is, I’ve only really seen those sort of dress codes at bars or clubs where black people are likely to frequent in urban neighborhoods.
Sorry, Mr. Timberlake. No Timbalands.
A bar in Milwaukee got into some hot water for this a few years back. Denied access to black people for their “clothing” but allowed in white people wearing exactly the same thing.
That’s what I came in to post about…
IIRC KMBC 9 did a “hidden camera expose!” where they tried to send equally-dressed black and white patrons into the Power & Light District, and it was the white patrons who were more likely to be stopped. It’s also worth noting that while they were enforcing the dress codes, every single dress code enforcement person I saw also happened to be black. Yet the cries of “racism!” we aired as a weekly psychodrama for years.
Is it okay to discriminate against white patrons, or something? That’s racism too.
Of course you are correct; my post was too brief. Let me amend it by changing the last sentence (and fixing a terrible typo) to “Yet the cries of “racism!” were aired by the media as a weekly psychodrama for years, despite there being no real evidence of a widespread, institutional, or even regular policy occurring.” Were some folks picked on unfairly? I’m sure of it, for the sole reason that even the best-intentioned people make mistakes. Did it rise to the level of racism in this specific instance? I do not believe it was ever proven.
It’s a moot point in this instance, as ever since immediately before the NAACP convention in town, the rules magically were lightened tremendously (which received a bit of cynical “money talks” discussion from liberal and conservative commentators alike on both Kansas City Week in Review and Ruckus). The new rules are as follows: http://www.powerandlightdistrict.com/index.cfm?page=info
I think even the most determined race-baiter would have trouble equating “sleeveless shirts on men; profanity on clothing; sweat pants or full sweat suits; bandanas; exposed undergarments (including undershirts) on men.” with Jim Crow.
Inappropriate attire can cause all kinds of legal problems.
