I hope the fire marshal puts you out of business, moron.

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, so Columbia went a little balls-up nuts Saturday. Evidently our football team failed to humiliate us as expected and several thousand drunk morons were released on the town drinking and fucking and running each other over with trucks. And of course these beacons of the future all ended up at the Five Points bars, because where else would you want to spend your time? Whatever.

The fire marshal closed down two bars. One of them had 321 people over the maximum occupancy.

Let me repeat that. This is NOT a large building. They had FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY SIX people in it. Think about that for a second. Just consider what would happen if this little wooden building caught fire with so many incredibly drunk college students crammed in it they must have been hanging them on nails and stashing them in the rafters? What the fuck do they hire the bouncers to do? Is their sole job to drag the football players out when they start throwing punches? To pretend to check IDs? Did they shove them in like ex-sumo wrestlers on the Tokyo subway? Did nobody look around and say, “Holy shit, I’m having flashbacks to the Coconut Grove up in here! Maybe this is a bad idea!”

Lest you think this is an isolated accident, this is the FIFTH time they’ve dragged the owner of this and several other Five Points bars to court for the same thing. Does this fuckwit think the fire chief does this shit for fun? Is his head stuck so far up his ass he can’t possibly imagine why fire safety for nightclubs might be important? That having considerably more than twice the number of people you’re rated for in your bar is a bad enough idea, but the fact that the vast majority of them are overexcited, oversexed, overdrunk, and under 30 means you’re just asking for a deadly fight, a fire, a medical emergency (good luck getting the paramedics in there, buddy) or a truly amazing plumbing breakdown.

Oh, by the way, this guy is such a good neighborhood citizen that he routinely does his level best to get people to take pictures of his bar down from Facebook. Well, that’s not exactly true - only if you took them in the morning, when a half an acre around the place looks like Woodstock after everybody came down off their highs and went home and left their cups.

Frankly, as a civilization we may be better off without the kind of fuckwits who stuff those college bars, but I don’t want to have to smell barbecued dumbass on my way to work in the morning. This flagrant disregard for the law, common sense, and people who have really truly died in fires like this just makes me so mad I could spit acid.

Oh, what’s the punishment for gross negligence like getting your fifth overcrowding citation? $350 and a suspended 10 day sentence.

Link.

2

$350 and a suspended 10 day sentence? Sounds like the kind of gross inconvenience that guarantees there will be a sixth, seventh, and eighth occurrence, right up to the one that ends in fire…

3

…followed by “nobody could have expected this terrible loss of life.”

4

The guy probably made $350 a minute that night.

ETA - but I’m sure the plumber made out like a bandit. :slight_smile:

5

Getting that many people into a bar that probably charges some kind of cover, and having them buy drinks and bar food on top of that, probably makes him a pretty penny. The $350 fine, economically, is just a cost of doing business for this guy.

Once penalty > revenue, he’ll probably stop.

6

Yup. The kids have a certain amount of responsibility, for going to a place that is obviously seriously, dangerously overcrowded, but kids are notorious for bad judgement (even when not drinking), and there are laws in place to help them make better judgements which this bar owner is not even a little interested in.

7

I wondered what Columbia would look like Saturday night. Now I know.

And I’m fearful that I know the bar you’re talking about.

8

Here’s the bar in question on Google Street View - it’s the red building set back a bit. Just in case you were picturing some huge New York dance club.

ETA - Kolga, from this I figure it must have looked like some stranger’s armpit.

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I gottta ask though, just how do they fit more than twice the number its rated for? Is there something wrong with the rating system?

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There’s “fit” as in “cram them in like sardines” versus “fit” as in “fit comfortably and safely such that a deadly stampede or other disaster won’t happen should they need to evacuate.”

11

I have a feeling the bar owner’s fire insurance policy just got canceled.

12

Wow, that’s bizarre. What happened to the West End? I thought it was still there. And since when did anyone give a shit about football? Times they are a’ changing. Football team always did suck, though.

13

Suspended the sentence! They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool, and that bastard, he smiled at me!

14

What, and it didn’t get cancelled the last four times?

There’s at least one bar that does seem to be underrated for occupancy, and I don’t know if that’s because of exits or sprinklers or something, but my boyfriend was there (Art Bar) once when the fire marshal made them all leave and get counted - but it wasn’t actually over the limit. And there was plenty of space in the place. I can’t imagine that there was plenty of space in Pavlov’s.

Seriously, when do you drop the dime on your employer when it comes to that? Evidently not at four hundred, nor at five hundred… do women have to be getting knocked up just by trying to squeeze their way through a mass of humanity to get to the bathroom before somebody calls the fire department? What if somebody had had a heart attack? Would anybody have even noticed?

ETA - what’s the West End? I’ve never been in a single one of those college bars, and I can’t keep track of them at all.

15

Meh, I remember one club in particular in the US that had a huge queue outside because they were “at their legal capacity”. It had something like 120 people, and could easily have fit another 300 or so. So I’d have to see pics of just how crowded it was before rushing to judgement.

Suffice to say that if the rules weren’t there, no one would be complaining. Here is a picture of Space in Ibiza, the most crowded club I’ve been in, for comparison. Now if it’s as bad or worse than this, then people may have a point. But in the litigation-crazy USA, I’d imagine a lot of places have ridiculously low legal capacities.

16

Man, you guys are old.

17

E2 Nightclub Stampede - 21 dead with no fire at all

Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire - 165 dead

Cocoanut Grove Fire - 492 dead

Ozone Disco Club Fire - at least 162 dead

That’s four random clicks in the Wikipedia category “nightclub fires”. (Don’t ask me why the first one was on the list, but it’s a great example nonetheless of what else can happen when you cram too many people into too little space.) I didn’t cherry pick. Guess what they all have in common?

18

If you’re so unhappy about drunken students, a fire at an overcrowded bar is a solution, not a problem.

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Oops, sorry, we were talking about two different Columbias. The West End is a dive about a block from campus (in uptown Manhattan).

20

Oh, sorry, I expected everybody would know where the drunkest dumbest kids are. :slight_smile:

I hate the inebriated losers, but I hate people who have no respect for the law or public safety and those who let them off with the gentlest kiss on the wrist a lot more.