Rock this town

Boston's leaders are increasingly open to the idea of a later, livelier city. Here's a practical, no-BS guide to making it happen.

by Jason Gay

Years from now, people will remember 1999 as the year Boston put on its party pants and became a real city. They'll recall a mayor named Menino, who liberated our long-shackled nightlife scene. They'll shake their heads and curse a time when the trains shut down at midnight, the bars wrapped at two, and the city's best dance club after three was a diner. Years from now, people will drink past 3 a.m. in Allston, dance past four in Chinatown, and gaily wobble to public transit as the sun begins to rise. And they will raise a glass to those who made it happen.

Whooooa. Slow down.

Before everyone goes bonkers about this noise from City Hall about the possibility of extending hours of operation at Boston bars and nightclubs, can we all just take a quick, cold reality shower?

First off, Boston's transition from a sleepy city to a nightlife mecca is going to take a while. Club kids may have choked on their pacifiers when they heard Menino and Police Commissioner Paul Evans say they were considering letting certain downtown bars stay open later, but night owls shouldn't plan on livin' la vida local anytime soon. This figures to be a lengthy and contentious journey marked by dozens of neighborhood howls, protests, and emergency meetings. Let's put it this way: you have a better chance of catching Dapper O'Neil in a vinyl suit at ManRay than you have of clubbing until 4 a.m. in the next six months. As for the opposition, you can take a chill pill, too. Bookish Boston isn't going to become Bourbon Street or the Lower East Side. You're not going to get steamrolled; your voices will be heard. Rest assured that eight billion activists will be making eight billion phone calls and writing eight billion letters to the editor to try to make sure that no one fresh from a Lansdowne Street club pees on your stoop at 4 a.m.

That said, this could work. A nightlife, that is. Boston could become a first-rate, civilized late-night destination in a way that enlivens and invigorates the city at minimal disruption to the people who live here. It wouldn't benefit just conventioneers, fat cats, scenester club owners, college kids, or the town drunks. With proper planning, keeping Boston up after dark could be a smart, exciting decision. It could change Boston for the better.

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Let's start with a smidgen of history. Boston's achingly early closing times -- right now, 1 a.m. for some establishments, 2 a.m. for the lucky others -- dates back nearly 100 years. Puritan-settled Boston wasn't exactly founded as a party town, and by the turn of the century, city leaders, fed up with the late-night carousing of immigrants and other non-Puritans, passed a series of laws restricting alcohol use, including caps on the hours of drinking establishments.

"There was a general Anglo-Saxon reaction to what they viewed as the drinking habits of immigrants," says Thomas O'Connor, a professor of history at Boston College. "All of this noise and carousing and drinking was generally categorized as unseemly in public, and [city leaders] didn't want it at all hours of the night."

Since then, natives have viewed Boston's early closing time as everything from a godsend to a mild inconvenience, while out-of-towners have invariably cited it when they bash the city. You've probably heard this before: the bars close early, the bagels suck, and the baseball team has a little problem fielding grounders in the late innings of playoff games. And so on.

"The [tourist complaint] that's really off the charts is the issue of having to leave a club at 2 a.m.," says Pat Moscaritolo, executive director of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, which surveyed travelers coming to this year's Ryder Cup matches in Brookline.

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What local officials and businessmen have to say
Boston's after-hours scene
Five reasons why extended hours of operation are a good idea

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It's not just the tourists who get shortchanged. Boston's early closing time has long been the bane of college students, twentysomethings, and other assorted night owls. It's one of the reasons that people grow to dislike this city. It's a reason that some people leave.

"It's just absurd," says Ken Reeves, a Cambridge city councilor and an occasional nightclub denizen. "And to think that people always say that Boston is the most European of US cities. Not quite."

Over the years, occasional attempts to change Boston's closing times have all failed. The hurdles have ranged from neighborhood concerns to public safety to transportation issues to the economy (when business is down, longer hours aren't so appealing). But the biggest roadblock has been politics. In this city, neighborhood groups wield substantial power -- certainly more than nightclub owners -- and politicians, rightly, feel more beholden to neighborhood interests. And neighborhoods tend not to be interested in 4 a.m. closings. (A number of neighborhoods aren't even interested in 2 a.m. closings, for that matter; witness the prolonged battles between Bay Village and Jacques, says Ken Reeves.)

But recently, the political pendulum has started swinging the other way. City leaders, propelled by a hot economy, major development projects, and the high of hosting nonpareil sporting events such as the Ryder Cup and the All-Star Game -- not to mention the Big Dig and the eventual razing of the Central Artery -- are eager to fortify Boston's position as a big-time tourism and conventioneering site. And they're looking for any way to bring in the business.

Promoting tourism and conventioneering is the main reason Menino says he's open to the idea of letting certain downtown hotel bars extend their closing times from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., and possibly to 4 a.m. Paul Evans, who used to be opposed, now says he's open to later hours if neighborhoods aren't disrupted. This establishment skirt-loosening has been big news: the announcements were lead stories in the Globe and covered on virtually every local television newscast.

Although both Menino and Evans were guarded, their comments represented the most significant progress on the late-night issue in eons. It's clear what's responsible for that progress. With tourism and the convention biz soaring, the idea of a late-night Boston has something it never had before: political muscle.

And that's changed late-night hours from a fringe cause to one of the more serious debates in the city today. Says Alan Eisner of the Boston PR firm Regan Communications, who serves as executive director of the Massachusetts Hospitality Association, an interest group serving more than 90 local clubs: "It's opened the door."

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Not everyone's in love with the late-night idea, of course. When any major change is proposed in Boston, people's backs go up quicker than a black cat's on Halloween. This time, some of the criticism is legitimate, but a whole lot of it is needlessly defensive. You know the gripes: Stay open past 2 a.m.? We don't need to be open past 2 a.m. It's all about booze, anyway. We're Boston -- we don't need to be New York. We don't need to cater to the needs of outsiders. We should be proud of what we are.

Hyperbole needs to be struck from this discussion. First of all, can we stop talking about this issue strictly in terms of alcohol? Yes, later hours for bars, clubs, and restaurants means these establishments will, in all likelihood, serve alcohol later into the evening. Yes, presumably it means more people will be drinking more. It probably means some additional alcohol-related trouble. But it's just absurd to suggest that later hours are merely about letting drunks get drunker.

Who to call About extended hours for bars and clubs: Mayor Thomas Menino (617) 635-4500 mayor@ci.boston.ma.us About extended hours for the MBTA: MBTA (617) 222-3200 Transportation Committee Massachusetts State House (617) 722-2460

Let's also stop saying this is just for the tourists and the students. Sure, students would be psyched about later hours, and interest in promoting tourism is what got the mayor off the couch. But there's a much broader constituency for the prospect of a later, livelier Boston. Not everyone who wants to stay out late is under 23 years old or visiting from Barcelona.

"This isn't visitors versus residents or residents against college students," says Moscaritolo. "Why does Boston always have to view these things as sporting events, where someone has to win and someone has to lose?"

Opponents of later hours also need to stop framing the issue in terms of their own lifestyles. You know: What the hell do people need to be doing out at 3:45 a.m.? I have no interest in being out at 3:45 a.m. Sure, Bostonians revel in their chronic contrariness, but it's hard to judge whether you'd be into doing something if you've never been exposed to it at all.

Consider the Museum of Fine Arts' recent John Singer Sargent exhibit, which stayed open 24 hours a day during its final weekend. Until the MFA cooked up this idea, it's a good bet that if you'd asked 100 people to name what they'd like to be doing at 2 a.m., not one of them would have said, "I'd really like to be walking around looking at 19th-century art!" But the Sargent-athon was a sold-out success, heavily hyped and well organized; thousands of people attended the wee-hours exhibit.

"It was unbelievable," says Vivien Li, the executive director of the Boston Harbor Association, who attended the late-night Sargent peek. "There were people of all ages at 1:30 in the morning. A lot of people were in evening attire; it was clear they came from another function. There were a lot of students, people in business attire. Older people found it fun to be at the MFA at [that] time in the morning."

Of course, part of the appeal of the MFA's jamboree was that it was unprecedented; no doubt if you did something like it every weekend, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Still, the success of the show underscores a fundamental aspect of the nightlife debate: people really never know unless they try.

And more people, it seems, are willing to give it a try.

"It might be worth testing on a limited basis," says Vivien Li. "People may want to stay up a little later."

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But in order to make it work, those who support extended hours are going to have to make a few adjustments, too. First of all, be willing to take baby steps. Don't expect Comm Ave to turn into a 4 a.m. strip from Brighton to the Back Bay. (Besides, that will probably never happen, especially as "student ghettos" such as Allston-Brighton, which may have been more likely candidates for this kind of stuff in past years, become increasingly gentrified.) Instead, proponents of later hours should endorse a more piecemeal approach, starting with a few establishments downtown, seeing how it goes, and taking it from there.

At the same time, neighborhood concerns must be taken seriously. Some people may like to pull the covers up a little earlier than you do, but that doesn't give you the right to dismiss them out of hand. Imagine living in a neighborhood that is already plagued by problems related to bars that close at 1 or 2 a.m. Now imagine how you'd feel if those bars could be kept open longer, especially if you thought it was a move to suck up to tourism officials and nightclub kingpins.

"I think it's unlikely that neighborhood associations, as a group, would ever support this kind of change," says Mark Merante, a South End attorney and activist who supports later hours (but whose own residential group, the Claremont Neighborhood Association, has yet to take a position.) "This is an issue where people's views tend to be determined by life experiences, as well as lifestyles, and Boston has some very diverse lifestyles and experiences. I don't think you're going to get most people to agree on it."

One more thing: people who support extended hours have to stop comparing Boston to New York. Thousands of people in this city suffer from such a throbbing Manhattan inferiority complex that they burn holes in their suede Pumas trying to make Boston as much like the Big Apple as possible. But nothing irritates Boston's defenders more. You want to get on a Brahmin's dark side fast? Say we should do things the way they do it in New York.

Instead, think of improving Boston because it's Boston. This is a vibrant city, a prosperous one, and a desirable place to live. It's a place that values tradition, to be sure, but it's also changing -- it's becoming a more youthful city, with more young professionals and families choosing to settle downtown rather than move to the 'burbs. This is not the time to shut out new ideas, even if it's an idea as apparently frivolous as staying out later at night. This isn't a conflict between old and new Boston. It's an open question, an opportunity.

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Of course, there are some problems with Menino's later-hours idea as it's currently being proposed. The main problem is that it's too narrow.

Late-night republic What are Cambridge's chances for extending hours? If you think Boston is reluctant to change its bar hours, come over to Cambridge. You want sleepy? In Cambridge, instead of "Manhattanization," people talk about "Newtonization." "It's been determined that Cambridge is more a town than a city, which is an absolutely inaccurate characterization," grumbles Ken Reeves, a former Cambridge mayor and current city councilor, who supports extending the hours of local bars. Indeed, even though college-rich Cambridge has plenty of denizens in their 20s, there's no big push to extend hours of operation at the city's bars and nightclubs. The main reason, locals say, is that the city is extremely residential, with densely populated neighborhoods surrounding most of its commercial strips. Extending hours "really hasn't been talked about much in Cambridge," says Richard Scali, who oversees the operations of Cambridge's licensing commission. A more pressing issue, Scali says, is the city's policies for 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. closing licenses. Cambridge sets firm caps on the number of establishments allowed to have 2 a.m. closings, which frustrates many owners of bars and clubs that have to close one hour earlier. Of course, there are Cambridge bar and club owners who would welcome the opportunity to stay open even later than 2 a.m. if such an opportunity were offered. "I think it'd be kind of exciting," says Charlie Christopher, who owns several Cambridge establishments including Toad, the Cambridge Common, the West Side Lounge, and the eponymous Christopher's. "It reminds you of that city-that-never-sleeps feeling." The question is, how much of Cambridge wants to be a city that never sleeps? The city of 95,000 is in a major transition, as many of its older, working-class residents are being replaced by a younger, more affluent crowd. These well-moneyed twenty- and thirtysomethings might be more open to extended hours than their predecessors, but local neighborhoods tend to be extremely protective of their tranquillity. Even Reeves admits: "You have to acknowledge that there is another point of view that feels just as strongly the other way." In other words, Cantabrigians, don't hold your breath. -- JG

Right now, the mayor says he's open to allowing only downtown hotel bars in the Copley, Boylston, and Tremont areas to stay open. That might be a great idea if hotel owners were champing at the bit to keep their bars open later. But we checked; they aren't. The hotel-bar crowd tends not to be a late-night crowd anyway; plus, if you're the Four Seasons, do you really want to get bum-rushed at 2:30 a.m. by a bunch of yahoos coming from another bar who are itching to drink until 4? (Okay, all you Sigma Chis, let's haul ass to the Bristol Lounge!)

Local hoteliers, though not saying no, have pretty much adopted a wait-and-see attitude about the mayor's proposal. "If it was a good business decision and the customers valued the additional service, we'd probably do it," says Dennis Clark, general manager of the Fairmont Copley Plaza.

The other thing about the mayor's proposal is: hotel bars? Sure, places like the Copley's Oak Bar and the Ritz have genuine history and character, but a lot of hotel bars have as much pizzazz as a waiting room at Mass General. Hard to think that anyone is going to be psyched about the possibility of having more time to suck on $8 Scotch and sodas, listen to cheesy piano players warble Captain & Tenille covers, and get hit on by aging out-of-town salespeople.

So it's crucial that a few other places be kept open too. Here, the mayor has a bit more latitude than he's letting on. The city is fortunate in that some of its biggest nightlife districts -- Lansdowne Street and bars in the Tremont/Boylston area -- aren't right next to residential neighborhoods. The growing number of establishments in the Financial District are pretty much neighbor-free, too. These places could have their hours extended with fairly minimal disruption. And this would greatly supplement the dull-as-dirt hotel-bar scene.

From there, later hours should be examined on a case-by-case basis. Establishments that want a 3 or 4 a.m. closing time could apply for one, and a review would give careful consideration to neighborhood impact. Or the city could do what cities like Cleveland have done, and create an after-hours zone where everything would be allowed to remain open later. And it shouldn't hesitate to yank or scale back the licenses of clubs that chronically disturb the area.

It's likely that extended hours will spark a bit of infighting within the bar and club community itself. Naturally, any nightclub owner who feels that competitors are getting an unfair advantage based on geography is probably going to go ballistic. There's already a bit of conflict in Boston between clubs that close at 1 a.m. and those that get to stay open until 2 a.m.; an extension of hours is sure to fuel more trouble.

"Right now there is inequity in the system depending on the location of the licensed [property]," says the Massachusetts Hospitality Association's Eisner. "There are some licenses to close at 1 a.m., and also a 2 a.m. closing license. [Extended hours] could, depending on what's accomplished, exacerbate the inconsistencies."

Assuming that these issues can be worked out -- Eisner says optimistically that the extended-hours debate could give the city an opportunity to streamline its currently labyrinthine licensing system -- it will be interesting to see what develops. Can extended hours work elsewhere in the city? Perhaps, though it's doubtful that residential areas will be willing to accept any change until the program succeeds elsewhere.

And no one should be pushing to keep the entire city up late, anyhow. "Neighborhoods give Boston a very distinctive position, but along with that comes people who are very protective of that," says Moscaritolo. "It's definitely a tradeoff, a balancing act."

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Other issues need to be addressed to make an extended-hours trial program succeed. One is the work force. If clubs and bars are open later, people who work in clubs and bars will have to work later. This is a trickier problem than you might think. Many late-night workers are young people holding down second jobs or earning tuition money. A lot of them have someplace to be in the morning -- school, or another job. Right now, they can get away with going to bed at 2:30 a.m. It could be a different story if it's 4:30.

Law enforcement, too, will be a major concern. Later hours will require more police, and that's largely why Commissioner Evans is reluctant to support anything bigger than a limited, downtown-only program. More police will cost more money, too, and the city will have to be financially prepared to take that hit.

Another huge issue is transportation, particularly mass transit. It makes absolutely no sense to extend hours for bars and nightclubs without running the subways later. (For that matter, it makes absolutely no sense that the T currently shuts down before 1 a.m., nearly an hour before many establishments close.)

Here, the MBTA's feet need to be held to the fire, because the agency's management really doesn't want anything to do with running trains later at night, which it regards as a colossal headache. Progress seemed to have been made this spring, when a legislative transportation committee asked the T to explore a winter 1999-2000 program that would have tested late-night hours on weekends. But when legislators became embroiled in a brouhaha over the state budget, the proposal gathered dust. By the time the fall rolled around, the MBTA said that too much time had passed to launch the pilot program this winter.

This drives members of the transportation committee crazy, and rightly so. "We're going to call them [T management] back in and find out why this isn't gonna happen, and one would hope that the reasons would be more substantive than they have been already," says State Senator Robert Havern (D-Arlington), the co-chair of the transportation committee, who adds: "I think everyone wants to try [later T hours.] I haven't heard one negative opinion from the general public on it."

Finally, it's critical that those who support extended hours speak up. It's good that Boston's licensing board is organizing a "blue-ribbon panel" to examine the after-hours issue. It's good that club owners and neighborhood groups and tourism officials are talking about assembling another review group. But it's also important for the public at large to get involved. If you're into this idea, that means you. Call City Hall. Write your state rep. Register to vote, for crying out loud. Make your presence known.

Yes, the door is open. Extended hours are finally a viable idea. Never has there been a more politically favorable moment. The mayor's on board. The police commissioner, sort of. It's in the papers and on television.

The culture can be changed. Get off the couch and help make it happen.

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.