Here is story about my seaside town. A local guy bought a bar that had just closed up shop. He wanted to be a brewer and brews in the bar. The new bar he opened up is real nice place. The building was one of the old main street pharmacies. It has gold leaf window signs, wooden wainscoting, tin tiles on ceiling and beautiful woodwork. A very "Cheers" friendly vibe in look and in feel. Me and my friends and our bands play there often. We al attend the local open mic night and trivia nights. About a year or so before it opened a woman opened up a rather snooty high end clothing boutique next door. She owns the whole building her store is in and lives upstairs in an apartment two buildings over. Dan, the new bar owner, owns his building and lives upstairs over his bar.
As soon as he opened and had live music there was sound complaints. At the open mic night I like to attend there she used to peek her head through the window every Tuesday night right on cue, see if there was music being played and routinely call the cops. One night while the emcee was playing an acoustic ballad, a cop walked in, did a double take, and said "Um, er..you'll have to keep it down.. " This is as quiet as we could get it and he kept explaining that she could hear it in her opposite corner apartment a whole building over and had complained. Really?!? Then it got worse. This woman filed complaints about the cigarette butts on the sidewalk, noise outside the bar, people "urinating" in front of the bar on the sidewalk, and everything else she could get mad about. He used to take his leftover water from brewing out a back door and dump it down a grungy gutter drain. A friend of the woman said her little "poofy" dog walked through it, so he now has to pay big bucks to have it hauled away to facility. Now I frequent the bar as a musician who plays there. The bar is as nice as i've described. The house brewed beer is amazing. The place is clean, not seedy or excessively noisy. He put a cigarette can outside and people use it. People made sure to be quiet leaving the front of the bar, even though all up and down main street everyone else is a noisy as could be exiting other restaurants and bars. Even the wine bars. No one has ever urinated in the street. We stand out here to get fresh iar during breaks. But he faced city council and had his entertainment license removed. He almost lost his liquor license too, but it was saved since the other violations could not be proved. And all the Maine newspapers wrote about his "violations" giving him bad press. Long story short he got his ent. license back as long as his staff decimal checks the noise. Guys in their tall redneck-y pickup trucks sometimes roar down main street and set it off.. lol.. they also have a summer street fair and close the street off for the Blues festival. Bands play in all the bars and restaurants and play all up and down right on the street. So they decided the woman might have been harassing him unfairly. Some folks in town know the woman who owns the shop. They think she wanted the old bar to close up (the owners decided to retire) and never re-open as another bar and did all she could to close the new one. My town had a reputation as rough fishing village. Main street was all boarded up and there were very seedy bars throughout town. It was dangerous and drugs were bought and sold. In the nineties things started to change. By now its gentrified and is all art galleries, wine bars, and gelato parlors that cater to summer tourists. The next towns over have already become tourist towns and have strict noise ordinances so they have no live music at all except light jazz during the day at some of the nicer resturants seaside.. The bar we like is a nice one but it feels like the snooty new business owners still want it out. We love playing it but for a awhile we had to be quieter. It sucked. Now we can a bit louder, but still. He is the only bar in town that has to do this. There are other older bars at the end of the street that have been there forever and have bands that play so loud you can hear the music all the way down the street. She never complains about them. And even the new wine bars have noisy customers! But they must her friends. Oh, well. The crazy lady now summers elsewhere part of the year. The bar pays real nice though so we'll all keep rocking there. Besides I never really see many customers in her shop even though she has nice stuff in there. Maybe she won't be there for longer. I don't know.