Category: reason

City’s Allowing “Black Lives Matter” Street Painting Doesn’t Require It to Allow Other Writings

From Judge Lorna G. Schofield’s opinion Thursday in Women for America First v. De Blasio (S.D.N.Y.), which strikes me as quite right (see this post of mine from June):

On July 28, 2020, Plaintiff Women For America First filed a Complaint alleging that Defendants’ denial of Plaintiff’s request to paint a mural similar to New York City’s eight “Black Lives Matter” murals deprived Plaintiff of its First Amendment rights ….

The surfaces of public streets are not traditional public fora for the dissemination of private speech. Plaintiff argues that public streets are public fora that “have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.” Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum (2009). Plaintiff accordingly concludes that the government must narrowly tailor any content-based restrictions of speech to serve a compelling government interest.

This argument is unavailing. Plaintiff does not seek to congregate and share messages with the public in New York City streets. Plaintiff seeks to paint a message on New York City streets. The United States Supreme Court’s characterization of a public street as a place of assembly where citizens can communicate, is undeniably distinct from an endorsement of the use of the face of a street—usually reserved for transportation-related guidance—as a message board for private speech. This conclusion is underscored by Local Law § 10-117(a), which prohibits writing, painting and drawing on New York City streets, absent express permission….

As an alternative argument, Plaintiff contends that, by permitting the Murals, Defendants opened up New York City streets as designated public fora and triggered an obligation to permit similar expression of different viewpoints absent a compelling reason for denial. A designated public forum “exists where government property that has not traditionally been regarded as a public forum is intentionally opened up for that purpose.” The government, however, does not create a public forum—of any variety—”by inaction or by permitting limited disclosure.” In addition, the government does not create a public forum when it engages in government speech.

Plaintiff has not shown a substantial likelihood of success with respect to this alternative argument because Plaintiff has not shown that the Murals constitute private—not government—speech. “The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.” The government is free to “select the views it wants to express.” In doing so, it does not trigger an obligation to permit similar expression of other viewpoints….

“In [Summum,] … many factors indicated that park monuments represented government speech, among them, (a) government’s historic use of monuments to speak to the public, (b) a tradition of parks selectively accepting and displaying donated monuments, (c) the public’s close identification of public parks with the government owning the parkland, and (d) the accepted monuments were meant to and had the effect of conveying a government message….”

Even privately contributed monuments can constitute government speech. “Just as government-commissioned and government-financed monuments speak for the government, so do privately financed and donated monuments that the government accepts and displays to the public on government land.” For example, in Summum, the Supreme Court found that monuments placed in a public park constituted government speech, even though “many of the monuments were not designed or built by the [c]ity and were donated in completed form by private entities.” The Supreme Court rejected the premise that a completed work conveys one message—that of the creator or donor—and that a government must accept that singular message to engage in government speech….

Several of the factors the Supreme Court looked to in … Summum and [other cases] apply here. First, markings on public streets have historically been used as a means for the government to communicate with the public. Particularly in light of Local Law § 10-117(a), the surfaces of New York City streets are reserved primarily for government communication. As a result, public street markings are likely to be “closely identified in the public mind with the [government],” specifically the DOT.

In addition, the pleadings suggest that Defendants intended the Murals to be government communication. Tweets from the Mayor’s office confirm that suggestion. For example, the June 15, 2020, Tweet explains that the “Black Lives Matter” message will be shared all summer and notes that the Mayor’s office intends to make the Fulton Street block pedestrians-only and to coordinate with the MTA regarding transit. In addition, the June 19, 2020, Tweet explains that Defendants were “not just painting the words #BlackLivesMatter on streets,” and instead, were “sending a message that these are our values in New York City.” Finally, Defendants were involved in the creation of, and controlled the content of, the six later murals. For example, Defendants paid for the mural on Fifth Avenue with DOT funds. These factors all strongly support the conclusion that the Murals constitute government speech.

The pleadings suggest that this is not an instance in which Defendants have merely affixed a seal of approval to pass private speech off as government speech. Although Defendants did not create or commission the murals on Fulton Street and Richmond Terrace, the acceptance and preservation of those murals, in combination with Tweets explaining the government’s intention to share the message that “Black Lives Matter,” suggest that Defendants used these privately donated works to engage in government speech. The focus and clarity of Defendants’ message help to underscore this point. Cf. Matal v. Tam (2017) (rejecting the premise that federal trademark registrations constituted government speech, in part because together, the registrations were “incoherent babbling” rather than a concerted government message). Defendants adopted a message of social consequence and disseminated it during a time of social unrest. Black lives matter. It is plainly evident that these words—which affirm the value of Black lives—have meaning separate and apart from any organizations or movements of the same name.

Plaintiff also contends that Defendants’ conduct is an affront to the First Amendment because the “Black Lives Matter” message is political. Whether the “Black Lives Matter” message has political content is not relevant to the question of whether the Murals constitute government speech. The fact that an elected official, such as the mayor, might seek to communicate a message that is appealing to voters suggests that the Free Speech Clause is serving one of its intended purposes; “the Free Speech Clause helps produce informed opinions among members of the public, who are then able to influence the choices of a government that, through words and deeds, will reflect its electoral mandate.” …

Because the Murals are government and not private speech, and therefore did not open up the surfaces of New York City streets as designated public fora, strict scrutiny does not apply to the denial of Plaintiff’s request to paint its own street mural….

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Lance Armstrong vs. the New Honor Code

lancearmstrong

Do people who have acted horribly in public life deserve a second chance, or does giving them a pass contribute to a decline in morality and standards that makes us all worse off?

I’m not talking about the extreme and obvious cases, like movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison on rape and assault convictions. And I’m not talking about people getting fired or pushed out of jobs because of random dumb posts, woke mobs, or years-old statements ripped out of context.

I’m talking more about public figures such as Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles in 2012 after getting caught using banned substances for basically his entire professional career and lying about it. Should we let him and others like him back into the public spotlight when they don’t really own their mistakes or try to repair the damage they’ve done to public trust and confidence? Overall, I think we’re generally too quick to let bygones be bygones, with the predictable result that our trust in each other and our institutions is tanking.

Armstrong is working his way back into the spotlight after making a few public apologies that didn’t really convince anyone. Last year, he was the subject of an ESPN documentary and he’s currently the face of WEDŪ, an events and media company where he hosts a podcast that covered the 2019 Tour de France and raked in an estimated $1 million in revenue during the month-long event.

Cultural anthropologist and brand consultant Grant McCracken is a hard no on Armstrong. “Here’s a guy who doped, who insisted that he didn’t dope, and accused his competitors of doping,” says McCracken, who has taught at Harvard and MIT and worked with Netflix, Google, and Kanye West. “We are open-hearted Americans, we like to think that all people should be forgiven. People make mistakes. It’s always the second act in American culture. I’m not sure there should be a second act. I think once you’ve done something as bad as that you’re done, you’re out.”

His new book is The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names and I interviewed him at length for a podcast (listen here). Honor, or the expectation that we’ll hold ourselves and others to high standards, has gone missing in too much of our lives, he argues. We often let celebrities and public figures get away with what he calls monstrous behavior partly because we view them as entertainment and partly because we project ourselves onto them and don’t want to judge ourselves too harshly. In his book, he points out that even some Armstrong critics argued that virtually everyone in cycling used performance-enhancing drugs and some defenders of Weinstein minimized his assaults by pointing to the long history of Hollywood’s casting couch.

Lowering our standards and explaining away bad people by claiming that everyone breaks the rules leads to lower and lower standards for our own personal behavior in turn. In a system where everyone cheats and gets away with misdeeds, McCracken says, only a fool actually plays by the rules, especially when no one is looking.

McCracken is no moral scold and he doesn’t always call for the figurative equivalent of the death penalty for malefactors. But he says too often people don’t seem to pay any serious price for bad behavior. He writes about the 2016 scandal involving the Harvard men’s soccer team, some of whom created a spreadsheet ranking the sexual desirability of members of the women’s team in graphic detail and then violating the school’s honor code by lying about it when it was first discovered. The players involved got away with publishing an unsigned apology in the student paper and Harvard’s then-president and dean of students also let it all slide. “When you look at the details and you don’t look at the damage done by this behavior—there’s a detailed account of how one young woman reacted psychologically—it’s horrifying,” says McCracken. “These guys regard themselves as above reproach, suggesting that some larger point has to be made here. They have to understand what they did and the cost of what they did.”

McCracken is the first to admit that there isn’t a clearly objective measure of whether we’re less honorable than we were 25 or 50 years ago, but I think he’s fundamentally right that we tolerate a huge amount of absolutely rotten behavior that should be called out for what it is. If our response to lying, cheating, and acting despicably is simply a collective shrug, we can’t be surprised when we get more of the same.

How might we restore honor to our culture? McCracken says that a positive honor culture—one which expects individuals to uphold standards of behavior even when they conflict with personal desire or gain—still exists in the military. He acknowledges that bad behavior still exists in the armed forces but says it’s rarely excused on the grounds that everyone does it. “Nobody in the military ever says, ‘Well, everybody goes AWOL, or everybody steals stuff, or misuses their power,'” he says. “I think you get more good behavior when there is bad behavior that’s more culpable, that’s more punishable.”

McCracken believes that we must also do more to recognize and celebrate the people in our community who do all sorts of things that make our lives better. He writes about Bob, his neighbor in a small town in Connecticut, who has quietly helped build Little League fields, volunteers at local hospitals, and is active in his church. “This guy does all this stuff,” says McCracken. “He’s completely unheralded. Nobody in my community has any clue of what he does. I thought, we need more Bobs. There are about five Bobs in my community. If you created a reputation economy and you found some way of giving people credit for these accomplishments, you might be able to inspire 30 Bobs to behave in this manner. And all boats would rise with that tide.”

We live in an era where trust and confidence in government, business, and religious and charitable institutions are at or near historic lows and continue to decline. The past year’s experiences with police, politics, pandemics, and riots aren’t going to turn that trend around anytime soon. While endless—and often insane—examples of cancel culture make it clear that none of us wants to live in a world of one strike and you’re out, we’d do well as a society to think seriously about McCracken’s call for a new honor code.

We’ll always be adjudicating what we consider bad behavior and the appropriate social response on a case-by-case basis, but it’s time to hold public figures and ourselves accountable for making the world a better place.

Watch “Is American Too Forgiving? The Case of Lance Armstrong”:

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via IFTTT

Lance Armstrong vs. the New Honor Code

lancearmstrong

Do people who have acted horribly in public life deserve a second chance, or does giving them a pass contribute to a decline in morality and standards that makes us all worse off?

I’m not talking about the extreme and obvious cases, like movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison on rape and assault convictions. And I’m not talking about people getting fired or pushed out of jobs because of random dumb posts, woke mobs, or years-old statements ripped out of context.

I’m talking more about public figures such as Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles in 2012 after getting caught using banned substances for basically his entire professional career and lying about it. Should we let him and others like him back into the public spotlight when they don’t really own their mistakes or try to repair the damage they’ve done to public trust and confidence? Overall, I think we’re generally too quick to let bygones be bygones, with the predictable result that our trust in each other and our institutions is tanking.

Armstrong is working his way back into the spotlight after making a few public apologies that didn’t really convince anyone. Last year, he was the subject of an ESPN documentary and he’s currently the face of WEDŪ, an events and media company where he hosts a podcast that covered the 2019 Tour de France and raked in an estimated $1 million in revenue during the month-long event.

Cultural anthropologist and brand consultant Grant McCracken is a hard no on Armstrong. “Here’s a guy who doped, who insisted that he didn’t dope, and accused his competitors of doping,” says McCracken, who has taught at Harvard and MIT and worked with Netflix, Google, and Kanye West. “We are open-hearted Americans, we like to think that all people should be forgiven. People make mistakes. It’s always the second act in American culture. I’m not sure there should be a second act. I think once you’ve done something as bad as that you’re done, you’re out.”

His new book is The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names and I interviewed him at length for a podcast (listen here). Honor, or the expectation that we’ll hold ourselves and others to high standards, has gone missing in too much of our lives, he argues. We often let celebrities and public figures get away with what he calls monstrous behavior partly because we view them as entertainment and partly because we project ourselves onto them and don’t want to judge ourselves too harshly. In his book, he points out that even some Armstrong critics argued that virtually everyone in cycling used performance-enhancing drugs and some defenders of Weinstein minimized his assaults by pointing to the long history of Hollywood’s casting couch.

Lowering our standards and explaining away bad people by claiming that everyone breaks the rules leads to lower and lower standards for our own personal behavior in turn. In a system where everyone cheats and gets away with misdeeds, McCracken says, only a fool actually plays by the rules, especially when no one is looking.

McCracken is no moral scold and he doesn’t always call for the figurative equivalent of the death penalty for malefactors. But he says too often people don’t seem to pay any serious price for bad behavior. He writes about the 2016 scandal involving the Harvard men’s soccer team, some of whom created a spreadsheet ranking the sexual desirability of members of the women’s team in graphic detail and then violating the school’s honor code by lying about it when it was first discovered. The players involved got away with publishing an unsigned apology in the student paper and Harvard’s then-president and dean of students also let it all slide. “When you look at the details and you don’t look at the damage done by this behavior—there’s a detailed account of how one young woman reacted psychologically—it’s horrifying,” says McCracken. “These guys regard themselves as above reproach, suggesting that some larger point has to be made here. They have to understand what they did and the cost of what they did.”

McCracken is the first to admit that there isn’t a clearly objective measure of whether we’re less honorable than we were 25 or 50 years ago, but I think he’s fundamentally right that we tolerate a huge amount of absolutely rotten behavior that should be called out for what it is. If our response to lying, cheating, and acting despicably is simply a collective shrug, we can’t be surprised when we get more of the same.

How might we restore honor to our culture? McCracken says that a positive honor culture—one which expects individuals to uphold standards of behavior even when they conflict with personal desire or gain—still exists in the military. He acknowledges that bad behavior still exists in the armed forces but says it’s rarely excused on the grounds that everyone does it. “Nobody in the military ever says, ‘Well, everybody goes AWOL, or everybody steals stuff, or misuses their power,'” he says. “I think you get more good behavior when there is bad behavior that’s more culpable, that’s more punishable.”

McCracken believes that we must also do more to recognize and celebrate the people in our community who do all sorts of things that make our lives better. He writes about Bob, his neighbor in a small town in Connecticut, who has quietly helped build Little League fields, volunteers at local hospitals, and is active in his church. “This guy does all this stuff,” says McCracken. “He’s completely unheralded. Nobody in my community has any clue of what he does. I thought, we need more Bobs. There are about five Bobs in my community. If you created a reputation economy and you found some way of giving people credit for these accomplishments, you might be able to inspire 30 Bobs to behave in this manner. And all boats would rise with that tide.”

We live in an era where trust and confidence in government, business, and religious and charitable institutions are at or near historic lows and continue to decline. The past year’s experiences with police, politics, pandemics, and riots aren’t going to turn that trend around anytime soon. While endless—and often insane—examples of cancel culture make it clear that none of us wants to live in a world of one strike and you’re out, we’d do well as a society to think seriously about McCracken’s call for a new honor code.

We’ll always be adjudicating what we consider bad behavior and the appropriate social response on a case-by-case basis, but it’s time to hold public figures and ourselves accountable for making the world a better place.

Watch “Is American Too Forgiving? The Case of Lance Armstrong”:

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via IFTTT

Is America Too Forgiving? The Case of Lance Armstrong

8105361_thumb

Do people who have acted objectively horribly in public life deserve a second chance, or does giving them a pass contribute to a decline in morality and standards that makes us all worse off?

We’re not talking about the extreme cases, like movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison on rape and assault convictions. Or people who get canceled—often unfairly—because of random dumb tweets, online mobs, or years-old statements ripped out of context.

We’re talking about public figures like Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles in 2012 after getting caught using banned substances for basically his entire professional career and lying about it. Should we let him and others like him return to the public spotlight when they don’t really own their mistakes or try to repair the damage they’ve done to public trust and confidence? Armstrong is working his way back into the limelight as a podcaster and the face of WEDŪ, an online platform geared toward endurance athletes.

Anthropologist and brand consultant Grant McCracken says we’re too soft on people like Armstrong and our willingness to let bygones be bygones leads to a general decline in public and private morality. “Here’s a guy who doped, who insisted that he didn’t dope, and accused his competitors of doping,” says McCracken, who has taught at Harvard and worked with Netflix, Google, and Kanye West. “We are open-hearted Americans, we like to think that all people should be forgiven. People make mistakes. It’s always the second act in American culture. I’m not sure there should be a second act. I think once you’ve done something as bad as that you’re done, you’re out.”

In The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names, McCracken argues that we need to do more to celebrate people such as his neighbor Bob, who receives little recognition despite being central to his community by helping to build Little League fields, volunteering at the local hospital, and being active in his church. “We need more Bobs. As it turns out, there are about five Bobs in my community,” says McCracken. “If you created a reputation economy and you found some way of giving people credit for these accomplishments, you might be able to inspire 30 Bobs to behave in this manner. And all boats would rise with that tide.”

Photo Credits: John Angelillo/UPI/Newscom; Dennis Van Tine/Geisler-Fotopres/picture alliance / Geisler-Fotop/Newscom; Julien Behal/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Pierre Teyssot/Newscom; Bildbyran/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Pierre Teyssot / Splash News/Newscom; Anthony Devlin/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Christopher L. Smith/agefotostock/Newscom; Admedia, Inc/Birdie Thompson/AdMedia/Sipa USA/Newscom; Antonio Perez/TNS/Newscom; SMG/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Jan Woitas/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; SMG/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Breloer Gero/DPA/ABACA/Newscom; Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/Newscom; Nick Potts/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom 

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Is America Too Forgiving? The Case of Lance Armstrong

8105361_thumb

Do people who have acted objectively horribly in public life deserve a second chance, or does giving them a pass contribute to a decline in morality and standards that makes us all worse off?

We’re not talking about the extreme cases, like movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison on rape and assault convictions. Or people who get canceled—often unfairly—because of random dumb tweets, online mobs, or years-old statements ripped out of context.

We’re talking about public figures like Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles in 2012 after getting caught using banned substances for basically his entire professional career and lying about it. Should we let him and others like him return to the public spotlight when they don’t really own their mistakes or try to repair the damage they’ve done to public trust and confidence? Armstrong is working his way back into the limelight as a podcaster and the face of WEDŪ, an online platform geared toward endurance athletes.

Anthropologist and brand consultant Grant McCracken says we’re too soft on people like Armstrong and our willingness to let bygones be bygones leads to a general decline in public and private morality. “Here’s a guy who doped, who insisted that he didn’t dope, and accused his competitors of doping,” says McCracken, who has taught at Harvard and worked with Netflix, Google, and Kanye West. “We are open-hearted Americans, we like to think that all people should be forgiven. People make mistakes. It’s always the second act in American culture. I’m not sure there should be a second act. I think once you’ve done something as bad as that you’re done, you’re out.”

In The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names, McCracken argues that we need to do more to celebrate people such as his neighbor Bob, who receives little recognition despite being central to his community by helping to build Little League fields, volunteering at the local hospital, and being active in his church. “We need more Bobs. As it turns out, there are about five Bobs in my community,” says McCracken. “If you created a reputation economy and you found some way of giving people credit for these accomplishments, you might be able to inspire 30 Bobs to behave in this manner. And all boats would rise with that tide.”

Photo Credits: John Angelillo/UPI/Newscom; Dennis Van Tine/Geisler-Fotopres/picture alliance / Geisler-Fotop/Newscom; Julien Behal/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Pierre Teyssot/Newscom; Bildbyran/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Pierre Teyssot / Splash News/Newscom; Anthony Devlin/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Christopher L. Smith/agefotostock/Newscom; Admedia, Inc/Birdie Thompson/AdMedia/Sipa USA/Newscom; Antonio Perez/TNS/Newscom; SMG/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Jan Woitas/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; SMG/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Breloer Gero/DPA/ABACA/Newscom; Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/Newscom; Nick Potts/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom 

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Seattle Forces Beloved Takeout-Only Cider Bar To Close

Yonder

This week Yonder Bar, a beloved, months-old, licensed, takeout-only neighborhood cider bar that operated out of the residential garage of one of its owners, was forced to close. Maybe for good.

Visitor’s to Yonder Bar’s Yelp page are now greeted with the dreaded words that, so often these days, sit atop the site’s listings for the more than 100,000 similarly beloved bars and restaurants around the country: “Yelpers report this location has closed.”

But Yonder Bar’s closure, unlike many thousands of other bars and restaurants, has nothing to do with COVID-19, the recession, or the economic impact of quarantine policies.

Instead, the closure has everything to do with the persistent complaints to Seattle regulators by one anonymous person and those regulators’ choice to bow to that person’s complaints.

I visited Yonder Bar, in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, last week. What I saw there, as I stood behind a dozen or so other masked, socially distanced customers also waiting patiently in line, was a small, converted garage space that had clearly energized and brought together the local community.

“This makes our community better,” local resident and Yonder Bar supporter Ben Kotovic told KIRO last week. “It’s a place for us to greet and have a chance to meet our community. The idea of shutting it down doesn’t make any sense.”

Indeed, many residents seemed to stop at the bar during their early evening walks, soaking up what would be the last sun for several days, before rain and then snow would hit the area. Several customers pulled dogs. Others pushed children in strollers. I saw happy kids biking along the street, runners passing by, and neighbors talking to each other from their porches.

After making my way to the front of the line, I bought a couple of four-packs of Yonder’s dry cider, which—and I write this both as a middling, low-tech, at-home cider brewer and regular drinker of bone-dry craft ciders—is among the best I’ve tried.

On Monday—Yonder Bar’s last day in business—I spoke with Yonder’s co-founder, Caitlin Bramm. I asked her first about her anonymous persecutor.

“We didn’t have a lot of people complain,” Bramm says. “We had one person complain. A lot.”

Yonder Bar, which was Yonder Cider‘s only retail location, opened in August, which is also when the company launched its line of ciders. Business was brisk. Then the string of complaints began. What had become an issue by September, Bramm says, reached crisis level by December.

After the anonymous person’s complaints, the city was now claiming Yonder Bar was “operating illegally in a residential zone,” close to a church and a private school. But both the school and church, notably, have been supportive of Yonder Bar.

The city also alleges Yonder Bar, which purchased all the necessary business and liquor licenses, nevertheless violates the city’s single family zoning ordinance. It claims the bar doesn’t have adequate off-street parking, that Yonder Bar uses signage to indicate to consumers that it’s a bar—rather than just, say, an unmarked garage—and that the bar must operate by appointment only.

Suggestions that Yonder Bar’s presence increased auto traffic in the neighborhood—or gobbles up parking spaces available to local residents—don’t hold much water. That’s because Seattle has designated the street where the garage bar is located a “Stay Healthy” street. That city program, implemented in order to facilitate and encourage safe outdoor activities during the pandemic, sets aside and blocks off some city streets for foot traffic and other recreational and fitness purposes such as biking—and prohibits vehicular through traffic.

Furthermore, the idea that a bar selling to-go ciders could, should, or must sell only to consumers who’ve made a prior appointment violates common sense and basic business principles. And suggestions that the bar should operate without adequate signage that indicate it’s a business make no sense—the city says Yonder can’t have any signage at all save for, effectively, one 8 x 8 unlit sign—violates both those same basic business principles and also, likely, the First Amendment.

“You can operate a business from your residence if it doesn’t look like a business,” says Seattle spokesperson Wendy Shark.

While Yonder Bar is closed, Yonder Cider is still available to buy online and in retail stores. And efforts continue to ensure Yonder Bar’s hiatus will be temporary. Yonder has launched an online petition, asking supporters to tell the city to allow it to reopen. (Full disclosure: I signed.) And a freedom of information act request, which at least one party has filed with the city, could shed light on just who filed the complaints against Yonder Bar and—maybe—why they did so. 

Hopefully, the city will come to its senses. And soon.

“It’s going to be funny when this lone complainer winds up getting a citywide zoning change that will legalize stuff like Yonder on every lot,” the Seattle-based Twitter account Pushing the Needle tweeted hopefully this week.

That would be funny. And awesome. And the most just of results.

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Seattle Forces Beloved Takeout-Only Cider Bar To Close

Yonder

This week Yonder Bar, a beloved, months-old, licensed, takeout-only neighborhood cider bar that operated out of the residential garage of one of its owners, was forced to close. Maybe for good.

Visitor’s to Yonder Bar’s Yelp page are now greeted with the dreaded words that, so often these days, sit atop the site’s listings for the more than 100,000 similarly beloved bars and restaurants around the country: “Yelpers report this location has closed.”

But Yonder Bar’s closure, unlike many thousands of other bars and restaurants, has nothing to do with COVID-19, the recession, or the economic impact of quarantine policies.

Instead, the closure has everything to do with the persistent complaints to Seattle regulators by one anonymous person and those regulators’ choice to bow to that person’s complaints.

I visited Yonder Bar, in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, last week. What I saw there, as I stood behind a dozen or so other masked, socially distanced customers also waiting patiently in line, was a small, converted garage space that had clearly energized and brought together the local community.

“This makes our community better,” local resident and Yonder Bar supporter Ben Kotovic told KIRO last week. “It’s a place for us to greet and have a chance to meet our community. The idea of shutting it down doesn’t make any sense.”

Indeed, many residents seemed to stop at the bar during their early evening walks, soaking up what would be the last sun for several days, before rain and then snow would hit the area. Several customers pulled dogs. Others pushed children in strollers. I saw happy kids biking along the street, runners passing by, and neighbors talking to each other from their porches.

After making my way to the front of the line, I bought a couple of four-packs of Yonder’s dry cider, which—and I write this both as a middling, low-tech, at-home cider brewer and regular drinker of bone-dry craft ciders—is among the best I’ve tried.

On Monday—Yonder Bar’s last day in business—I spoke with Yonder’s co-founder, Caitlin Bramm. I asked her first about her anonymous persecutor.

“We didn’t have a lot of people complain,” Bramm says. “We had one person complain. A lot.”

Yonder Bar, which was Yonder Cider‘s only retail location, opened in August, which is also when the company launched its line of ciders. Business was brisk. Then the string of complaints began. What had become an issue by September, Bramm says, reached crisis level by December.

After the anonymous person’s complaints, the city was now claiming Yonder Bar was “operating illegally in a residential zone,” close to a church and a private school. But both the school and church, notably, have been supportive of Yonder Bar.

The city also alleges Yonder Bar, which purchased all the necessary business and liquor licenses, nevertheless violates the city’s single family zoning ordinance. It claims the bar doesn’t have adequate off-street parking, that Yonder Bar uses signage to indicate to consumers that it’s a bar—rather than just, say, an unmarked garage—and that the bar must operate by appointment only.

Suggestions that Yonder Bar’s presence increased auto traffic in the neighborhood—or gobbles up parking spaces available to local residents—don’t hold much water. That’s because Seattle has designated the street where the garage bar is located a “Stay Healthy” street. That city program, implemented in order to facilitate and encourage safe outdoor activities during the pandemic, sets aside and blocks off some city streets for foot traffic and other recreational and fitness purposes such as biking—and prohibits vehicular through traffic.

Furthermore, the idea that a bar selling to-go ciders could, should, or must sell only to consumers who’ve made a prior appointment violates common sense and basic business principles. And suggestions that the bar should operate without adequate signage that indicate it’s a business make no sense—the city says Yonder can’t have any signage at all save for, effectively, one 8 x 8 unlit sign—violates both those same basic business principles and also, likely, the First Amendment.

“You can operate a business from your residence if it doesn’t look like a business,” says Seattle spokesperson Wendy Shark.

While Yonder Bar is closed, Yonder Cider is still available to buy online and in retail stores. And efforts continue to ensure Yonder Bar’s hiatus will be temporary. Yonder has launched an online petition, asking supporters to tell the city to allow it to reopen. (Full disclosure: I signed.) And a freedom of information act request, which at least one party has filed with the city, could shed light on just who filed the complaints against Yonder Bar and—maybe—why they did so. 

Hopefully, the city will come to its senses. And soon.

“It’s going to be funny when this lone complainer winds up getting a citywide zoning change that will legalize stuff like Yonder on every lot,” the Seattle-based Twitter account Pushing the Needle tweeted hopefully this week.

That would be funny. And awesome. And the most just of results.

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From the Archives: March 2021

archives1-march-2021

20 years ago

March 2001

“Whatever one may think of the Florida high court’s handling of the election cases, there’s no disputing that when it comes to lack of judicial restraint, it’s the U.S. Supreme Court that takes the prize.”
Mike Godwin
“Election 2000”

“Adults who enlist in the anti-television crusade always insist that it is ‘impressionable youths’ whom they wish to protect. In the guise of shielding youths, however, adults are trying to contain and control them.”
Jib Fowles
“The Whipping Boy”

“Punditry rests on a foundation of easy stereotypes, clichés that make it easier to fit one’s ideas into a short op-ed or even shorter soundbite. So when social conservatives and liberal social engineers team up against speech that both find distasteful—be it pornography, South Park, or video games—the combination is inevitably labeled an ‘unusual alliance,’ even if those allegedly unusual allies have been snuggling for years.”
Jesse Walker
“Intolerant Alliance”

25 years ago

March 1996

“In the law journals if not yet in media of mass circulation, the Second Amendment has captured the attention of scholars, including some of the most eminent and respectable in the field, who find, somewhat to their own surprise as they reflect upon the matter for the first time, that the private right to keep and bear arms is very much in character with the Bill of Rights as a whole and with the thinking of the Framers of the Constitution.”
Daniel Polsby
“Second Reading”

40 years ago

March 1981

“So, while Ronald Reagan is certainly no libertarian, he has in the past occasionally demonstrated healthy attitudes toward reducing taxation. No doubt this has something to do with his almost constant struggle with IRS harassment since the end of World War II, not to mention his experience of having been in the 91 percent tax bracket during the late 1940s.”
Timothy Condon
“What Will Reagan Do About Taxes?”

“Mr. Reagan should reconsider the grey areas he has accepted as warranting compromise of the principle of individual liberty. He should take to heart his very own words that ‘libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path,’ and he should make this into a policy, not just a bland wish. The world and this country today need far more human liberty than anything else conservatives have to offer.”
Tibor Machan
“Some Thoughts for the New President”

“The United States has acquired an enviable reputation as a haven for refugees. The adventurous and the skilled have gravitated to its opportunities; the victims of political or religious repression and economic hardship have sought and found sanctuary on its welcoming shores. Until the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1925, few were turned away, and those who were admitted generally found a better life than they had left behind.”
David Rees
“Who Can Cross Our Borders?”

50 years ago

March 1971

“Libertarians must stop looking to the past for allies in their struggle for a rational culture and look toward the future. Our hope lies, as difficult as it may be for some to accept, not with remnants from an illusory ‘golden age’ of individualism, but with tomorrow, with youth, with anyone who will listen. Our day has not come and gone. But it could be coming.”
Roy Childs
“Big Business and the Rise of American Statism, Part Two”

“To decide if the police are efficient, one must question the ethical suppositions which act as the rationale and source of wisdom for the present system. Because efficiency can be defined only with reference to desired goals, underlying premises need to be carefully examined. Indeed, the greatest portion of today’s police problems can be traced to either the fact that few people really know what they want the police to do or to the fact that people have exceedingly hazy or dogmatic reasons for asking police to do the tasks selected as ‘proper.'”
Lanny Friedlander
“The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”

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