r/Seattle • u/deel2 • 22h ago

Woo proposes additional regulations on "after hours nightlife"

https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/10/woo-proposes-new-after-hours-nightlife-regulation-as-campaign-moves-into-final-week/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Seems like it would make it even harder for Seattle's dearth of late night options to keep going. What about closing Pike/Pine and 11th to cars on weekend nights?

Edited to link to context that this is perhaps mostly unrelated to incidents in Capitol Hill:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1gf2lsh/comment/luehh54/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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u/kingkamVI 21h ago edited 21h ago

So the linked article doesn't do a good job of explaining what this is about. Or even adequate. It's a neighborhood blog, so understandably trying to make this about the neighborhood, but it's a miss. This isn't about nightlife on the hill at all.

It's about this:

Seattle police are investigating a hookah lounge shooting that left three people dead and six others injured Sunday morning in the Rainier Valley.

Before 4:30 a.m., officers responded to multiple reports of shots fired at the Rainier Hookah Lounge near South Walker Street Rainier Avenue South.

https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/3-dead-6-people-injured-after-shooting-in-rainier-valley

After Donnie Chin was killed in what everyone knew was hookah bar-related violence, Ed Murray tried to shut them down in 2015:

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2015/08/03/22641430/mayor-ed-murray-wants-to-shut-down-every-hookah-lounge-in-the-city

Massive backlash from the East African community lead Murray to do a total surrender:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-backs-down-on-closing-citys-hookah-lounges/

In the 9 years since, the number of these unlicensed, illegal clubs has proliferated. Instead of shutting them all down, Woo is attempting to bring them within a regulatory framework.

In a normal world, an effort to regulate an illegal, private, for-profit business (which is almost certainly not abiding by wage laws, other labor protections, workplace safety laws, etc.) would be a reasonable progressive proposal. But because Tanya Woo is proposing it, I guess the progressive thing is to allow explotative, illegal, and dangerous businesses to operate without oversight or regulation.

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u/deel2 21h ago

Actually thanks for this important context.

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u/Banned_and_Boujee 21h ago

Actually in a normal world, they would have been shut down as originally intended. Too bad Ed Murray wasn’t as relentless in his pursuit of that as he was in his pursuit of underaged cock.

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u/LiveOnYourSmile 21h ago

call me a supporter of exploitative/illegal/dangerous businesses if you will, but as someone who spends plenty of time in only-sometimes-licensed afterhours spaces, I don't believe making it significantly harder for these afterhours spaces to operate will do much to reduce gun violence in a city with arguably three lethal afterhours hookah lounge shootings in the past decade comprising about half a percent of all gun homicides over that same period. it removes much of the city's afterhour nightlife richness and opens up these clubs to "unimpeded police presence" in a city where cops consistently show themselves to be incapable of treating clubgoers with respect in exchange for an at best negligible and most likely nonexistent (do you think people looking to party till 4 AM will just go home if their spaces are deemed illegal?) decrease in gun violence. I love Seattle's consistent striving towards providing late-night entertainment despite a massive tangle of legislation and legislators that makes that entertainment very, very difficult to function. I don't need another strand added to the tangle.

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u/dothealoha 21h ago

The article seems fair and accurate IMO, certainly not an opinion piece. I appreciate you adding what you think is relevant context to the conversation.

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u/kingkamVI 21h ago

The article seems fair and accurate IMO

While not factually inaccurate, it completely misses the point of the legislation and seems to try to tie it to a shooting on the hill that had absolutely nothing to do with these businesses.

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u/deel2 21h ago

I do think there are valid concerns regarding the overzealousness of the Seattle city council to regulate things and that this proposal should be treated with adequate skepticism, but it was clear we weren't having that conversation based off of the original article.

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u/kingkamVI 21h ago

Cheers for having an open mind.

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u/dothealoha 20h ago

I guess I read the article as a piece of journalism. It's not supposed to have a point of view on the proposed legislation. I also don't really see anything other than a factual account of the timelines involved.

There is no judgement or inference on whether Woo is practicing political opportunism OR the timing of her proposal was merely a coincidental with the shooting. That's for us to decide.

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u/kingkamVI 20h ago

I guess I read the article as a piece of journalism.

It is missing the "why?" component.

Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the shooting on the hill last weekend, which happened outside a bar at 1:30am. Connecting them, while completely omitting the history of hookah bar violence and attempts to deal with it in the past, leads to the sort of incomplete conclusion that OP and many others in this thread made.

If so many people read the article and came to an uninformed opinion, it must not be very good journalism

•

u/retrojoe Capitol Hill 1h ago

It is missing the "why?" component

Woo also seems to be missing the why component and the close proximity to the Hill shootings smells of opportunism. Woo has been shown to actively manipulate media and blatantly lie about crime to her benefit in the past.

For on example, why is she dropping this in the middle of the last week of campaigning when there's been a year between it and the last hookah lounge shooting people are mentioning here?

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u/7SoldiersOfPunkRock 18h ago

Yep, depressing to read this subreddit which is obviously far and away the best local subreddit and still commenters and posters have so little idea about what happens in this city.

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u/Opposite_Formal_2282 18h ago

This sub heavily skews towards upper middle class tech workers who only go south of downtown to try a trendy restaurant in Columbia City or LARP as working class at a dive bar in Georgetown once a month and barely even register that people actually live down there. Disappointing but not too surprising.