NIMBYs wanna 86 Club Six (updated)UPDATE: I ADORE all the controversy this post is causing (thanks BeyondChron!). Admittedly I wrote this almost a month ago, then hightailed it to the jungles of Peru -- just as the facts of the case were becoming clearer. Steve Jones elaborated on the case later in the game here. It's encouraging that Sixth Street residents are organizing to protect their living conditions, but the reality is that Club Six is zoned properly and obeying the rules, as far as I know. And I stand by my opinion that Six is one of the liveliest clubs in the city. Also admittedly, I jumped to some distasteful conclusions right away (although I was acting at the time on the info available -- like any good hothead blogger). But that's the fun of being a drama queen.
So now some whiny "Not In My Backyard" folks are after one of the best big hip-hop/dubwize/ragga/house spots in the Bay -- the six-and-a-half year-old Club Six.
I love Six -- the subterranean downtown-ness of it -- definitely a little rough around the edges, but nice and soft inside. The irony of this whole sad affair is that the complaining neighbors are saying that Six is too loud -- ON SIXTH STREET! Bwahahaha! Are they kidding? Not only has Six's owner, Angel Cruz, invested a ton o' duckets into soundproofing the place, but -- C'MON! --it's Sixth Street. The rowdies on the street fart louder than Club Six.
Still, Six faces its license getting pulled for a month, which would break the place. Click here to read an open letter from Angel to the nightlife community, and see how you can help (PDF). Folks like us helped save Hole in the Wall last week -- let's pitch in and keep nightlife diverse in the Bay!
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Comments (2)
Or, from another perspective, the neighbors on 6th who are used to a lot of noise and drama in their lives are saying that Club Six has crossed the line. I think that's pretty significant. But I can see from your blatant display of classism in this blog entry that you don't think poor people deserve to have a little peace and quiet in their lives. Tells me all I need to know about SFBG (or at least this writer).
Also, I note that the Guardian's "save Club Six" push has suddenly vanished after the conflict of interest thing was pointed out in blogs far and wide.
Posted by art | May 25, 2007 02:07 PM
Let's keep nightlife diverse in the Bay? Club Six is your typical "culture" yuppie hangout of the sort that has helped gentrify-not diversify-the city. The photo you’ve included of “one of the best big hip-hop/dubwize/ragga/house spots in the Bay” sure looks like your typical upper-middle class gathering of white, ‘creative capitalist’ types that are so good at sucking off up the vibe of ‘edginess’ in working-class neighborhoods. Isn’t that what you mean by rough around the edges, but nice and soft inside”? They love to party and get wild in the gritty parts of the city all night, making a lot of noise, and disrupting the streets until morning, but of course, wake up hung over in a nice quiet part of the city or in the East Bay, in neighborhoods where they would never allow the sort of bullshit that they inflicted on the working-class the night before to go down. This classism is disgusting, especially coming from a supposedly progressive source that I generally admire.
But the charge of NIMBYism is the most absurd. Poor renters with absolutely nowhere else to live qualify as NIMBYs only via the most perverse twist of logic. I’m all for the rights of old SOMA bars that have been operating for decades that real NIMBYs are trying to shut down. Its outrageous that rich outsiders moving to SOMA believe they have the right to alter traditional patterns of life in the area. The real “irony” here is that it is most likely the NIMBYs who have moved into SOMA’s yuppie condos over the last decade that are the PATRONS of Club Six. Club Six is a cultural extension of gentrification. Its not so much the Guardian’s support of Club 6 that bothers me so much as the way in which various articles have degraded the residents of the area, dismissing them as rowdies and “junkies”(as Steve Jones does in this week’s print Guardian. This is fucking disgusting and my boundless respect for this publication has plummeted.
Posted by Chris G. | May 26, 2007 09:18 PM