Rah, way to get the word out Marke! I too wonder who those "promoters" who were part of the process are - certainly no one I know in the gay club scene was part of that, which leads me to the same conclusions as yours - it will be used as a way of killing independent promoters and squashing competition.

I wrote Bevan Dufty, and a copy of my letter is up on my blog; I'd urge anyone else who is concerned about this legislation to get in touch with their supervisor now and try to put a stop to this.

While I understand why club owners may not want to have to assume responsibility for actually managing their properties/events and providing adequate security, I don't believe this proposed legislation is a big deal, nor will it "kill" nightlife. Other cities with much better night life than San Francisco have similar regulations.

I don't care one way or the other about Gavin Newsom, but as I understand the components of the the proposed ordinance, the new laws will simply require night club owner/promoters to have adequate security and safety planning and to comply with with a city permitting process so promoters so the city can know who the responsible parties are and better track violations.

Sorry if that adds to the costs of running a club or throwing a commercial entertainment event--it's called a "cost of doing business", and I doubt the price will be as high as the club owners/promoters warn.

I enjoying going out from time to time (I prefer smaller venues to huge nightclubs), but I firmly believe that clubs, like any business, should operate safely and without being a public nuisance--or they should not operate at all.

Chris -- I'm not really concerned how this will affect high-roller promoters who charge $30 at the door for doing nothing but making a flyer and bringing in a liquor sponsor's scantily clad representatives. My point here is that this will seriously affect promoters who charge very little at the door -- most of the great parties I go to are free, in fact -- and do it out of love and art. Most of the time these promoters actually lose money (but the bars make more on drink sales, which is why they bring in promoters in the first place -- so this will affect their income as well).

You say you don't go out much, so let me bring you up to date -- art-oriented nightlife has blown up in the past 20 years, and club nights put on by creative people with little money FOR creative people with little money have become the crucibles of artist, music, and fashion development, which in turn fuels a good part of our economy, not to mention keeps San Francisco a desirable "funky" tourist destination.

Many of the promoters I've talked to who are wary of this legislation say they'd rather take their events, which often include live bands, underground (i.e. house parties in your neighborhood) rather than submit themselves to government scrutiny ...

Lumping ALL nightlife together is ridiculous, like saying all music is the same. It's an extremely ludicrous lack of respect for an art form that's been around forever. These (very few) violent incidents happened at particular venues that host particular kinds of parties put on by particular promoters. There's no reason that everyone involved in nightlife should be implicated or punished. These were tragic events, but if three or four people getting hurt out of the 50,000 or so who attend nightlife events is a measure for cracking down, we might as well sign everyone up for a government badge to ride Muni.

And I'm very offended by your statement that other cities have better than nightlife than San Francisco -- if anything, the few cities that do have better nightlife are the ones with clubs that can stay open all night and serve liquor after 2am! Signed, pissed off virtual drag queen.

The problem with this legislation is that it puts forth no specifics about the permitting process for promoters, nor does it specify what sanctions will be brought to bear if you don't have a permit, or if a club hosts an unpermitted party. As Marke points out, most of the music/dance/art events that go on outside major clubsl like 1015 or Ruby Skye are put on by small -scale promoters like myself, who usually barely make enough money to cover the costs of our flyers. If the city now wants to require EVERY promoter who does more than two events a year to go through a permitting process, then it will certainly have a negative effect on the club scene by discouraging people from participating in it. There's also no specification on how this law will be enforced; can we now expect the police to show up at every club in the city and ask whether all their nights have permitted promoters? Do we really want the police to have that kind of ability to harass clubs, bars, and promoters? Finally, responsibility for security and health issues is always up to the club; they provide their own in-house security, and part of their permitting process is having their building and bar all up the appropriate codes. Why should I, as a promoter who is essentially renting the space, be responsible for this? It's obvious that this leglislation was crafted by people who have no experience of doing actual club promotion, and it needs to either be killed or significantly amended to reflect the realities of the small club promoter, rather than something that exists only a bureaucrats imagination.