Mayor, Council Love the Nightlife, Love to Boogie [Photo Gallery]

It’s hard not to take it as an omen that while I was covering the Mayor’s announcement of the Seattle Nightlife Initiative at the Century Ballroom last night, someone rummaged through my bike’s seat bag and walked off with a a) rag, b) patch kit, and c) front light. All in front of about 30 people standing in line for Molly Moon‘s ice cream. (In fairness, you don’t want to lose your place in that line.) It’s my second bike-related theft this summer, after nothing at all over the past five years.

Which, anecdotally, is a way of saying that the furor that produced this Nightlife Initiative–the punitive crackdowns and nightclub stings of the Nickels/Carr era–has been overtaken by recessionary events (unless you personally live next door to a problem club). There are bigger fish to fry, and there’s no money to fund any major new effort.

So, nightlife is not as top-of-mind as night deaths. The first question Mayor McGinn took after his presentation was whether this initiative would address violence in Belltown. McGinn responded by saying the Public Safety Initiative was really the tool for that; the nightlife proposal was designed more to deal with neighborhood conflicts with nightspots over nuisance issues like noise complaints or boisterous closing-time crowds.

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The Nightlife Initiative [pdf] at this point, he said, was a way of taking this “balanced approach” out to the community, now that the Seattle Nightlife Association has been reassured the city isn’t out to get them. There’s an online survey where Seattle residents can weigh in about its eight pillars elements:

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1. Code compliance enforcement
2. Flexible liquor service hours
3. Noise ordinance enforcement
4. Security training requirements
5. Precinct community outreach
6. Professional development
7. Late-night transportation alternatives
8. Targeting public nuisances

The comment period will extend to mid-September, McGinn told me, adding laughingly, “But this is Seattle. It may take longer.” The Mayor was joined by the City Council‘s Nick Licata, who was there to speak for the Council’s work on the issue, specifically, allowing police to issue tickets on the spot to disturbers of the peace, rather than make an arrest. The Council’s Tim Burgess, Mike O’Brien, Sally Bagshaw, and Sally Clark also mingled with the crowd at the Century Ballroom.

Media coverage (CHS, Crosscut, Publicola, Seattle Times, Seattlepi.com) so far has selected the “flexible liquor service hours” as the single most controversial component, with good ideas like drunk ticketing, bass decibel measurement, and late-night bus/taxi options trailing distantly. Requiring nightclub staff to come in for security training, and working more closely with nightspots are not likely to raise eyebrows, unless you think nightclub owners are getting away with something.

A consultant’s report (mentioning Seattle’s “low-risk psyche”) was handed out on the subject of flexible service hours–aka staggered closing times. It does not do a particularly persuasive job of demonstrating the harm-reduction benefits of the practice. The two main reasons for later/staggered closing times for bars seem to be to forestalling drinking against the clock, and giving police the chance to deal with smaller outbursts of public drunkenness throughout the night, as opposed to all at once at 2 a.m.

It seems to me that if you’re prone to drinking against the clock, it doesn’t matter when closing time is, exactly. But that said, Seattle could certainly revisit whether it wants to shut down promptly at 2 a.m.–the only problem is that, ultimately, later hours are the decision of the State Liquor Control Board. The Mayor characterized the process as “gathering community support” (or not) and then lobbying the SLCB, but the board tends to take the “control” in their title very seriously. They’re just now allowing beer and wine tastings in grocery stores.