Council Member Sally Clark, who claims, somewhat proudly, that she rarely goes to bed later than 9:00, may not be the nightlife advocate clubs were hoping for: Her nightlife licensing proposal has proven incredibly unpopular with the nightlife industry, whose representatives lined up en masse to protest at a public hearing in council chambers on June 4. Clark was reportedly surprised at the negative reception to her proposal, which removed most of the mayor's grounds for license dismissal; but she appeared beneficent, almost cheerful, on Monday, despite the fact that the room was stacked 10 to 1 against her legislation.
That legislation, which won't be public until June 7 at the earliest, reportedly preserves the so-called "50-foot rule," a provision that holds club owners responsible for nuisance crimes and violence within 50 feet of their property. It also incorporates the mayor's new noise regulations; introduces the possibility of additional new laws, such as licenses for bouncers and promoters; and actually increases penalties for violating the city's noise and nuisance codesâto as much as $6,000 and "abatement," a procedure for shutting a club down.
Molly Neitzel, Clark's campaign manager and a former Music for America organizer, resigned on May 31, reportedly in response to Clark's the nightlife proposal. (Clark brought Neitzel on to fill in for council staffer David Yeaworth back in March, in part to help her formulate nightlife policy.) Neitzel maintains that she left to run another campaign; she acknowledges, however, that "I don't agree with [Clark's] position" on nightlife.
Then again, nightlife, schmightlife. What everybody was really talking about in council offices last week wasn't Clark's potentially culture-shifting legislation, but art: specifically, a massive, bipartite wooden painting of a '30s-style cartoon character by Karen Ganz that is now stationed directly outside the council lunchroom. The appearance of the piece, referred to around council offices as "the green monster," prompted a frenzy of criticism from council staffers, who complained in e-mails that the painting was "hideous," "garish," and "awful." An e-mail campaign and petition drive ensued, and it was decided that the painting would move to the end of the hall occupied by the council's central staff. That plan was scuttled, however, after staffers objected to the movement of a file cabinet around the corner. A subsequent election favored moving the cabinet, but, as an internal e-mail put it, "Unfortunately, the election committee failed to consult with the users of that file cabinet before approving the election, an election that turns out to have been null and void before the first vote was cast." The painting, for now, remains in the hallway. 
