When the band took the stage on a recent weekend at a popular local bar, a couple enjoying cocktails and appetizers in a rear booth couldn’t help but start tapping their feet to the music and bobbing their heads in
When the band took the stage on a recent weekend at a popular local bar, a couple enjoying cocktails and appetizers in a rear booth couldn’t help but start tapping their feet to the music and bobbing their heads in time.
But within seconds, the restaurant’s manager approached the pair and scolded them for dancing, explaining that his establishment lacked the required permit for patrons to shake their tail feathers on site. If an inspector should catch them in the act, he could face financial consequences.
Although few may be aware of it, the county currently requires bars and restaurants to obtain a permit from the Liquor Commission if patrons will be dancing on premises. This is separate and in addition to the permits needed for live music and to serve beer and wine.
There is no extra cost for the dancing permit, but the establishment must have 150 square feet of floor space cleared whenever there is dancing.
For the sake of discussion, let’s just assume that whenever this ludicrous law was passed there was a good reason for it. Unfortunately, at issue now is not whether bars should have to obtain such a permit, but what actually constitutes “dancing.”
The state Legislature — through House Bill 1339 and Senate Bill 588 — is working on legislation that would require liquor commissions in each county “to prescribe, by rule, limitations on licensed premises regarding the expression and conduct of patrons therein.”
In other words, the state is asking the counties to define “dancing.” Not even local dance experts could define the term when The Garden Island asked around earlier this week.
We wish Kaua‘i officials the best of luck with this harebrained task.
The only appropriate move here is to discard the dancing license requirement in its entirety. Permitting the distribution of liquor makes sense. Permitting live music is also logical to a degree in that if a bar or restaurant is in or near a residential district, the decibel level should be controlled out of respect for the neighbors.
But to license dancing? Seriously? What is it, a public safety issue if patrons caught up in the beat bumped into a server carrying food or drink?
Running isn’t banned in bars. Neither is skipping. Unless, or course, that could be construed as some new age form of dancing. Accidents will happen, especially in crowded bars, regardless of whether the cause is dancing or an inadvertent slip.
Let’s inject some common sense into the discussion. Particularly if a restaurant is permitted to have live music or a DJ, dancing is only to be expected. It’s practically human nature. Unless the tunes they’re playing are atrocious — another issue altogether — we would only think it logical for such a classic cause-and-effect scenario to result in dancing.
Dancing is a form of self-expression. This is essentially a First Amendment freedom our state is trying to define and control. Let this one go. We don’t need to weigh down bars and restaurants with another permitting hoop to jump through, and we don’t need their patrons being harassed for bobbing their head to the beat.
Certainly there are more important matters for our elected officials to focus on. How are we doing on closing that budget gap? Combating drugs? Solid waste? Traffic? Education? Tourism?
State lawmakers should kill these two bills while they are still in committee and get back to business. Don’t burden our counties with more useless tasks. Our councils have enough on their plates already.
Every time our lawmakers try to define a freedom, we lose more of it. Such is the case with dancing in establishments that serve alcohol on Kaua‘i.
