So earlier I posted about a neighborhood restaurant that was causing ongoing noise and nuisance complaints, to the point where our local alderman and the city's legal office were holding community meetings about it. Well there have been DEVELOPMENTS.
I've been attending the meetings out of curiosity; I hear the restaurant's music sometimes, but I'm far enough away that it doesn't actually bother me. I rarely go out at night, so I hadn't encountered the "nuisance" aspects of it, which include lots of loitering drunk people, mysterious box trucks with no license plates blocking bike lanes while unloading, and bouncers swearing and trying to stop and frisk people walking past the restaurant.
("Why does a restaurant have bouncers?" you ask. Well, one of the complaints was "He's operating a nightclub but just using a restaurant license to do it.")
Anyway, I was intrigued to attend the latest video call because last time ONE DERANGED PERSON got on the line and spent ten minutes telling everyone else that the place is fine and if it isn't nobody cares and if you do you're a narc. I wanted to see if they were gonna come back to rant again and they did, but they got stymied by the moderator, who insisted that if you wanted to talk you had to "raise your hand" in the video call and they clearly couldn't figure out how to do that.
But then. After the airing of grievances and the owner's lawyer apologizing for no-showing at the last meeting, the alderman's spokesperson got on the line. FIFTY MINUTES into a one hour meeting, she said, "Before you inform the owner about the steps he needs to take to prevent this from becoming a legal issue, the Alderman has a question. He understands that the building landlord has served the owner with an eviction notice for the business, and we'd like to know if you and your client are aware of this?"
Every visible face on the video call did a jaw drop. It was awesome. I was muted and I still went "OooooohOOOOOOHHHHH!"
So yeah turns out the owner is "a little behind on the rent" but is confident he can bounce back, and then the moderator gave him a list of twenty things he needed to do (or not do) to fix the non-rent-related problems, two of which were "Stop doing unlicensed bottle service" and "No sparklers indoors".
The next meeting is the second week in July. I've already put it on my calendar.