Jeez, it just gets harder and harder to do anything in this city without someone getting pissed off about something to do with bars and clubs, whether it's noise, or, in this case, potential cigarette smoke and noise wafting up from a patio into a neighbor's window. The Bay Guardian has all the details about the current controversy surrounding the re-location of the Hole in the Wall to 10th Street, a controversy allegedly stirred up by Jim Meko, a member of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission and the Western SoMA Citizens Planning Task Force, and Damian Ochoa. As Jeremy Paul, a permit expediter (only in SF, my friends) hired by the owners of the Hole put it in a quote from the Guardian story, "'The Hole in the Wall relocation is a case study in how dysfunctional this system is,' . . Zoning in the area allows for a bar, he said, 'and if these people don't want to live in a bar district, they should check the zoning where they're buying a house or renting an apartment' before moving there." All in all it's a big fat mess.
And it just gets messier: A little more link tracking led to this fascinating exchange in the comments section of an article on this matter at sf.curbed.com. In fairness, here's Jim Meko's response.
What's going on? I dunno, but it's all messy, messy, messy, and a great example of how difficult it is to not only run bars and clubs in San Francisco, but to also just deal with a local political scene that thrives on divisiveness and ad hominem attacks (when not throwing beer on people).
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