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Can the City that Always Sleeps tolerate sandwiches at 2:30 a.m.?

Black Seed Cafe and Grill, 132 Tremont St., goes before the Boston Licensing Board next Wednesday for permission to extend its closing time from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.

Earlier this year, the board told Tequila Mexican Grill on Bromfield Street it could stuff its request for a 4:30 a.m. closing time.

Separately, the McDonald's at 1750 Soldiers Field Road in Brighton faces a violation hearing before the board after police found patrons buying food inside well after its stated 11 p.m. closing time; only the burger joint's drive-thru has a 24-hour license. That hearing is on Tuesday.

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Comments

I can see...in my magic crystal ball...a representative from the mayor's office...claiming that sandwiches will lead to more post-club shootings, because if everything just closes at midnight, all of the drunk people either disappear or quietly and respectfully goes home...the board says no to later closing time...Boston continues to be an increasingly insignificant laughingstock that hemorrhages the creative young people that could be driving our economy if we didn't constantly tell them that fun was illegal here.

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simple answer is to start to allow a large swath of places to open late night. The more open, the less concentration of patrons and the less of a chance of a powder keg. Further, if they're sit down places and eateries, you don't get the packed in swill saloon crowds.

90% of pub and club problems are when concentrated areas of them push all their patrons out onto the street in the same 15 min time span around closing.

Corralling a bunch of drunks into tight, empty streets or into only a few eatery establishments is a recipe for disaster.

So, let places stagger closings by allow them to be open as late as they want to, or as late as it's economically feasible for them to be. The problem swill melt away.

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Having all clubs centralized is Combat Zone era thinking which didn't work so well either. If reasonable closing hours were set, say, 4am for bars/clubs and more liquor licenses, both would lessen loitering. I like places smoke free, but the ban does also put smokers hanging out on the street too.

Finally, I miss the Tasty and Riley's (?) roast beef - late night institutions lost to redevelopment.

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"It's 2am
I want meat
Where should we go?
Buzzy's Roast Beef!
Roast Beef!
Roast Beef!"

-Steve Mathewson / Blitnikoff

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What is wrong with people in this city? Late night / 24 hour food service is a wonderful amenity. Why do people fight against it? Is it the puritan bigotry: the fear that someone, somewhere might be having fun?

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Life must be pretty easy for you if you're this worked up over not being able to get a PB&J at 3:30am!

Damn!

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What a ridiculous response. This is not an issue of spoiled brats and pb and js. This is an economic development issue. Our economy relies on the best and the brightest being drawn here to work for companies and start companies. The best and the brightest have a choice of where to live. They also, believe it or not, might want to have a night out with their friends once in a while. Living in a city that tells them they are not allowed to buy food at a certain hour justifiably leaves these people with a bad taste in their mouths about Boston, and puts us at an economic disadvantage.

The young people that the mayor is always touting as moving here are from New Hampshire, taking analyst jobs at Liberty Mutual and Fidelity. They are not the people who can be good for an economy. Those people are all going to SF, NYC, and Austin, and we won't realize it's too late until our economy suffers. Then your asinine comments will seem pretty shortsighted, and people may start saying, "wow, his life must be pretty easy if he's willing to turn away economic drivers and jobs because he doesn't want to allow people to eat a sandwich when they damn well please, just like they can in EVERY other city in America."

Please travel outside of your little world and report back when you have something to compare Boston to. Those of us who have left realize that we don't compare, and we're in big trouble.

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For all the people who work nights - like those doctors and nurses, cops and cabdrivers, firefighters, etc. who will be there for your sorry arse when your kid stops breathing at 3am.

Yeah, such losers of leisure those night workers!

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It's sad that all these years the masses of people, who weren't able to get a hamburg after 2:30 am, have suffered from the pains of hunger. If we do not allow all nite eateries the hungry are going to suffer.

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Actually, it's the EMT's and Paramedics who will be there at "3am". People always forget them. 3rd City agency, along with Police and Fire, there's ' Boston E.M.S...just saying..

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Are food truck hours limited? If not, there's a market in late night sales right there.

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Yes, they are limited. I believe they are limited to 10:00, and the city is considering extending them, until...wait for it...11:00.

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FYI, Future Boston Alliance picked this up as a cause, and is urging people who are sick of this nonsense to email the Licensing Board in support of this petition. Takes all of 30 seconds and may make a difference:

http://futureboston.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/late-...

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The Future Boston Alliance is a joke...everybody knows that right? For all Selkoe's talk I've never seen him in BRA/Licensing/Civic Design/Consumer/ZBA/PIC meeting.

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He used to work at the BRA. Does that count? Did you ever work in city government?

Pro-change arguments on this site and others seem to be well-reasoned and based on facts.

Anti-change arguments are always some variation of "that idea is dumb" or "that guy with the idea doesn't know what he's talking about" or "why don't you spoiled brats spend your time thinking about something more important." There is never any logic backing up the arguments.

It's kind of like talking to a Tea Partier. I'd love to respond to their ideas...if they had any.

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I'm well aware of his past but I don't see him out there anymore, which is all I was saying. And no I have yet to work in city government but I am quite familiar with it.

Also I'm all for later hours, I just think the FBA got it wrong.

It's not about a city being "hip" or attracting younger people it's about a city serving the needs of all of its citizens.

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Just because he worked at the BRA doesn't mean his Future Boston Alliance isn't a farce or that believing so means that I'm against change. And yes, I've worked in government.

Selkoe was a low-level twerp who couldn't cut it at the BRA and has had a chip on his shoulder ever since. As has been noted, he prefers being in the spotlight of his new organization to doing the grunt work of making a city run well. Though I seem to remember that he was vocal in his opposition to Suffolk University's expansion into Downtown Crossing--he didn't want all those college students bringing down the 'hood. What, was Suffolk not hip enough for him?

He should stick to running his company, at which he's been very successful.

And yes, 24 hr food options would be a great step forward for Boston.

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start a petition to completley abolish the Boston Licensing Board. They are a perfect example of a truly wasteful and totally needless government bureauracy.

Or at least change the "rules of engagement" so that the opponents of late night hours and the like actually have to produce some tangible evidence to prove their claims, instead of forcing the proponents to counter their mostly unfounded "facts". And to not base their decisions on "do-gooder" neighborhood groups that have no legal standing (some day, this "policy" is going to bite the City big time when a business owner actually gets the courage to challenge one of the Board's decisions in court).

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So why is the onus on would-be business operators to prove that their business won't cause problems, instead of on the local NIMBYs to prove that it will?

The default should be "You're allowed to open and operate until and unless your business starts causing problems, at which point we might ask you to cut back your opening hours," not the other way around.

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hat tip

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