A state bill being considered in Sacramento would move closing time in some bars to 4 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. California Assembly Bill 342 (AB342) would affect the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and certain holidays in designated “hospitality zones.”
Downtown San Diego’s likely impacted area would be the Gaslamp Quarter, which is designated an Entertainment District.
At issue: safety concerns versus extending time for additional sales revenue.
Star Bar bartender Keller Johnson says that in the post-Covid-19 lockdown era, late-night drinking culture has become less rowdy, so pushing closing time to 4 a.m. won’t be much of a difference.
“How many business owners are actually going to stay open until four in the morning?” Johnson wonders. “A lot of bars and restaurants aren’t even open till 2 a.m. seven days a week…”
Notably, Star Bar, always open until 2 a.m., used to be one of few downtown bars that had a licence to open for business at 6 a.m. Now, they open at 11 a.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. on weekends.
Johnson says “if you really want to drink, you can just cross the border to Tijuana and you can drink all night.” (Note: Drink late-night and early morning in Mexico at your own risk.)
Star Bar patron James Mathews points out last call in other regions in the country are even later than 4 a.m.
“There were customers in [Florida] bars, but [the increased foot traffic] wasn’t noticeable,” Mathews says. “Florida’s last call times vary throughout the state for specific counties; Miami’s last call time is 5 a.m., to accommodate its international nightlife scene.”
Mathews continues, “If San Diego has something to offer, like Mardi Gras – New Orleans stays open all night long. Vegas stays open all night long. They have the [nightlife] for that.”
Mathews and Johnson don’t think AB342 would be very successful in San Diego.
Jeremiah Saunders is a bartender at Myst Lounge on Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp. In his experience, going to Miami and Vegas “where [last call] is 24/7 or at least until four or five in the morning, it wasn’t much cooler.”
As a patron and a bartender, Saunders doesn’t want to stay later than he needs to but does see how a later closing time could help Myst.
“On the weekends, it makes sense,” Saunders says. “We’re still packed at 2 a.m. At, like, 1:30 or 1:45 a.m. we’ll get that last-second rush and then we have to kick out anywhere between 50 and 75 people. So it makes sense for us from a business standpoint.”
Bang on 5th manager Aman Mehrzia agrees the bill could add revenue and also have a positive safety effect in the Gaslamp.
“When it’s 2 a.m., that causes a lot of people to down their shots, and then it causes drunk craziness and all other kinds of stuff,” Mehrzia says.
He hopes that with the extended last call, people won’t be rushed to drink. “They’ll sip on their drinks instead of binging in that last call before they go out,” he says. “Bartenders already have the responsibility to make sure that if someone’s too drunk, we cut them off.”
Whiskey Girl manager Jake Southworth doesn’t know if AB342’s passage would affect his business positively or negatively. What he can foresee, though, are later hours in the Gaslamp.
“People are going to be drinking and partying no matter the time, so it would be business as usual for us, but it would also mean staff being here a lot later,” Southworth says. “We’re usually here two hours after close, so that would push us to being here close to six in the morning.”
Being a manager, Southworth is the last one out. He’d stay later than his employees.
“We’ve never had anything like that before, so I don’t know how it would be,” Southworth says. “We’d have to see how it goes and just roll with the punches.” SDSun
