SOCIAL CLUB
TASK FARCE
RAIDS ROCK CLUBS

Just before midnight on June 27, the Velvet Mafia was in the middle of an encore set at CBGBs, performing "Girl From Planet Muff," when lead singer Dean Johnson noticed that the audience seemed to double in size. "I had no idea they were police. I thought it was a packed house loving us."

The new "audience" was actually a 30 man raiding party from the mayor's Social Club Task Force. Just nine days earlier, the Task Force raided several bars and clubs on Orchard and Ludlow Streets. The Task Force was formed in 1990 by then mayor David Dinkins, in response to media outcry over some fatal mishaps and fires that took place in illegal underground social clubs around the city. For a few months, Dinkins' Task Force made a few cursory inspections of party spaces and clubs, but then faded into obscurity.

Under mayor Giuliani, the new and improved paramilitary Social Club Task Force is composed of members of the NYPD, Fire Department, State Liquor Authority, Department of Health, Buildings Department, Department of Consumer Affairs, and other city and state agencies. Their mission? Hit the clubs and find SOMETHING to cite owners for.

After shining flashlights in the faces of people sitting at tables in CBGBs and chasing customers away, Task Force members hung around for a while, seemingly embarrassed over having no real reason to be there, other than harassment. At one point, one of them asked Dean Johnson, "Were all the songs this good? That one's fucking great!"

In the end, the Task Force found nothing, except for a fruit fly. Unwilling to leave empty-handed, they issued citations for CBGB's not having a liquor license displayed and for handling ice without a food handler's certificate.

Also that night, the Task Force hit Continental Divide at St. Mark's Place + Third Ave, and Coney Island High at 15 St. Mark's, where they again frightened patrons with flashlights in their faces, stopped customers from being served, killed the music and denied entry to new customers. Outside Coney Island High, a line of undercover police held up people trying to enter the club.

Jesse Malin, one of four partners who created Coney Island High, told the SHADOW, "You go to a night club to get AWAY from reality. There was no sex, drugs, fruit flies, or dancing--just people trying to get away from things on a Saturday night."

Malin, lead singer of DeGeneration, told the SHADOW that he grew up on St. Mark's Place, "playing in bands in clubs, watching gentrification creep in." He said that Coney Island High opened 3 years ago, funded by musicians, artists, and the creative community to create a nightclub as "an alternative to the corporate-style clubs that I always hated in the 1980s." According to Malin, at one point, CIH employed 50-60 artists, musicians, and actors.

Malin said that in the summer of 1997, CIH's "GreenDoor" dance nights and gay disco nights were suddenly stopped by the city. Anyone moving or swaying to live local talent was busted, because CIH has no cabaret license.

Malin told the SHADOW that CIH has tried, but cannot get a cabaret license. He said that when he investigated, he discovered that St. Mark's Place, between Second + Third Avenues, is zoned as "residential," despite the entire block being lined with businesses, including restaurants and bars. Malin said that the antiquated cabaret laws date back to the Prohibition era, and have not been en forced in New York City for as long as anyone can remember. "Dancing is defined as two or more people moving in an organized fashion," said Malin. Upon receiving a second violation for dancing, a club can be shut down and padlocked. Malin noted that "several clubs just blocks away and in equally or more resided in areas have cabaret licenses which they were granted many years ago." As a result of the city's dancing raids, CIH posted a "NO DANCING" sign. Customers who see the sign think it is a joke.

Malin said that CIH has still not recovered from having to eliminate dance nights. As a result, he said, the staff had to be cut, and CIH has been barely making enough money to pay rent, payroll and bills.

The Task Force club raids came along with stepped-up police activity stemming from the NYPD's creation of a "model block initiative" for St. Mark's Place in November 1997. Under the initiative, last summer, police set up regular roadblocks on St. Mark's, just a few doors away from CIH, shining flashlights into cars and checking licenses and IDs. Several business owners along St. Mark's have complained that these scare tactics have kept customers away.

On top of that, a week before the club raids, an article appeared in the Village Voice, titled "Whiskey, Cocaine and Bar Sex." The front cover was illustrated with a clay depiction of people passed out in their own vomit in front of Coney Island High. The article's phoney premise that clubs like CIH and CBGBs are havens of drugs and sex only added fuel to the city's war on New York nightlife, especially on the Lower East Side.

Malin told the SHADOW that he has spent $2,000 a week on Village Voice ads since CIH opened in 1995, and is outraged that the Voice chose to run the distorted article depicting Coney Island High as the center of whiskey, sex and coke. Since the Voice article, Malin said, "there has been a police car parked in front of CIH every night."

Aside from harassment against clubs on the Lower East Side, SHADOW sources say it is well known that the NYPD regularly demands pay-offs from owners of bars and clubs. The Coop, a club located on Bowery, between Fifth and Sixth Streets, was extorted by 9th precinct cops who threatened to otherwise shut it down. After about a year of paying them off, The Coop's owner refused to continue. Soon after, cops arrested patrons of the club on three occasions, all for alleged drug-related offenses. After the third bust, cops were able to close the club down. The Coop subsequently went out of business.

Dean Johnson told the SHADOW: "I'm glad I don't own a nightclub--what a pain in the ass!"