I hesitate to bring up the activities surrounding downtown clubs again because the constant talk will only increase the perception that our downtown is unsafe. It is not, but as I heard from a couple of people this week, “There is a certain time of night on some days that you might want to be in another part of downtown for about a half hour.”
It’s understandable that people might think that way after hearing some of the reports of fights in the streets, people getting maced by the police and large crowds of people gathering on the sidewalks in the early-morning hours.
City officials have rightly moved quickly to deal with what they believe are a couple of hotspot trouble areas. The caution here is that not every fight or incident that occurs at a nightclub is cause to shut the place down. Fights happen at restaurants, movie theaters and even Y-league football games.
A huge part of what has transformed our downtown into a vibrant area are the clubs, restaurant and live music venues. Closing them would be bad. Making them close earlier in the evening would be bad. Treating them as if they are all the same is also not a good idea.
The sad thing is it appears that the crowds that are causing most of the recent trouble downtown are much the same that caused problems in clubs in other parts of town over the years. One solution might be to do as some clubs in Knoxville do. When things get too out of hand, the DJ starts playing country music.