Blue Lake's Logger Bar
The Times- Standard reports the Blue Lake City Council has decided the city's existing noise ordinance doesn't apply to its Logger Bar- the Logger Bar being established in 1899 and the ordinance adopted much later in 1956. In other words, the Logger Bar was kinda grandfathered out of it.
Kinda puts a decades old spin on that saying about not moving in next to the airport and then complaining about the noise, doesn't it?
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:04 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Good comment.
Speaking of businesses, I remember your recent S.F. trip report and your Healdsburg comment. One of the commentators suggested Wild Sage Cafe on Dry Creek Road. This place is worth the stop. Wonderful food. Best to make this a northbound stop as for southbound travel one must turn left onto Dry Creek Road and good luck finding a break in the traffic. Still, this place is worth the effort.
Good to know!
Your analogy of moving next to an airport is bogus here because one would expect noise from an airport - all the time.
However, moving into a neighborhood where a bar may be located does not in itself mean that you should expect noise all the time, does it?
Look at what the BL City Council said: the bar is "grandfathered" in against their noise ordinance from 1956 simply because it was there since 1899?
That is not a logical conclusion in itself. Who would know of that "loophole" Before moving into a neighborhood, or city, where there IS a noise abatement standard established?
And, would this also apply to city standards established after 1899 about such mundane things as health regs for a bar or eatery. Sorry, folks, back in 1899 we didn't know about salmonella so if you got poisoned at our bar you're plum out of luck.... grandfathered!!!!! Ha Ha Ha
I'll give you this much: They probably didn't have much in the way of electronic music and amplification back then.
Still, I resent the idea that someone new to an area can disrupt what has been going on decades, although I have no idea just how long the complainants have lived in Blue Lake.
Kinda like what happened to the guy that owns Taylor Landscape, down off of West Wabash(?) in Eureka. He lived out behind Ridgewood School in Cutten and had an area set up where local gardeners could dump their grass. He'd then turn it into compost and sell it at his business.
He had to shut down the dump after someone new moved next to the road we'd drive down to get to his place. It seems they didn't like the traffic. I never saw any other gardeners there when I dumped stuff so there couldn't have been that much.
Regardless, the neighbor complained to the county and they shut his dump down. He wasn't happy. As he told me, "I've been there over twenty years. These guys move in two years ago and start complaining, even though no other neighbors ever had".
I got my own story:
For a brief time I worked in a cannery in Sonoma County. It had been there since at least the Second World War.
Someone in the '90's decided to make his pile by buying land next door and built a pack of McMansions (a "Murder of McMansions"? an "Exhalation of McMansions"? a "Mob of McMansions"?). Then all those doctors and lawyers and dentists and CPA's moved in and decided they didn't like the noise.
So they got the cannery closed.
The fact that they left unemployed people who had worked at the cannery for decades did not phase them one bit.
I'm pretty sensitive to noise myself so I have some sympathy for the Logger Bar's neighbors; but really, one does need to take a look around a neighborhood before deciding to move in.
However, moving into a neighborhood where a bar may be located does not in itself mean that you should expect noise all the time, does it?
Of course not "all the time," but depending on how close the place you're looking at is to the bar, and what kind of bar it is (like whether they have live music, outdoor seating, etc.), you should expect some noise, especially at night and on weekends. By the same token, if you move near a hospital, you should expect some ambulance sirens. It's kind of an inevitable part of the business.
That being said, in the interest of being good neighbors and constructive members of the community, the Logger Bar should take steps to minimize the noise impact on neighbors. Keep the volume down or keep more of the noise inside, or both.
By the way, when it comes to live music in a small bar, louder is almost never better.
In fact I don't think I've ever left a live show at a bar thinking "the music wasn't loud enough." But many times I've left thinking "that was way louder than necessary."
Thanks for sharing the good news.
I lived about a block away in the early 1990s. The Logger was nothing compared to the train coming through. It was a much rougher area in those days.
Rock n roll. Move to eureka if you want it quiet at night
Being a part of the neighborhood that complained, just for your Info. 5 generations 90 years and 70 of those right here in Blue Lake. My husband for 39 years himself. Lived next door for 15 years, no complaints until the reopening. No noise at all before, a quiet bedroom community just like the city wanted, then a night club opened up. In a place that has never really had live entertainment because it is just a small bar with limited space.
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