![murder[1]](https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/murder1.jpg)
KetMoRee Thai Restaurant & Bar in Davis has long been a popular late night club with the college-aged crowd but often has been the source of trouble in the form of fights and drunkenness. On Friday night this scene turned deadly, leading to one 23-year-old man being dead, a 25-year-old being charged with homicide and two more at large following a fight early Saturday morning.
Assistant Police Chief Darren Pytel told the Vanguard that police responded to a fight inside the bar located at 238 G Street at approximately 1:30 am on Saturday morning.
When officers arrived they found a 23-year-old male from Southern California suffering from a serious injury consistent with being stabbed. The victim was transported to UC Davis Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
Sources told the Vanguard that the victim may have been the brother of the bride in a wedding party staying at a nearby hotel. Assistant Chief Pytel told the Vanguard, “There are no indications the victim did anything to provoke the fight.”
The victim’s name has not yet been released by the Yolo County Coroner, pending an autopsy reportedly scheduled for Monday.
Assistant Chief Pytel described it as an active investigation, where leads have identified three young adult males who were involved in the fight. One male, 25 years old and from Vacaville, was arrested on homicide charges. Several search warrants have been served and detectives are actively looking for the two additional outstanding suspects.
Detectives have not ruled out gang involvement regarding the three suspects.
KetMoRee remained closed throughout the day on Saturday, surrounded by yellow tape as investigators from the Davis Police Department and Yolo County Sheriff’s Department worked the crime scene.
KetMoRee has long been troubled by late night violence, with at least one previous stabbing.
Meanwhile, Davis continues its string of murders. From 2004 to 2011, there were no murders at all in the city of Davis. Then in October 2011, James Mings was arrested for murder in a strange case where a jury would ultimately find Mr. Mings guilty of attempted murder, instead of either first- or second-degree murder.
Then there was the infamous Daniel Marsh double murder in the spring of 2013, where the Davis teenager stabbed to death an elderly couple in their Davis home. In May of 2014, a Yolo County jury acquitted Davis resident Quentin Stone, accused of shaking his three-month-old baby, ultimately causing his death.
In September of 2013, Aquelin Talamantes was arrested and accused of drowning her five-year-old daughter. The defense had argued not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury convicted her and she received a 25 years to life sentence.
Darnell Dorsey is accused of assaulting his girlfriend’s child, causing the child’s death in Davis. That case is still pending and the defense has argued that there is no direct evidence tying Mr. Dorsey to the murder.
Most recently Joseph Hein, 23, shot 27-year-old Whitney Engler and took his own life this spring. The coroner confirmed the murder-suicide scenario. An autopsy report released this week gave few clues about Mr. Hein’s motive for the murder. Although it did turn up a note detailing that he planned to take his own life, it did not specify why or the reason he killed Ms. Engler as well.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
KetMoRee was a wonderful restaurant when it first opened in Davis and it still is. The food is delicious and the staff is very nice. It was not always a night club. The problems with fights and public drunkenness started when the night club opened up. Perhaps it’s time to return to the restaurant with bar and discontinue with the night club. It would be a smart move for the owners. Turning downtown into a “downtown of drunkenness,” fights, and urination in public (which happens and has been witnessed too many times by residents) is not the type of downtown that businesses and residents want or need. Let’s keep downtown Davis safe!
ketmoree has been a long time problem. we have a city council that deals with banalities like basketball hoops and bikes in yards but has failed to deal with these looming problems.
Davis Progressive, I agree that KetMoRee is a problem. Something needs to change and I think closing the night club while keeping the restaurant open is a good solution. We are past the point of promises of tightened security. One murder was one murder too many, so it’s time to take serious steps and put a stop to this now not later!
“KetMoRee was a wonderful restaurant when it first opened in Davis and it still is. The food is delicious and the staff is very nice. It was not always a night club. The problems with fights and public drunkenness started when the night club opened up. Perhaps it’s time to return to the restaurant with bar and discontinue with the night club. It would be a smart move for the owners.”
Let’s hope KetMoRee makes an effort to make some changes to protect its patrons. If it doesn’t, it may find customers take their business elsewhere. It is not as if there are not plenty of other restaurants/bars in town to patronize that don’t have an unsavory reputation.
This is a Davis downtown problem that is strongly connected to the NYMBY, no-growth, change-averse population of Davis.
With a limited supply of commercial real estate caused by the lack of city expansion to accommodate our population growth, with most of it forced into a small footprint downtown, downtown landlords jack up commercial lease rates. Restaurants tend to pay higher rents than do other retail and so the downtown has been converting to be more food-service and less other retail. But with limited square feet of table space and high rents, Davis downtown restaurants don’t make enough money for food service alone, and must double as night-clubs to make enough profit to pay their rents. (And don’t get me going on the impacts that would be caused by the stupid idea to jack up labor costs from a local minimum wage hike.)
The concentration of restaurants that convert to nigh-clubs combined with the large college student population has made Davis a well-know night-time party zone attraction for people outside the area.
For most of us this problem is easy to ignore because we are either too old or our kids are too young to be downtown on a Friday or Saturday night after 11:00 PM. But do yourself a favor and take a nap Saturday and head downtown around midnight… and you will not recognize your little village commercial center.
The only other location in Davis outside of the downtown is the Graduate at University Mall.
Davis, being a college town with a large population of students, is going to attract people from outside the area. There isn’t much we can do about that. And with a flow people from outside the area that come to party and drink, there are going to be fights and some of the fights are going to end up as tragedies of serious injury and death.
However, I think we increase the risk of these tragedies by concentrating so many of these people into such and small area. With more and more retail space converting to entertainment, the concentration will only increase.
Ian Wilson, a 2007 Davis Da Vinci graduate, was nominated for People’s Best New Chef in Food & Wine Magazine. But not for his work in Davis… he had moved to Portland.
See the article on Ian in the Davis Enterprise: http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/da-vinci-grad-in-the-running-for-best-new-chef/
So we prevent growth because we don’t want to change, and we cause the downtown to change to night-clubs and we prevent creative people like Ian to sophisticate and expand our local food-service economy.
The blame for the death of this young man is 100% on his killer. However, we are responsible for the concentration of high-testosterone and high blood-alcohol humanity that comes to our downtown. This concentration increases the risk of tragic encounters. Ideally we build more peripheral retail that provides a larger inventory of commercial real estate that caused rents to fall and a more diverse selection of downtown retail to flourish.
Well, they have had the same problems in Old Town Roseville, Old Sac and other parts of downtown Sac, downtown Chico, and myriad other downtown locations. And I’d guess the actual crime rate in Davis is lower than similar locations. A single incident like this really stands out here, but probably wouldn’t in a lot of other cities.
http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/chico-crime-rate-sees-big-spike/26149268
If particular types of businesses are causing increased police service activity, they can be assessed for that, or they can provide private security.
all the downtown bars already have private security during late night peak hours.
Frankly, your logic does not work. Are you claiming the restaurants would shut down the nightclubs if there were peripheral business locations? That doesn’t hold any water.
No, he’s saying we need to move the drunks to his neighborhood by opening nightclubs there. Disperse them around the city. It’s all just a planning issue.
No, I am saying that by adding more attractions around the city we would not concentrate the mass of humanity going downtown and lessen the risk of hostile encounters downtown. And I am saying that by increasing the inventory of business locations rents would fall and more GOOD restaurants could succeed without needing to do the night club thing.
The night club thing is not a panacea for these restaurants. Their insurance is higher. They have more damage to the restaurant facility that has to be maintained. They have to hire and pay more staff to tend the night-time business. They make money but at a cost. If the restaurant could make a profit without the night-club most would close early.
But I am talking about good restaurants, not the cheap student food types. Some like Mikunis are the exception.
When I was in my 20s in the 1980s I was in a band that played for several Davis downtown venues. I fail to see the difference between this and today except it is mostly recorded music and not live music. The difference is simply the number of people coming here. Davis has about doubled in population. The student population has grown, and the region has grown. Yet Davis has not really added much new commercial real estate. The downtown is about the same size as it was in 1980.
“…we cause the downtown to change to night-clubs and we prevent creative people like Ian to sophisticate and expand our local food-service economy.
The blame for the death of this young man is 100% on his killer. However, we are responsible for the concentration of high-testosterone and high blood-alcohol humanity that comes to our downtown. This concentration increases the risk of tragic encounters.”
Hear, hear.
Frankly
“However, we are responsible for the concentration of high-testosterone and high blood-alcohol humanity that comes to our downtown. This concentration increases the risk of tragic encounters. Ideally we build more peripheral retail that provides a larger inventory of commercial real estate that caused rents to fall and a more diverse selection of downtown retail to flourish.”
There are many approaches to violence prevention in our community. I would place “build more peripheral retail” near the bottom of a very long list. Some specific steps that I would place much higher on my list would be:
1. Stop defending male on male violence as a “boys will be boys” phenomena seen as inevitable, but rather as a manifestation of our violent society which can be moderated.
2. Adopt a much stricter attitude towards domestic violence which is the root of societal violence.
3. Stop viewing individual business profit as sacrosanct. Adopt a stepwise disciplinary action up to and including closure of problematic aspects at businesses at which ongoing violence has been a problem as suggested by Cecelia. On a personal level, we have stopped going to this restaurant largely for this reason.
4. Recognize that population growth, both at the university and within the city will likely result in higher levels of violent and non violent crime and take deliberate steps to mitigate this consequence.
5. Recognize and plan to mitigate the likely increase in violence that may be seen with increased densification and urbanization of the downtown and surrounding areas.
Tia,
YES. Every word.
Who is defending it? Anti-cop social crusaders maybe, but not me. But regardless, this comment is largely a non sequitur as there is nothing actionable there. You need to take it to the next level and explain what you would do and how.
I don’t see domestic violence being at the root of social violence. Do you have any citations for that claim? In any case though, again, you don’t provide any what and how? Are you prepared to accept the adverse consequences to the people belonging to the victims groups that you otherwise demand more law enforcement leniency toward?
This is where you demonstrate a stubborn disconnect or ignorance about how the entire social system works or does not work. From where does the money come to fund utopia? How do you first make money to pay taxes and to invest in new business that can pay taxes if not profit? And how do you attract existing capital to invest in business without some probability of returns?
This restaurant is fine during the day… it is only the nigh-club business where problems can occur. And this restaurant is not unique in that many Davis downtown restaurants do the same. How do you want this restaurant to change? To stop being a night-club? Then you would have to accept it going out of business. Or would you support profiling at the door… rejecting people that look like they might be prone to violence?
It seems to me that you are prone to deflecting responsibility for this problem with an irrational blame of the restaurant.
There is some truth this this, but it is more complicated. For example, in this study the conclusion is that a concentration of people increase the number of person-to-person encounters that increase the risk that more will turn violent. Now, one offsetting indicator is the number of “guardians” (cops). So that is a possible assist here… Davis should hire more cops to patrol downtown Friday and Saturday night. Are you going to be in support of that, or are you going to claim that cops unfairly target people are too heavy handed? My guess is the latter.
What do you recommend other than more cops? It seems to be that your vision of utopia is stuck in a conundrum.
And many more restaurant DON’T Frank Lee, and they manage to stay in business. Turning your business into a nightclub at night and all the sin it brings is a choice.
Name them sir Alan.
Jack-in-the-Box, for example.
LOL! Yes, and Taco Bell.
Just read about a new type of Taco Bell that will serve booze… http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/09/15/taco-bell-begins-selling-beer-wine-liquor-chicago/72292440/
The end of the world as we know it.
Come on, nothing would wash down a bean burrito or a beef taco better than a margarita.
It’s…
…and I feel fine.
Seasons, Paragary’s, Sophia’s are three restaurants on my rotation that do not convert to nightclubs that seem to be able to stay in business. It can be done.
“How do you first make money to pay taxes and to invest in new business that can pay taxes if not profit? And how do you attract existing capital to invest in business without some probability of returns?”
Frankly, not entirely sure if you’ll like my suggestion: Perhaps when cannabis becomes recreationally legal, it could change from an alcohol-based nightclub to another knd of club. I wish most people didn’t need to do cannabis in public, recreationally, because I worry about them driving home. Also are they dealing with the issues in their life that perhaps give them a feeling of a need to escape personal/society issues for a while, by being high or drunk? But at the end of the day, I’d take my chances at a dispensary-type club, rather than an alcohol based club.
My take from a few years as a young partygoer who is now somewhat reformed but enjoys a very occasional wine/IP or joint to unwind:
Alcohol based clubs seem to fuel sex-based arguments. The majority of the fights I’ve witnessed in bars, in my twenties and thirties (granted, 30 years ago) revolved around a man wanting a woman’s attention, or a young woman wanting several mens’ attention. Then the men start fighting over her, or the girlfriends get pissed.
I recently asked my twenty-something CA son and daughter if much has changed? Sadly, no. I recently asked my other friends who live in Portland/frequented Seattle clubs before rec cannabis legalized, if much has changed? No, but in the cannabis clubs, there is less violence.
It would be nice to hear from some actual club goers in Davis, as all my current knowledge is, thankfully, second hand!
Something tells me they aren’t the type who read the Vanguard.
And, we’d have to catch them when they’re sober…
“I don’t see domestic violence being at the root of social violence. Do you have any citations for that claim?”
I have no citations, only a gut feeling after dealing with over one dozen domestic violence survivors, and being friends with a woman who did not survive her attacker/boy”friend”.
My gut feeling is that Tia is correct.
Domestic violence is the root of some, but not even a significant percentage of social violence. MH issues trump DV issues big time. Orders of magnitude. Just look at David’s “string” list of murders/homocides.
Frankly
I wrote a short piece for the Vanguard previously about domestic violence as one root of violence in our society. I think that one point is probably so self evident as to need no substantiating evidence. Most behaviors have some root in the family structure in which we are raised. If this were not apparent to most who post here, we would not have calls for two parent families and paternal responsibility as critical to certain societal problems.
The second point regarding the role of domestic violence in fostering violent activity within our society is less obvious and deserves support which is why I wrote my previous piece on March 19th of this year which includes a number of studies about the widespread negative effects of domestic violence on childhood, adolescent and adult behaviors. I do not claim that domestic violence is the sole root of adult violent behavior as this is very complex, but I feel that it is undeniably one root and one that can be addressed within our society.
I don’t debate that domestic violence is a factor, just not a big root. As you know a “root” is the very source… the thing that all else grows from? I think domestic violence is sometimes the root; but I think morale decay, poor education and limited economic opportunity are more expansive and more preliminary roots.
A few years ago my husband and I were having a late dinner with friends who we had not seen in a long time and were having fun catching up with in a local restaurant. The place was empty except for us, and the staff started moving all the chairs and tables outside. Then they started taking all the art work of the walls and statues out of the alcoves. At some point the waiter approached our table and said they were converting to night club and needed us leave, although, he added we were welcome to go wait in line, pay a cover, and come back in to dance if we wanted. Needless to say we took the leaving option. (I was at staged of my life when my kids were so young that yoga pants and oversized tee-shirts were basically all I wore, not quite nightclub attire).
This was the first inkling that I had that the Davis bar scene had changed in the 20 years since I had frequented it.
I lived downtown when in my later college years, and would frequently patronize the then local establishments like, Mr. B’s, The Catina, G St. Pub, Froggy’s before it was Froggy’s (what was that place called?), late into the night, I don’t ever remember seeing a fight.
When did restaurants start converting to night clubs in which violence occurs on a regular basis?
Pretty sure it was the Paragon before it was Froggy’s.
Yup, that was it. Although they had a tragic event occur there as well, after a patron died from attempting to drink 21 drinks on their 21st birthday.
They changed the name to Froggy’s after one of their bartenders over-alchoholed a patron and killed them.
https://localwiki.org/davis/The_Paragon
in the last five to ten years, places like tres hermanas and ketmoree have had night club style usages bringing with them drinking, fights, assaults, rapes, and now murder. i don’t know that this means we shouldn’t have these kinds of establishments, but we need to be aware of it.
Over the last 10 years or so, Planning staff has promoted restaurants in the Core, particularly those that serve alcohol, even pressuring PW staff to accept more and more ‘fences’ in City right of way, in order to serve alcohol outside. They called it ‘economic development’.
And this is the result.
Davis’s downtown like most growing cities is becoming “old downtown”. And most old downtowns convert to entertainment over time.
The difference is that Davis hasn’t expanded with enough commercial development and so the rents are very high due to high demand and low supply. And our old downtown is much smaller than most from a per capita perspective… thus concentrating the mass of humanity in a small area.
A restaurant’s food and labor costs will typically absorb 60 to 70 percent of total sales. The remaining third of revenues has to cover everything else, including lease, taxes and — hopefully — some profit for the proprietor. In most cases, the industry’s collective experience shows that the lease cost should total no more than 5 to 8 percent of the restaurant’s total revenues. In Davis the average lease costs is more like 12-20% of revenue for the restaurant operation. Then figure another 2-5% for other operational costs like insurance. Those Davis restaurants that stay viable without a nigh-club reduce their labor costs and food cost percentage of total sales. For example, pizzas are relatively cheap to make. Restaurants without wait staff and without the need for trained culinary professional employees and without the need for dishwashers etc… they have lower labor costs. With lower food costs and/or lower labor costs some lower-end restaurants can absorb the higher rents and still make some profit.
Frankly
“ there is nothing actionable there.”
I disagree. I believe that there are many actions that could be taken. Males ( as females largely are now) could be taught from childhood that physical force when angered or frustrated is completely unacceptable behavior. This could be modeled by all of the adults in their lives. This could be modeled in every family. Not our current model, but certainly possible. I never resorted to physical discipline with my children and know many other parents who have successfully raised peaceful children without the use of physical force.
“From where does the money come to fund utopia? “
Talk about non sequitur. I made no mention of utopia. I do not believe that businesses whose profits are based on violence promoting activities, namely public intoxication with its inhibition lowering tendencies should be allowed to continue to profit from these activities once they have demonstrated their inability to cope with violence within their establishment which is definitely true for this restaurant/ night club.
“To stop being a night-club? Then you would have to accept it going out of business.”
Hardly. It had not gone out of business as a restaurant. It was obviously profitable enough to allow it to expand its business,. There are many restaurants that have existed in Davis for many years without either converting to a violent night club or going out of business.
And for Michelle:
“When did restaurants start converting to night clubs in which violence occurs on a regular basis?”
From my completely personal, non data based perspective speaking only as someone who can hear the events at the downtown nightclubs from my house due to proximity, I would say that last 3-4 years have seen major changes in the degree of late night/early morning violence.
About 7-8 years ago the sub-woofer and alcohol fueled night club scene came to Davis. Lots of public urination, some public fornication, possible rape, mega drunk driving, lots of people coming into town from up and down the valley including a large contingent of males from all over to prey on inebriated college women. The entire scene has gone downhill fast, in the name of economic development. F-that. I recently received a copy of a report from Fullerton that has a similarly exploding night-club scene and the assessment was that the cost of policing and other city services costs the city of Fullerton far more than it takes in from additional revenue from the night scene. Perhaps Davis should conduct a similar study. I called the city once about the night clubs and was told by a planning staffer than night-clubs are not permitted in downtown Davis. I have never been able to confirm this, but if so perhaps it should be enforced. This scene attracting so many undesirable out-of-towners here to drink and drive drunk on our streets isn’t worth the revenue even if there is any.
Years ago I volunteered, in Sac, with a CHP-based organization that gave free rides to drunk bar patrons. Does that organization still exist? Also, how is the tipsy taxi, or whatever it was called, doing?
Does the Vomit Comet still orbit the downtown area to whoosh drunks back home?
I see we have some of our local liberals complaining about the public urination occurring in our downtown due to the night club patronage. Are these same liberals also including the public urination of our downtown homeless? Or is pointing that problem out considered taboo?
BP
Public urination is public urination regardless of who is doing it. The question here is whether we are providing places for those who do not have homes to have access to public toilets. The action is not changed, but the reason is certainly different, and if the night club patron is in need of a toilet, there are always those available in the facility they are patronizing.
LOL. If we had more space downtown, we could build some public bathrooms. Or put up portapotties Friday and Saturday night and then take them away on Sunday.
Go check out what goes on. The kids stand in line to get into a bar, and then move to another and stand in line again. They are standing in line to get into these small venues and they have to go to the bathroom. Where do they go?
The homeless urination problem is different in that we should not welcome people that don’t have a place to live to go to the bathroom. We should have a supply of facilities and disallow any homeless camping and give citations/fines for public urination.
Frankly
“Go check out what goes on”
I live close enough to be keenly aware of “what goes on”.
Patrons of night clubs should remain enough in control of their faculties to realize that they should urinate before changing venues. On the point of providing enough public facilities, we are in agreement.
Well, “public urination” if observed by minors, can result in charges, and possible permanent “sex offender” status. [if the ‘hose’ is visible]
I’d rather accommodate the homeless with public toilets, rather than over-imbibing college students. The latter are deliberately making poor choices, IMO.
Since we are talking about someone who got stabbed to death, I don’t know how appropriate it is to have a conversation about public urination.
Then talk to your wife, she brought it up.
BP, Topic here is the bar murder, not the homeless.
Ya’ll making the case that these restaurants do not need to become night clubs (i.e., it is a choice) are frankly demonstrating your profound ignorance of the business reality. I would suggest you actually go talk with an owner of one of these establishments before positioning yourself as knowledgeable.
Tocus did NOT do the nigh club thing and went out of business.
Get a clue folks.
Rents downtown are high because there are few alternatives for other restaurant locations in town… because there are no other commercial buildings or land to build on available. Supply and demand is a difficult thing for some to understand. Sad, but true.
Alan Miller, I am very disappointed in your rant here. Usually you can be counted on for more thoughtful points. It is the LACK of economic development that has resulted in the current situation. For example, I know of one downtown big downtown landlord that has currently put all his buildings up for sale. It will likely result in more restaurants replacing non-restaurant retail because the new owner will jack up the rates. These new restaurants will either be cheap food places that students like to visit and that have low enough overhead to make it work… or nice restaurants that adults would like but that cannot afford the rents unless they have a full bar and can keep it open until late hours.
If you want to outlaw night-clubs you are basically going to have to set a drinking curfew. If we are going to set a drinking curfew then be prepared to see good restaurants close and be replaced with cheap-food restaurants.
Frankly: Tocus did NOT do the nigh club thing and went out of business.
Maybe you mean ‘Tucos’? or maybe ‘Tuckus’?
Thanks. Tucos. See what happens when you go out of business… some of us forget how to spell your name! I once had a Tuckus but that too is fading with age!
Would’ve been a pretty small dance floor.
My rant is perfect, like a fine wine . . . a fine wine served in excess by a downtown bar on a Thursday night (to the the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa that penetrates 1/4-mile in everyone direction from downtown until 2:00am), the patrons parking in my neighborhood to hide from the cops that they are driving home drunk, tipping over our trash cans and smashing fencing while they walk home, fornicating in our allies, peeing . . . wherever . . . and possibly costing more in city services than they take in. Yes, a fine wine indeed. You may consider it a fine whine, but then again, most of you safely tucked away in your suburb, not affected by the Davis Murder Dubs, unaffected by the wine, beer and other spirits doled out en-masse on our little Fridays, our regular Fridays, and our Saturdays.
Frank Lee, I a very disappointed in you being disappointed in me.
My rant is perfect, like a fine wine . . . a fine wine served in excess by a downtown bar on a Thursday night (to the the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa that penetrates 1/4-mile in everyone direction from downtown until 2:00am), the patrons parking in my neighborhood to hide from the cops that they are driving home drunk, tipping over our trash cans and smashing fencing while they walk home, fornicating in our allies, peeing . . . wherever . . . and possibly costing more in city services than they take in. Yes, a fine wine indeed. You may consider it a fine whine, but then again, most of you safely tucked away in your suburb, not affected by the Davis Murder Dubs, unaffected by the wine, beer and other spirits doled out en-masse on our little Fridays, our regular Fridays, and our Saturdays.
Frankly
“Tocus did NOT do the nigh club thing and went out of business.”
You are conveniently neglecting to mention any number of restaurants in town that have been in business for many, many years without expanding into night club business in order to remain open. This would apply to any number of Thai, Chinese, Mexican and Indian restaurants. Perhaps a conversation with the owners of these businesses would be instructive with regard to how they manage to remain in business.
Seems to me I played with a trio at some dump in that location around 1972 or 3. I know they served pizza, because in the middle of a song, the house p.a. would blare ,” Number 19, yer pizza’s ready”. My buddies and I wrote a song about it.
The bartender was strong arming us for a cut of our money. We negotiated a satisfactory agreement, after he realized we were playing for survival. Rents are pretty steep in your little burg and landlords are not big on improvements. I can well imagine the tight margin for a restaurant operator, trying to exclude the market with the most accessible entertainment budget. I have often thought that it would be to everyone’s advantage to create a Sports/Leisure mall, Spanning the river with a skywalk between Stadium and Arena, West Sacramento and Sacramento, encompassing the waterfront and old Sacramento, Hotel, Entertainment and dining, instead of just screwing up downtown with the pet arena project. And have shuttles and moving sidewalks, No personal vehicles inside the entertainment zone. That might keep that dangerous “out of town ” element out of Davis and attract the chic, club crowd to our area.
” If we are going to set a drinking curfew then be prepared to see good restaurants close and be replaced with cheap-food restaurants.”
I think this is a real possibility.
;>)/
Franky can we agree that the growing night club scene in this town may be causing problems that as a community we need to address, regardless of the economic factors at play.
We can agree that there are opportunities for improvements, but we cannot ignore the economic factors. That would be really stupid, IMO.
We can also agree that there are trade-offs and consequences for every thing we do or do not do. We can agree that we cannot directly control nor effectively manipulate social outcomes without expecting economic impacts that in turn result in social impacts.
You and other seem to want to crucify the business owners. Sit-down restaurants that require professional culinary and service personnel and expensive ingredients are not comparable to pizza and family-run restaurants that cater to students. The former have a lot more overhead.
The primary problem is just density. The density of humanity that ascends on a small 2 square blocks of Davis’s downtown two nights a week. The secondary problem is the high rents.
How would you solve the problem?
Huh? What did I say that implied this?
I have no idea, I have not claimed to have a solution. But before we find one I think we need to agree that there is a problem.
I imagine that business owners would agree that situations which foster violence, and lead to the fatal stabbing of a young man in their establishment, is a problem that needs to be addressed and that finding a solution is in their best interest.
You said…
To me that says you would ignore the financial viability of the restaurant in your hunt for “solutions”.
If this was your take away then you misinterpreted my comment. You seem so defensive of restaurants in Davis continuing a business practice that may have resulted in the violent murder of a young man, that you don’t want to seem to acknowledge that a problem exist with the practice. This kind of digging in does not lead to productive results, for anyone.
I’m not blaming or trying to crucify business owners for trying to stay profitable. But clearly this practice of converting their restaurants into nightclubs will not be profitable in Davis if these types of tragic events continue to occur at their establishments. It is my understanding that violence outside these bars around closing time is an escalating problem in our community that needs to be addressed. Blindly defending the “nightclub practice” as the only economically viable option is not a step in the right directions for the business owners, their employees who depend on their jobs to support their families, or the community.
I am in business to promote economic development through small business financing. I protect all small business from harm where I can. The restaurant did not cause the fight nor kill the young man. I disagree that the restaurant was even complicit in this problem. I have lived here about years and there has always been bars with music and crowds and some fights. If the problem is worse now than then, it is for one single reason… density. More people crammed into a small area. Your blame is misplaced.
How about blaming city politicians that gave away the city treasure to the union members that funded their campaigns and now we don’t have the money to hire more cops as foot patrol to monitor the area? How about the current politicians for failing to work hard enough to solve our budget problems thus leading to no money to fund creative solutions? How about the NIMBY, change-averse, no-growth voters that have prevented any peripheral commercial development?
Since these problems are common to every college town, I don’t see your growth/planning argument as having much basis here. Is the crime rate in Davis higher than other college towns? Are the problems here worse than towns that have more peripheral retail? This is a very unfortunate incident, but I doubt it proves anything at all about Davis nor does it lead to any particular need for policy changes. I seriously don’t see how “peripheral commercial development” would have prevented an early morning stabbing outside a Davis nightclub.
http://davismerchants.org/vanguard/cityalcohollimits.png