Don’t Let Us Throw a Flag on Your Driving this Super Bowl Sunday “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” The Sacramento Police Department will conduct a saturation patrol on Sunday, February 3, 2013, for 5 to 7 hours after the Super Bowl. The purpose of the saturation patrol is to promote public safety and serve as a deterrent to potentially impaired, unlicensed and dangerous drivers. Don't forget to designate a driver to and from your Super Bowl party this year. Plan ahead and don't get caught off sides and impaired! DUI/Traffic Officers will be deployed throughout the city looking for dangerous and impaired drivers to help ensure our streets stay safe. Funding for this program was provided

Townhouse Lounge, the bar and nightclub located at 1517 21st St., is expected to close early next year, according to owner/operator Desi David. “We’ve been there so long – it’s been 15 years – and the landlord is going to raise the lease,” he said. “We don’t blame them, and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.” David said the business won’t close immediately, and will likely stay open through the holidays, and possibly into next year. “We’re being completely positive about it right now,” he said. “We’ve got a nice community, and we will see what happens.” The business is open from 9 p.m. - 1:30 a.m. every day and features multiple levels of dancing, a bar and live music

Does Midtown have an overconcentration of bars? It’s an issue that has divided readers on The Sacramento Press since we launched four years ago. Sacramento Bee Associate Editor Foon Rhee wrote about the issue on Sunday, and we’ll have him and Midtown resident George Raya on Sac Press Live Wednesday to discuss it. The video chat window will be live streamed here on Wednesday at noon:   Some longtime residents say the Midtown area is overrun with drinking establishments, and it’s destroying their quality of life. Others cite the walkability of the district – and the amount of bars and restaurants – as reasons to live nearby. When new restaurants apply for alcohol licenses, they ofte

Blackbird Kitchen & Bar, which opened about four months ago, and Bartender Patrick O'Neill said a song inspired his addition to the Midtown Cocktail Week offerings with a drink he calls the William Tell. “I was taking light rail to work on a Monday – we are closed on Mondays so I like to come in and workshop some drinks and see what happens – but I was listening to the Brand New song 'You Won't Know,' and there are some references to William Tell in that song,” O’Neill said. “(I) got to work and started playing around, and all (of a) sudden I had this cocktail. I was happy with everything in it. Then I threw a slice of green apple over a rock cube and threw a cherry on top of it, and ther

The fatal shooting of a man walking near 28th and J streets in Midtown early Saturday morning has nearby residents concerned about a perceived connection between violence and the local bar scene, but Sutter District business owners say there is no cause for alarm. “Midtown is a safe district,” Midtown Business Association Executive Director Elizabeth Studebaker said Monday. “It’s not the kind of place where we’re accustomed to this kind of violence. It’s definitely not the norm for us.” The Sutter District is a popular destination and draws thousands of people each week, according to Studebaker. That concentration of people can create occasional problems, she said, but not unlike any oth

Does the grid have too many bars, and do those bars show enough respect for the residents around them? That's been a hotly debated question in the grid for years, and it came up during last week's Sac Press Live chat when I asked local historian and author William Burg to respond to a reader's comment that he was a "Not In My Backyard" activist. "That particular epithet is offensive and inappropriate," he said. "If you have standards – if you feel that some project isn't good enough for your neighborhood, then that's what you get slapped with." Here's the video of my question and his response:   Burg said that he enjoys nightlife in the grid, but he thinks many bars don't show eno

Will Brew it Up! return? The answer is a resounding "maybe." The brewpub and restaurant that featured a brew-your-own-beer aspect in addition to its selection of craft beers closed last year after a 15-year run. Now, owner Mike Costello said he’s got a new business plan in place to resurrect some of the successful aspects of the former business, and build upon them. He’s only missing one thing. “It all comes down to money,” he said, adding that while he has pledges of about $300,000, the potential investors don’t have quick access to the money, and he's looking for something more solid in the next month. “Basically, the long and the short of it is that the concept of Brew it Up! worked

Sacramento, CA | Several people busted in Sacramento and throughout California Friday purchasing alcohol for minors. As part of a state-wide operation, agents from the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) with Sacramento Police Department DUI Enforcement Officers ran sting operations throughout the day. Several teams were in the field utilizing actual under-aged decoys who would approach individuals entering a liquor store or market, disclosed their age and asked the persons to purchase alcohol for them. In one incident at Natomas Liquor, the sales clerk (not knowing an operation was under way) even warned the female purchaser that if she was purchasing the beer for minors not

A slice of life in pre-Prohibition Sacramento was on display at the Sacramento County Historical Society’s monthly meeting Tuesday night as saloon ware collector Steve Abbott gave a presentation on artifacts from the 1860s through the 1920s. The Sacramento Press caught up with Abbott Wednesday for a more in-depth look at his collection. “I come from a family of collectors,” the 73-year-old retired English teacher from Rancho Cordova said. “One day I was in Old Sacramento in an antique store, and I saw an old whiskey bottle for $7. That was when I got into it – about 30 years ago.” While whiskey was made back east, in states such as Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Indiana, it was shipped to

The city’s planning commission will decide whether to OK a permit for alcohol to a proposed bottle shop and tap room planned for a shopping center near the intersection of Howe Avenue and Fair Oaks Boulevard Thursday night. Capitol Beer and Tap Room is a potential business set to take an empty space at 2222 Fair Oaks Blvd. put together by business partners Ken Hotchkiss and Patti Aguierre. “It’s going to be kind of a high-end craft beer tasting room and bottle shop,” Hotchkiss said Wednesday. If given the go-ahead by the Planning Commission, the business could open as early as December, and Aguierre said she plans to participate in Beer Week, in late February. About 20 beers will be on

Over the past several weeks, the Save Sunny's Market Campaign attempted to obtain a change in the law so that we could decide as a neighborhood whether or not new owners Josh and Monica Patel ought to possess an alcohol license.  As the leader of this campaign, you might imagine that I became emotionally invested in the effort. It is with regret that I found out yesterday that we will not be able to get the change in law that Sunny's Market needs.  People just want government to work and as someone who has been in and around government, I hoped to be able to navigate around the some of the complexity.  Unfortunately, the bureaucracy proved to be too large of a barrier. So it is with even

Anyone who's been following the Save Sunny's Market campaign, might wonder how we got to this point.  In short, state law allows the negligent actions of a previous business owner to impact the potential success of a new owner.  After researching the legislative history, the answer to why this is the case is somewhat mysterious. The legislation in question is AB 1042 (Chapter 538, Statutes of 1996), authored by Assemblywoman Dede Alpert, and came about to "reduce the number of applications for liquor licenses by premises who have continually been denied a license and thus reducing the impact that these 'unwarranted' applications have on communities." Specifically, residents of the Linda

Thanks to the support of so many Marshall School/New Era Park (MSNEP) residents, the Save Sunny's Market campaign was able to deliver eleven pages of petition signatures to the offices of Assemblymember Roger Dickinson and Senator Darrell Steinberg yesterday. The 165 signatures demonstrate broad-based neighborhood support for the new operators of Sunny’s Market to acquire a beer and wine license. If you are just hearing about this issue for the first time, Josh and Monica Patel – the new owners of Sunny’s, are at risk of closing their doors due to the negligent actions of the previous owner who violated the law several times by selling alcoholic beverages to underage decoys. Under curren

This week, members of the Marshall School/New Era Park Neighborhood Association helped launch a campaign to save Sunny's Market.  A corner store at 28th and G Streets, Sunny's was acquired four months ago by new owners Josh and Monica Patel. Because of mutiple alcohol sales violations by the previous owner, a one-year moratorium on a new license has been placed on the site, notwithstanding the change in ownership.  At a time when Midtown residents have sought to further restrict the availability of alcohol in the central city, it's ironic that neighbors of Sunny's have come together in support of the Patels acquiring a license.  However, options appear limited at the moment because the r

The owners of a contested bar with a mixed martial arts fighting concept withdrew their application earlier this month, but neighboring residents are still concerned that new plans for the Midtown space will be the same operation by another name. The MMA Fight Bar concept was planned by the owners of Luck’s BBQ, which at 2502 J St. is next door to the vacant space the fight bar would have taken. The application for an alcohol license for Fight Bar was withdrawn by owners in mid-July, and the Alcoholic Beverage Control office confirmed Friday that no new application has been filed yet. “They’ve decided to change their format there,” said Midtown Business Association Executive Director Ro

After being out of town and unplugged from social communication for over a week, I have decided to use this week’s column as a little op-ed piece regarding a very touchy relationship subject: the ever-so-awkward public breakup scene. The only reason this is so fresh in my mind is that, during my vacation last week, I was caught in the tornado of one of the worst public breakup fiascoes I have ever seen. No, I was not breaking up, but my tablemates were. What started out as a pleasurable evening of watching UFC at a local pub in Long Beach turned into a horrible display of awkward, loud, hateful (and drunken) insults spoken by Miss to her Mister. My party of four had been seated with this

As downtown’s Shady Lady Saloon undergoes a voluntary 10-day suspension of its alcohol license, owners are helping their 32 employees find work until the bar can reopen May 20. When the establishment opened two years ago, a liquor license was obtained under the names of the three owners, Jason Boggs, Garrett Van Vleck and Alex Origoni. When the business was renamed Shady Lady Inc., the owners didn’t clear it with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Boggs said. “Unbeknownst to us, you can’t do that,” he said Friday, three days after the bar’s closure for the license suspension. Lori Ajax, district administrator for ABC’s Sacramento and Yuba district offices, said the

What do you get when you mix drink specials and poker chips? Tipsy Tokens, founded in Sacramento in 2011, is similar to the concept of Groupon, but focuses its promotions on local bars and nightclubs. What sets Tipsy Tokens apart from the other coupon sites is its social focus, co-founder Robert Cima said. “Though you’re purchasing something online, there’s a social aspect involved. There are reps on-site at the event checking people in and making sure everyone is having a good time. Also, you’re provided something physical: Tipsy Tokens. These tokens are colorful poker chips with the company logo on them used for buying drinks and playing games.” According to Cima, the project began ab

Ace of Spades music club recently got its liquor license under limited hours following area residents' concerns about possible problems. On March 3, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) transferred a liquor license to the club, which opened in early February at 1417 R St. The license was transferred from Empire Events, a nightclub operated there by the building's owner, Randy Paragary, and partners from 2004 until February 2010. Ace of Spades' owners, Eric Rushing and Brett Bair, had hoped to serve alcohol at the club until 2 a.m. every night. Under the conditions of the liquor license, the music club must stop serving alcohol at 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursday

Sacramento Beer Week culminated with The Capital Beerfest, held at Cal Expo on Saturday. Upon entering the exposition hall, there were professional brewers, organizations of home brewers and several distributing companies present, with volunteers buzzing around with a camaraderie that can only develop while working a beer festival. Beer drinkers and enthusiasts of all ages were there enjoying the event to the fullest. The only downfall was the weather. It was so nice outside that everyone was wishing they could be sipping outside rather than inside a hall. The VIP session began at noon and was terrific in the fact that the brewers pulled out all the stops and brought out their best from