March 18, 2024

The Riptide secured it’s music permit, but not without a struggle but David Quimby and Les James did win a big one for live music.  The five-member Entertainment Commission voted unanimously to approve the bars entertainment license and granted late operatin hours on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and limiting it to 11:pm Sunday thru Wednesday.

A dozen people, including the SFPD and Cammy Blackstone, a former staff-member at City Hall’s entertainment works, were on hand to support the Riptide; three came in opposition.  Fortunately, the opposition did itself in with rambling presentations and chippy demeanor.  Pros and cons only had a minute each to speak.  Master of didacticism and elocution Mitch Polzac, the Royal Deuces’ Fearless Leader and Mayor of Port Costa, compressed his three-minute presentation onto one, on the fly.  With so many people speaking up for The Riptide, the Commission had to trim our time allotments in order to have any chance of closing the hearing in a reasonable time.

The bar wanted an hour more entertainment time for Sunday thru Wednesday, but that was the give-back the Entertainment Commission seemed to need to clinch the deal.  The “only in SF” part of the deal was abput the Rip’ having to drop Bingo because of our nineteenth century law that forbids even non-monetary Bingo anyplace other than in a church, apparently as God intended it.