Bars Not Welcome

This isn't going to help. Bravo for the Iowa City City Council trying once again to tackle a problem and completely missing the point. First of all, we live in a college town. There needs to be a pragmatic recognition that college kids drink and we all need to grow up a little and deal with that. Instead of wasting time trying to get college kids not to drink, how about we spend some time trying to promote responsible drinking?

There's a shocker of a concept. It's not that all the college kids drinking are bad- it's just that until they pass a certain age (usually 21, when the allure of doing sake bombs and shots of Jaeger until the point of vomiting profusely usually wears off) college kids are idiots. One only has to pass the core collection of freshman bars in Iowa City to see evidence of that every weekend. (The Filthy Four: Third Base, SpoCo, Jakes and the Summit). Drinking is something that every adult learns to do responsibly and it's usually a process that takes time (with age comes wisdom, supposedly) and experience (too much tequila one night does not a fun hangover make.) But by and large it does happen...

When it comes to binge drinking in this town, the problem is that no one has seriously thought of a way to lessen the idiot drinking and promote the smart drinking. That's the real problem- and its a problem that's entirely self-made. When City Council members say things like this:

"I'm tired of the drunk kids; I'm tired of the drunk adults," council member Connie Champion said.

It seriously pisses me off. For twenty years now, the City Council has been selling out to big name developers because somewhere along the way, they got it into their heads that downtown Iowa City needed to be swanky and have a 'big city' feel to it, whatever that means. Sensible businesses that brought the entire community downtown are now a thing of the past. Anyone remember Pizza Hut? Hardees? Great Midwestern? The movie theater? Hell, even Bushnell's Turtle and Barbara's Bakery? The City Council wants families to move back downtown, but who in their right minds would want to live downtown when in order to buy decent groceries, you have to drive somewhere else? And what business owner is going to want to pay exorbitant rates to move downtown?

In order for Iowa City to succeed at tackling this problem, the community at large needs a reason to come back downtown again. The Council can pass every ordinance in the books, but until we diversify the business base downtown and make it more than just bars, restaurants and overpriced boutiques, the problems will continue. Binge drinking isn't the biggest problem in this town: it's reversing twenty years of the City Council slowly but surely gentrifying our downtown and making it a playground for the wealthy folks and the drunk college kids instead of making it a place where the entire community can come to shop, eat, and participate in community events with their families.

How do we do this? I don't know- but I know for sure that passing this silly-ass law isn't going to solve the problem.