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Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Café Scene

Our last Common Council meeting is available online.  (See, Whitewater Common Council, 6/16/09.)   Over half an hour into the meeting, there was discussion of sidewalk cafés for some establishments near the Cravath lakefront. 

The Council had a first reading of an amendment to the local ordinance application to these cafés.  There were two proposed changes to the ordinance: (1) remove a requirement that establishments with café have a minimum of 30% food sales to be eligible to operate a café, and (2) that the required plans for the cafés — the arrangement of tables, etc. — be simpler, less elaborate.    The proposed amendments passed first reading, on a vote of 6-1.  

It’s odd to listen to the discussion, because so much of it sounds like so much of Whitewater — overly-regulatory, with objections based on supposedly raucous behavior, but without a willingness to discuss how to manage or prevent that behavior (should it occur), short of prohibition.  

Prohibition is the dumbing down of policy, the lazy man’s way to try to prevent a problem, all the while ignoring the other problems prohibition causes. 

A few remarks — 

The 30% requirement for food sales — This was a foolish requirement, twice over.  First, it’s just too burdensome.   This only sounds easy to someone who doesn’t grasp how many other requirements a business faces.  One’s supposed to measure all this, so carefully?  This is a non-merchant’s idea of a good idea.  It would only sound sensible to someone who did not have to run a restaurant.  Anyone else would accept it only begrudgingly.  It’s a giveaway that advocacy of this requirement cries out — does not understand a merchant’s life.  

What’s a sidewalk café?  There’s a too-clever moment, when those who oppose that alcohol consumption at the cafés contended that they favored sidewalk cafés, or the “café concept,” but not “sidewalk taverns.”  It’s a seemingly clever attempt to distinguish between two kinds of dining experience, and marginalize the one that includes consumption of alcohol. 

The problem, of course, is that most people — in Whitewater, in Wisconsin, or elsewhere in America — will understand that cafés often serve alcohol.  The linguistic distinction — sidewalk cafés vs. sidewalk taverns — only seems clever to people who don’t (or won’t) try to understand how ordinary people think about cafés like this.  It’s the kind of rhetorical distinction that seems so powerful in a room of a few people, all of the same view, but fails to persuade ordinary people, with a broader perspective.  Whitewater’s an echo chamber, and its leaders talk mostly to themselves and a like-minded few.   

(It’s why, when outsiders look at Whitewater, and point out simple local mistakes, there’s shock and indignation among the town’s elite.  These town squires have not thought half these issues through, using only each other as sounding boards, tell each other what they want to hear, and then express shock when others point out how ill-conceived actions here often are.  Huh, what, me?)  

The more extreme version of this view is when residents pretend Whitewater’s a magical place, unique from the rest of America.  That’s a magical notion, because it’s not at all reasonable  It’s also a dangerous notion, as rights common to all are either ignored or interpreted wrongly, in the most politically and bureaucratically self-interested way.  

Safety and security.  There’s a worry that sidewalk cafés will lead to patrons passing alcohol to those under drinking age, creating disturbances.  The cafés would operate at low volume times in Whitewater, but there’s a fear that all of this will lead to the raucous, the disorderly.   Other cities with universities operate cafés that serve alcohol, and we’re not — and will not be — Singapore, in any event.   If the answer to ordinary life is not prohibition, then it’s not raw numbers, crude increases in government personnel, either. 

We have a municipal leadership that uses all the language of modern business — every catchphrase ever coined — but recoils from even simple consideration of efficiencies.  

If it should be true that we’ve not the staff to monitor a few cafés near our municipal building, then we should adjust our staff.  If we need more staff, to do what other cities do routinely, then we should consider more staff, but also — no less — how present staff are allocated.  Both matter, but we never talk about allocation of staff in Whitewater, just headcount across the board. 

If the City believes that more officers are needed, and is prepared to offer detailed reasons for it, including when demand is highest, and show how personnel are used now, then that’s a debate those advocating more personnel should be prepared to entertain, received openly.

I see no reason, by the way, why there should only be sidewalk cafés.  If, as was once true, some people want to sell hot dogs, or have a push cart here or there. I’d be for that, too.  Deciding against hot dog sales was a bad idea — we should allow as much, and give others outside a small zone the chance to sell, too (for commericial or civic purposes, either).  It won’t be, at every moment, the most orderly scene, but we’ll not descend into Lord of the Flies, either.   As it is, the possibility of a cafe does not a cafe make.

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