NEW YORK, NY — Want to Lindy Hop, West Coast Shuffle, Electric Slide, belly dance, or Nightclub Two-Step to the music in your head or playing through the speakers? Well, you’d better check to make sure the bar you’re feeling jiggy in has its licensing in order before you try, or you could find yourself on the wrong arm of the law.The Gotham West Coast Swing Club found this out the hard way, so it and several individuals decided to go to court.
At issue is an 80-year-old cabaret law that makes it illegal for ordinary bar and restaurant patrons to shake their groove thing or even do the Hustle unless the establishment has been duly licensed to allow such excesses of behavior.
Originally enacted in order to attack the menace that was speakeasies during the days of Prohibition, the plaintiffs insist the law violates their rights to free expression. In their complaint, they pointed out that although about 1,000 clubs allowed patrons to dance during the 1960s, in 2007 that number is only 300. According to them, the zoning laws in place to govern dancing are arbitrary and capricious.
City attorney Normal Corenthal just thinks it helps keep neighborhoods livable by decreasing the amount of traffic, noise, and associated crime and unpleasantness.
The state supreme Court’s Appellate Division — whose opinion matters most in this situation — wrote “Recreational dancing is not a form of expression protected by the federal or state constitutions.”
Norman Siegel, whose defeated clients’ feet were likely not feeling happy about the decision, says he is considering an appeal.
