Seriously, I don’t even know who to be angry at anymore, in regard to the situation about town and our nightlife. It’s been so long that I have honestly forgotten whose side I’m on, and what and who I am actually fighting for. Anyway, in case you missed it, one of the most significant cultural hubs in Hamilton, is now the most recent target of the patriarchy. Someone, not mentioning any names, decided to dig up a 26 year old development application, which will now force a select handful of businesses to close at 10pm on weekdays (yes including Wednesday), midnight on Saturdays, and 8pm on Sundays. I’m not going to bore you with specifics, we all know who and what I’m talking about here.
Honestly it just sounds like a dead set ‘cop’ out to me (for want of a better word, although maybe that’s why this phrase was coined to begin with). Sure, the hotspot attracts a lot of punters, probably because it’s in the centre of town and well, Newcastle is a city after all. I thought that was the goal, to attract and encourage a vibrant nightlife.
Also, just to reiterate, everyone who’s anyone in terms of council and local government, is trying to draw the centre of the city to the West End. They want this to be the epicentre of town, so of course, like everything else in Newcastle, they seem to be trying really trying hard to shut it down. What was it that set this off I wonder? A noise complaint from a retiree who forgets that they live in the middle of a city? Maybe they tried to order something and they were charged extra for cheese (outrageous). Or maybe, instead of looking at the issue at hand, they thought it best to take the nanny state approach and remove the hazard. Too many fights = no kebab for you. Also, last time I checked, this isn’t Trump’s America, why are the police getting involved with this issue in the first place?
They say the objective is public safety, and I most definitely can see where you’re coming from on this front. But again, instead of actually addressing the issue, they seem to be going out of their way to dig up dirt on innocent business owners, to essentially do the dirty work. And honestly, the whole point of owning a kebab store in the middle of town, isn’t to cater to the snobbery and refined palates of the upper middle class at 7pm… Let’s not beat around the bush here. Kebabs taste best when you’re half cut, hand in hand with your Tinder date and stumbling home making regretful choices at 2am. They know that, you know that, so don’t ‘@‘ me with the whole premise of thinking that this change won’t affect business.
As well as the bulk of the crowd, shift workers work on a very (very) different time frame from a vast majority of society. From the shift workers I know, they actually like it that way. Their midday is your midnight and it’s actually a lot quieter and a more peaceful existence, circulating away from the mundane of the day. But are we going to take away their right to grab a snack after 10pm on a weekday? Sounds that way. It sounds like that time someone told me about the convenience of the 9-5. It’s not convenient. It’s a death trap for creativity. But that’s beside the point.
Are we really becoming a town of if we can’t lock it out, we should just shut it down? Is this what will put Newcastle on the map? We’ll splash all our dollerydoos on a car race but won’t work towards celebrating the vibrant wonder that is our town, and our nightlife. This is never what it should have been, and this is so far the opposite of what we were always and forever hoping to achieve. I don’t know about you, but I am always in favour of celebrating the wonder and vibrancy of our town. We should be coming up with active solutions to our problems, not removing the ‘problem area’ all together. Honestly, I’m actually starting to wonder if there is anything or anyone off limits anymore, which forces me to ask – who’s actually running this town anyway?
