I've Been Violated

As expected, I got a delightful little visit from the Mayor's Task force last night. This is the agency that visits you whenever your place of business receives any kind of negative press, like, say, a murder. The task force is comprised of inspectors and officers from the local Police precinct, FDNY, Health Department, Buildings Department and I believe there's one guy who's only job is to lube you up and kiss you before the major ass-raping you're about to get from the city.

Of course, as soon as they walked in the door there was some sort of a problem with our fire alarm system. I'm not being coy, I don't know how the damn thing works. If it goes off and there's a real fire I get everyone out. The End. But whatever was malfunctioning had them threatening to close us down immediately. We finally compromised, after much wrangling, and partially closed so we could at least finish the private corporate event that was in progress up in the Penthouse.

The assault on my hole continued, the most egregious bit of ridiculousness took place when they claimed we were in violation of the Cabaret Laws, in that we're not licensed for people dancing. I won't even go in to how completely and utterly six kinds of retarded the Cabaret Law is, it would have to be a whole other post. But by way of illustrating, what they saw as a violation was when a few corporate suit and tie types were enjoying some karaoke entertainment. Apparently, while they were going wild and singing along to some karaoke track, they had the audacity to throw in some movement, perhaps some arm gestures, a spin, or maybe a re-creation of the video that the song was from. This, in the eyes of the task force, constituted dancing and was deemed illegal.

When all was said and done, I was left with 10 (count 'em, 10!) violations, over half of which were for some sort of licensing paperwork I have no control over, as well as another two for the exact same No Dancing horror we perpetrated on New York City. Still, at least they had the decency to write all the summonses (pictured here) for the same court date, so's I can bend over and grab the courthouse railing all at once and they can just pull a train on my doughy white ass. Maybe I'll get some hunky bailiff to do the honors with the lube and the kisses.