Sugar Lounge

kreuzkav · September 2010

still has people shouting their heads off outside, but I guess it's fixture of whatever bar is located here forever

kreuzkav · September 2010

never mind

Ewan · September 2010

it is kinda the same outside the dairy and stapleton tavern

[Deleted User] · September 2010

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Ewan · September 2010

totally

ADGS · September 2010

I blame the clumsy, illiberal smoking ban.

Memon74 · September 2010

You think it's bad now. Wait till Chapter Ones replacement opens!!

Lord have mercy!!

Arkady · September 2010

How is the smoking ban illiberal? It seems like a perfect example of the ahrm principle in action to me.

ADGS · September 2010

Promoting the existence of non-smoking pubs for people who want a drink without secondhand smoke, fine, and if we'd been governed by people with any sense that's what we'd have had (some already existed, and measures such as tax breaks would soon have made more). Demanding that all pubs be non-smoking, regardless of the wishes of their drinkers and staff? Nanny state bullshit.

Ali · September 2010

Seems to have saved some lives < http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/warning-the-nanny-state-can-seriously-improve-your-health-1995031.html > although I guess you could take the view of this crowd http://www.opposingthe-uk-smokingban.org/ Think I am with Arkady on this one. I think there was also some studies in Scotland that proved that Bar staff had a big improvement in lung capacity after the ban was introduced there. The ban must be saving the National Health a few bob in these troubled times.

Arkady · September 2010

Having worked in the pub trade for years, I am sceptical that many pubs would have been persuaded to go non-smoking due to concern about loss of trade. But regardless, a blanket ban on smoking in covered public places – including public houses – seems like the utilitarian approach to me. The practicality of doing it otherwise is problematic. Even if half of the pubs were non-smoking I can’t see that groups of pub-goers would really be able to discern on that basis – most people have a mix of smoking and non smoking friends, some pubs might be excellent in every way but accept smokers while the neighbouring pub is crap but non-smoking, etc. And without a blanket ban staff and the police would have to be extra vigilant about enforcing non-smoking in non-smoking venues – you wouldn’t get the culture change that we have had. Any partial regulation would have been more clumsy than what we have. Smokers (of whom I am periodically one) need to accept that they don’t have the right to harm other people. Incidentally, most of my close friends smoke, and all of them think the ban is a good idea.

ADGS · September 2010

You can justify a lot of horrific things on utilitarian grounds. And saving lives doesn't sway me - basic principle of liberalism being that you don't have the right to save people from themselves, only from each other. The only reason anyone was being even vaguely 'forced' to be in proximity with pub smokers was that we have similarly draconian and unjust employment laws, which press people into taking any job going regardless of whether it was for them. The only people who should be working in pubs are people who are OK with the idea of working in pubs. Given which, a degree of smokiness would - like having to deal with pissed people while sober, something I know I wouldn't relish - be one of the resident annoyances attendant upon any particular job.
(I am, incidentally, a lifelong non-smoker. And one who has found several benefits in the new arrangement - people are happier to sit outside later in the year, shit support bands can more easily be dodged. Doesn't stop me hating this law on principle, as well as for the inconveniences it sometimes causes)

Arkady · September 2010

It's the 'each other' part that's the problem though isn't it. People have the right to kill themselves through smoking - fine - but they don't have the right to kill other people through passive smoking. Hence it being banned in public places. It's not just an 'annoyance', it's life-threatening act. Utilitarianism - and the the harm principle in particular - are key planks of the liberalism that you stated was being controvened by this law. Not so.

Billy Bookcase · September 2010

This book will help you to understand the illiberal aspects of the smoking ban.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6573.html

Arkady · September 2010

Let me see if I understand. Because the Nazis discovered the link between smoking and cancer, and because they promoted good health, the smoking ban is bad? It's like the old cliche that 'vegetarianism is bad because Hitler was one'. People don't have the right to physically harm other people.

sincers · September 2010

Unless they're really naughty.

ADGS · September 2010

JS Mill was a utilitarian, but his utilitarianism was logically flawed in some respects and ethically monstrous in others. As such, I have no interest in it; I don't think he's any kind of prophet. But what he wrote specifically in On Liberty, that was brilliant, and should be a guiding principle for all lawmaking.

People should have the right to harm other people, so long as those other people consent. If you have sufficient pubs - as London clearly does - to cater for various tastes, then there is no reason not to have some for smokers, where anyone who goes in knows what they're going to get. Call it The Fag & Ashtray or the Carcinoma Arms if you must, but just as there are a hundred other specialist pubs and nights for the nudists and the gay SM crowd and every other niche group (and rightly so), then the greatest city on Earth could surely manage one or two for the smokers.

Arkady · September 2010

Utilitarianism can be taken to extremes, but the harm principle is the foundation of liberalism, you cannot discard it. I agree in principle about consent. I think that stopping shisha cafes and cigar bars was deeply problematic - smoking was their purpose. But public houses are another matter. Consent is difficult here. You can go to a gay sadomasochist club and not participate, and not be harmed. You don't have that choice in a smoky pub.

kreuzkav · September 2010

Just logged onto this site after nearly a week. Interesting comments but they all seem intellectual. We have been subjected to real noise, every night for most of the Summer. It's nice that some of you can drop by, then go back to quieter streets but some of us do live here for economic reasons. Imagine people gathering on the road near your house in a very drunken state and shouting their heads off in the Summer, when you'd like to open your window and chill, watch a dvd, listen to some music without pissing off your neighbours.

The tempearture has got cooler. It's not so bad now. But many of us around Sugar Lounge have become sensitive to the sound. I am happy Sugar Lounge have taken in their chairs at 11 pm, even though this isn't always the case and last weekend had a doorman. Thank you Bee. But one of their barmen is so cocky and eggs on the clientelle. I've seen him out on the pavement with loud customers, shouting with them.

Yes, it's a high street, but i was placed here by my social landlord. Hard luck, I guess. Just wanted to rant about it as it is a forum. We still deserve respect (and I think Bee has made an effort but I guess she's given up now).

Yes, the comment on the re opened Chapter One is true and I dread it. I will see how things go. I can't afford to move but maybe it's the best thing.

Thanks to all the people who are sympathetic!

The difference Masscare is that other bars don't open late here!

Please Bee keep on respecting us!

andy · September 2010

Good grief. Lots of undergraduate certainty here.

kreuzkav · September 2010

Seems so andy! But this is about noise not about some kind of intellectual discourse. Maybe Focualt will be introduced soon and how noise is relative. I guess it is, but to me it's a problem. But maybe it's a mirror of my inner turmoil!

kreuzkav · September 2010

Please Sugar Lounge, take your chairs in at 11 pm, you don't always do it and keep employing doormen on busy nights. Also, ask your noisy drunk customers to go back into your bar or walk away.

love and thanks, Paul

andy · September 2010

@kreuzkav - Baudrillard argued that human experience is a simulacrum that conceals the true nature of reality. So there's no noise really coming from the bar, it's your mediated experience of it that's the problem. Try that line with the Council and see how you get on.

andy · September 2010

@Jeremy Fisher - totally magnificent oddball paper. I've got one that speculates that the years 614–911 didn't happen, (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis>

but I'm not sure that one helps either side of the argument either.

kreuzkav · September 2010

Sugar Loung has drunk people outside shouting their heads off. That's the way it is. It's a bar trying to make money.

By the way, La Porcheta have existed for a long time and have been great neighbours.

tosscat · September 2010

I assume Bee is the landlady of the Sugar Lounge. I know she's posted on here previously, but that doesn't mean she's reading every day. Get her number in your phone and whenever there's a problem call her - it's dull but beats moaning on here. If she does nothing then call the council.

Arkady · September 2010

@Andy - thanks for that link, hilarious. I may incorporate the theory into my (post-graduate) dissertation.

kreuzkav · September 2010

Tosscat, you're absolutely right! To put things into context, I have lived here for nearly a decade and the smoking ban ( I welcomed it as a non-smoker) has made the outside of bars noisy places. I think if you don't live near a bar, you probably think it's just people in high spirits but drunk people do shout a lot (and Sugar Lounge attracts the late night crowd from other bars that have closed who tend to be fairly drunk by the end of the night).

I have been aware of this forum for many years but didn't post about Chapter One etc. as I saw it as ineffectual. I only posted on here about Sugar Lounge when I noticed the Sugar Lounge posts. I did get a reply and Bee has taken steps to quieten things down (thank you Bee), but I think it's a bit hit and miss. SL leaves the chairs out late sometimes and has someone on the door now and again. I get the impression when Bee isn't there, things are n't managed the same way.

Well moving away from summer I think things will quieten down naturally but I think it's time for me to look elsewhere for somewhere to live before next summer and the opening of Chapter one mark 2, 3.

I'm off to work now, have a lovely day!

Emma · September 2010

@kreuzkav - I think it's time to stop posting on here about the noise: we get it, but there's not much we can do. The Council have a dedicated department for this and you'll get much further by calling them.

miss annie · September 2010

@kreuzkav
Or have you tried nipping down and having a chat with the people in charge of Sugar Lounge? If you get to know each other a bit they might be a little more willing to take your complaints on board.

twinspark · September 2010

@kreuzkav The Islington council licensing committee is the place to take this - they have a meeting every quarter at least. You and your neighbour's have to keep a log of every incident of noise and make a complaint by e-mail, voicemail etc., collect as many signatures as you can and write a letter to the committee chairman and ask for Sugar Lounge to be discussed at next meeting. On the council website it probably lists names of committee members that you should contact.

A similar approach was taken with Karmenz/K1 - although that's in Haringey - and it had some success in getting the owner to take responsibility for noise.

Complainants in Islington can have their privacy and ID protected whilst Haringey's policy is to pass on names and addresses of complainants to the bar/pub manager!

As for Chapter One,2,3 at least the owner spent money on proper soundproofing to the front to reduce notice from the inside.

Anyway good luck.

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