There are big differences between benches set up outside a bar and outdoor dining areas at restaurants with tables, waitresses and clear boundaries.
Duluth bar owner Mark Mitchell, whose Mitch's Bar & Grill in Lincoln Park/West End also serves food, is asking the Duluth City Council for permission to add three benches to the sidewalk outside his business where patrons could take their drinks while heading into the great outdoors for a smoke. A new statewide smoking ban prohibits lighting up inside Mitch's or any other bar or public place. The measure, which took effect Oct. 1, prompted Mitchell's bench request.
Among his argument for allowing drinking on a public sidewalk, Mitchell said last week: "They let Pizza Luce have it. They let Grandma's have it." But patrons at those businesses aren't buying their drinks inside and then wandering outside with them. They're served in a specified area with their beverages often as part of a meal. They're seated at tables where they remain until they're finished and have paid their bill.
Pizza Luce's seasonal outdoor dining area is defined by a rope barrier, the outdoor eating area at the Miller Hill Mall Grandma's with a fence. The Grandma's in West Duluth features tables shaded by umbrellas.
Three benches do not a restaurant make, for reasons of liability to start with. More structure is needed to monitor customers and to contain age-specific activities like smoking and drinking. What's to discourage a patron, with drink in hand, from wandering away from a bench to loiter, to block the way of a passersby or even to walk away from where the drink was purchased? What's to stop patrons from carrying their drinks from bar to bar? Those are among concerns being raised.
ADVERTISEMENT
With sympathies to Mitchell, the council must think twice about a request that essentially could legalize public consumption.
