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Oh those wacky kids and their social media: Snapchatty BU students overwhelm Allston bar and the sidewalk outside

It was the first full weekend back for Boston University and the kids quickly spread the word on Snapchat: Everybody head to Tavern in the Square. Ahorde of thirsty, hungry BU students quickly descended on the Brighton Avenue bar - forming themselves into an impenetrable knot of a line that went down Brighton Avenue and around the corner to where Common Ground used to be. Police, of course, quickly came to investigate.

And that was why two bar managers were before the Boston Licensing Board this morning, to explain what happened - and what they'll do to prevent similar mobbing in the future.

BPD Sgt. William Gallagher told the board this morning that he and his partner were patrolling Allston the evening of Sept. 12 when they spotted a huge line outside the bar. With just one bar worker outside to try to corral the herd, he said people were spreading out, preventing people with no interest in mingling with boisterous BU students from using the sidewalk and forcing them to walk in the street.

He said he and his partner talked to the manager on duty, who agreed to send additional people outside - and said that perhaps they should tell some people at the end of the line that the place was full and they might want to go somewhere else.

A bar manager admitted the problem caused by the "mass influx of guests at one time." He said the bar was actually far from full at the time, but was just unable to process so many people at once.

He said that going forward, Tavern in the Square will always assign at least three workers to outside crowd control on busy nights and will deploy stanchions to help keep the line narrow enough to permit the rest of the world to traverse the sidewalk.

The board will decide Thursday whether the remedy is adequate enough to prevent future problems.

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Comments

go before the licensing board? I mean, there are crowds in the stations around the Garden after every Celtics and Bruins game. If the restaurant is liable for people showing up to establishment, then isn't the Garden also liable? I mean really, bringing in managers for potential disciplinary actions because a lot of people showed up at once is just f'n stupid.

The Boston licensing Board is moronic. I can't think of any good reason someone would want to open anything in town.

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the problem was with the oblivious students who, as is common with hordes of them, couldn’t figure out that there are other people in the world besides themselves who need to use the sidewalk.

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Deciding to flash mob a restaurant and choosing... TITS.

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yet, the cops were too lazy and/or too stupid to discipline the unruly students.

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What do you think the Brighton DA would do in 2020 with a disorderly/City bylaw violation for 200 people.

The only reason police are involved is because the City has assigned the police as the ones to investigate and write report on the civil violations.

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Okay, Boomer.

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1. I wasn't even 20 years old in 1995.

2. Is anything I said untrue? Or even Boomer related? (asking because you are the #1 boomerette on this site so you must have knowledge of boomerism)

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HEAD TO TITS

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who went into the bar to make the people on the sidewalk, that had never set food in the establishment, their problem instead of actually doing something about it themselves. #heros

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Imagine rushing like lemmings to spend mom and dad's money at the local equivalent of a TGI Friday's.

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but enough of them are so that it really does present a problem.

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How smart were you when you were that age?

Who paid for your education?

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This seems to have been a colossal waste of time. Once the police decided to get involved, were they required to then alert the Licensing Board? Did the Board have to hold a hearing, or could it have just noted the report? It's a public sidewalk, couldn't officers just told everyone to move aside?

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Note that the citation was issued by the BPD licensing division, which consists of either two or three full-time officers (out of a department of roughly 2,000 officers) - this is all they do.

Could they have told everybody to get against the building and stop hogging the sidewalk? No doubt, but that would be time they couldn't spend checking the other bars in that area.

Plus, when you are officially made a manager of a liquor-serving establishment, you have to promise to obey city and state regulations (really: you go to a hearing and the board chair asks you a series of questions, one of them being whether you're familiar with "the rules and regulations of this board, the ABCC and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"), and one of those is making sure the sidewalks outside your establishment stay clear enough that non-patrons can still get through.

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for the licensing division? It would have taken those cops two minutes to tell everyone there to move closer to the building. Just because there are rules in place doesn't mean that they're rational or necessary. The people on the sidewalk weren't even patrons yet, its not like they were at patio tables or out for a smoke break.

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Cops could yell out "can everyone please move closer to the building". Then everyone does that, then the cops leave and people move back out to the sidewalk again. Crowd management 101 right there.

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.

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and what did you base that on? Nothing.

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He said that going forward, Tavern in the Square will always assign at least three workers to outside crowd control on busy nights

...They didn't figure that out in the eight years that they've existed?

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