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Large outdoor dining and drinking places and Allston/Brighton restaurants with liquor licenses to get dressing down over Covid-19, smoking and dogs

The Boston Licensing Board has scheduled two emergency hearings on Thursday, one for operators of beer gardens and large outdoor dining places in the city and one for restaurant owners with liquor licenses in Allston/Brighton to "address the numerous complaints" the board and ISD have received over their operations in an age of Covid-19 and social distancing .

The beer-garden hearing starts at noon, the Allston/Brighton one at 3 p.m. Restaurants whose owners or managers do not call in can have their permission to operate outside revoked.

In June, the board held a similar emergency hearing for the North End, to discuss complaints that restaurants were jamming too many people into their then new outdoor patios.

The board said that complaints about beer gardens, other large outdoor areas and Allston/Brighton restaurants with liquor service include lack of social distancing in both the dining/drinking areas and lines to get into the gardens as well as the presences of both smokers and dogs in dining areas.

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Comments

"Numerous Complaints" Is that like the cops saying We Have Reports?

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Your idea of fun is, to me, deadly dangerous. So I say clamp down and clamp down hard. These places agreed to a set of conditions to reopen. If they can't stick to the limits they agreed to, close them down.

I won't do indoor or outdoor dining due to my own vulnerabilities but I do like to get a nice takeout meal once or twice a week. Navigating through the sidewalk patios and entrances of many restaurants is scary due to the tight seating and unsafe conditions.

And, before you say it, I can't get delivery from most of these places because I'm way out of their delivery radius.

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I can see that. Fwiw the Night Shift beer garden in Allston was always pretty spaced out pre-Covid. I was more than 6 feet away from everyone. At least during day time hours when I was there. I think if places are allowed to be open at all for service this should be. I'd feel more safe there than at the average restaurant.

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they have to comply with the mask-wearing and social distancing rules, then.

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...I wish they would get serious about dogs in supermarkets and, to a slightly lesser extent, cafes and coffee shops. I love dogs (well, most dogs -- not fond of yappy purse-sized breeds) but they do not belong in such places. This used to be understood, back when consideration for others was more important than self-entitlement.

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What's the issue with (well-behaved) dogs in cafes, coffee shops, supermarkets, etc...?

In the Land of Europe dogs are everywhere and it doesn't seem to negatively impact people's health.

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that these dogs are rarely well behaved.

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The non-existent ones that aren't allowed? Anecdotally, I've lived here for 20+ years and never had a problematic encounter with a dog in a public space.

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"Seem to" is the key word here: if dogs are everywhere, people with serious allergies can't go to those places.

It's like the old claim that if people couldn't smoke in bars, they'd stay home and the bars would go broke. It turned out that some of those people did stay home, but a lot of people who weren't comfortable around smoke started going out to bars again.

Also, which part of the "land of Europe" does this refer to? Norway? England? Romania? Greece? Germany? Europe is a large place, with a lot of cultural variation: you might as well say that in the land of North America, everyone eats grits.

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But many of the parts the Land of Europe I've spent a fair bit of time in, France, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, are way more permissive of dogs in public spaces than the US and no one seems to get worked up.

Comparing dogs to cigarette smoke is just outrageously ridiculous. You're not shortening anyone's life by taking your dog to a store.

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Especially in outdoor dining areas.

How do they manage in Europe? Are there fewer people with dog allergies there? Or is it not really a problem outdoors if a dog is hanging out at a nearby table?

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