Hey, there! Log in / Register
Boston gets first Waking Up the City that Always Sleeps Czar
By adamg on Wed, 02/22/2023 - 6:09pm
Mayor Wu today announced her pick as Boston's inaugural director of nightlife economy: Corean Reynolds, whose job will include figuring out how to make Boston more enticing for both long-time residents and the post-graduate set deciding whether to stay here through a more vibrant, diverse nightlife - in a city where neighborhood groups, even downtown, often do their darndest to resist anything that might interfere with rolling up the sidewalks when their members are ready for bed.
In this role within the Economic Opportunity and Inclusion Cabinet, Reynolds will be responsible for engaging internal and external stakeholders to better understand the post-pandemic challenges to a nightlife economy; working to redefine and reimagine late night in Boston; and analyzing citywide initiatives through a racial equity lens with the goal of achieving Cabinet-level priorities, which include advancing post-pandemic recovery efforts, revitalizing Boston’s neighborhoods, delivering equitable investments, and providing access to shared prosperity. Additionally, Reynolds will focus on citywide efforts that help residents build generational wealth, establish Boston as a family friendly city, and foster and retain local talent.
Reynolds, who will start March 6, is currently director of economic inclusion at the Boston Foundation, where she helped start the Business Equity Fund, aimed at helping Black and Latino entrepreneurs find financing.
In a statement, Segun Idowu, the city's chief of economic opportunity and inclusion, said Reynolds' role will extend far beyond simply ensuring people who expect late-night entertainment and dining can actually find them:
Corean brings an important and unique perspective to the role of Director of Nightlife Economy, and I am glad to have someone join our team who is policy focused and has experience with efforts to close the racial wealth gap. Her leadership and passion for economic inclusion will help us advance Mayor Wu’s vision of a city that has a robust, vibrant, and family-friendly nightlife economy for all residents and visitors.
In addition to her work at the Boston Foundation, Reynolds has served on the board of directors for English New Bostonians and on steering committees for Amplify Latinx PowerUp LatinxBiz, the Center for Women and Enterprise and the Greater Boston Immigrant Defense Fund. Reynolds is also a classically trained soprano and has performed internationally from the age of 11.
In 2014, then Mayor Walsh appointed a Late Night Task Force that then faded away like a dream.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Sure, she loves the nightlife,
but does she got to boogie?
.
On the disco round? In this economy?
How about
zoning in some of the club scene that has utterly died since Menino?
Boston used to be a world class rock and roll city that touring European bands would visit in lieu of New York. Through the ‘60s up until the Rat closed, and after that there was a decade plus of a roiling house show scene that the BPD and city leadership did everything they could to crack down on.
Wu doesn’t need to hire outside advisers. She needs to talk to the people who ran the Counter Cultural Compass, and they’ll talk to her for free.
Agreed. There are thousands
Agreed. There are thousands of people here who could detail the problems. We just need the city to listen and then actually do something. If that requires a new job title, so be it, but this isn't a problem of the city not having the info; they've had it and ignored it for decades.
Jeez
Another activist and another new role.
Might be time to start counting the amount of new positions and their total cost. The city ran fine prior to all of these newly created favors, i mean positions.
Yeah, previous mayors never, never did anything like this
Like Marty Walsh never created a whole new set of "chief" positions to sit between him and city departments, which still had their own top administrators.
Maybe she can tell us
how much the City’s payroll has increased under Wu.
Public Records
Instead of being glib and lazy, you can actually look that up.
Naw ... too much work.
Run the T until after the bars close
Running the T until the bars close would give people, including the workers, a safe way to get home.
I'd be satisfied if the T ran
I'd be satisfied if the T ran at all.
This is the key thing right
This is the key thing right here. Even at my advanced age I'd like to get out on a weekend once in a while. But I don't have a car, and taking gray-market cabs (*) gets expensive real fast.
(*) the kind you summon with an app, I'm not giving any of their companies free advertising here
Unfortunately
not something the city can decide to do on its own (but maybe they can exert some influence in that direction).
Late night T service has come
Late night T service has come and gone. more than once(the Night Owl?). It's not worth it to accommodate a few nightclubbers. I went into Boston last Saturday evening for a game at Agganis Arena, had food and drink before and after the game, had a great time, and was happy to be able to take the 57 bus home at 11 p.m. There's plenty to do before midnight.
Not a kid anymore but..,
As someone who went to school here and is now old lol and married I would love to see more night,I’ve beyond pricey drinks and overpriced restaurants-
Night,I’ve can even start earlier - I would love to see a a band in Allston or a back bay coffee shop at 9 PM - we need more late night coffee and dessert places too!
People hear night,I’ve and think clubs / dancing, which isn’t always the case - though would be up for smaller clubs like Landsdowne in the 90s.
I’d love to see local bands with cheap covers on a Thursday, even stuff I could take my middle schooler to.
Do we need to be a 24 hr city? Maybe not, it would be nice to have night,ice from 8-2 with trains running till 3:30.
Not Boston but Cambridge:
Not Boston but Cambridge: There used to be a nightclub, I think at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Main street where they would have early evening band shows.
I remember just wandering in one night and seeing this really cool teenage metal band. I think night life is disappearing all over greater Boston not just Boston proper.
Also; Lanes Lounge in Dorchester used to be a popular venue. No way that's coming back. After being a vacant lot for many, many years it was built over with a library. A library is definitely not a night life venue.
Do we need a night life Czar to bring it all back? Maybe, but it's going to be ridiculously hard.
Library
I would LOVE libraries to be open late. Most are comfortable and quiet, good for getting work done.
Later library hours
When I first moved here, the main Cambridge Public Library was open Friday nights until 9 pm. It was the only library I know of anywhere around here that had Friday night hours. It doesn't anymore.
Sounds like
You should be spending more time at the Midway. Local bands, cheap covers, weekend matinee shows, and lots of all ages offerings every month.
The city has lost its soul
We are not an urban amusement park. The Mayor and her staff should make safety in the streets, subways and schools their first priority.
Why does no one…
…understand that most cities are like this now? Young people don’t tonight. Even the New York Times said 6 PM is the new 9 PM, and few of that city’s former all-night establishments returned to full hours after COVID.
More government
Yes, we need another position to then hire another group to do a study about doing a study and maybe in the next decade they'll have an answer after forgetting why they started the study.
Yeah
Restoring Boston's nightlife to what it was in the 1990s sounds like a great idea, but that's not going to happen. Wu is due for a "Back to Basics" pivot focused on basic city services instead of moonshot initiatives.
Lets think about nightlife in the years gone by
I think it may have had something to do with the drinking age being lower than that of an Islamic country?
Hmmm.
Good to see the Roundhouse
Good to see the Roundhouse funding get reallocated to different uses. At least a dozen more new city officials will have a better housing now.
Despite all the (earned) cynicism here, I'm
rooting for her. I'll ride my old hobbyhorse again and ask her if she can essay the problem of our ridiculous liquor-licensing laws. It's been a few years now that indie chefs have had to flee the city to set up shop somewhere where they can afford to serve the spirits, wine and beer that are essential to profitability and thus attract the investors that can launch a talented chef/entrepreneur's dreams into reality.
In my book, a cool, indie-centric restaurant scene is just as important to nightlife as better clubbing options. When only deep-pocketed national chains can afford a $300K-$450K liquor license in town, our dining options start looking like any of dozens of duller American cities: we're sliding into becoming "Peoria with oysters." My recent BoMag review of Southie's excellent Lenox Sophia hopes that maybe more BYOB licenses in more neighborhoods might help a little. There's got to be a way to get the State House to loosen their grip and also mitigate the sunk costs of existing restaurants that bought licenses at artificial-scarcity prices.
THIS!!! Nightlife doesn't
THIS!!! Nightlife doesn't have to mean clubbing until 2am. I could mean a nice dinner with friends that turns into hanging at the table, ordering cocktails until 10pm. There's entire swaths of the outer neighborhoods that have 1, maybe 2 decent restaurants for doing that--- and that's because the liquor licenses have all been sold to chains in the Seaport and high end restaurants in the South End. The only small local places opening in a lot of areas are essentially built around takeout!
Yeah, this. All of this.
We have to bring down the barriers to entry to encourage experimentation. If the up-front cost of starting a business is close to $750k before payroll, you're not going to get a broad swath of people taking that bet; let alone those who can get approved for a loan of that amount.
With respect to famous chefs and restaurant group owners, I'd rather see them focus their full attention on one or two places and see the remainder filled by other individuals who have their own interesting ideas. "Peoria with oysters" indeed.
The whole idea of BYOB
The whole idea of BYOB licenses makes no sense. BYOB should be allowed by default.
What's next, a license to have BYOB without a BYOB license?
MA state law says that the decision to
allow BYOB is up to the local police chief. It's legal in a lot of towns in the Commonwealth, e.g., Brookline. In 2017, Boston started allowing BYOB permits for $400/year except in neighborhoods where a lot of full-freight liquor and malt (beer/wine) licenses had already been bought: Downtown, the North End, the South End, Bay Village, the Fenway, Chinatown, the Seaport, the West End, Beacon Hill and Back Bay. Uptake has been pretty meager in the other neighborhoods.
I was surprised to learn that they are allowed in non-Seaport Southie. This greatly benefited Lenox Sophia, which couldn't afford a full-liquor license and found that not even a malt license was available as it was getting ready to open. In my BoMag review, I rejoiced at this: it's a pricey spot, and BYOB will save you a small fortune on the typical 300-400% markup over retail on wine. Plus Social Wines down the block monitors their menu and always has nice pairing suggestions at attractive prices, including chilled whites, rosés and oranges (plus lots of groovy natural wines, if that's your thing.)
would be nice, have some bars in the neighborhoods again
pursue liquor license reform in a serious way
and I don't mean "gastropubs"
I mean divey dancehalls like Packy Connors,' The Breezeway, Great Scott's or Upstairs Downstairs.
or just taverns
Tremendous number of licenses sucked out of the neighborhoods to Downtown/BB/
Fenway/Seaport since 1990.
Masonic lodges and veterans' posts, like the aforementioned Mt. Horeb Lodge and Carver Hall filling the gap, but they have to get temporary event licenses.
accept that some places will have a body count through no fault of their own
too many OUIs coming back from Vincent's anyways
make it easy for people to go out instead of stunning themselves on cannabis on the couch
Or how about opening a couple
Or how about opening a couple of Amsterdam-style weed coffeeshops, to make it easy for people to go out instead of stunning themselves with beer and also getting fat and belligerent and stupid? I would mention drunk driving but apparently that's OK.
Speaking as an avid couchbound stunner
I resent that remark
Third Places in Neighborhoods
Anybody else been to Medford Brewing Company?
They are in West Medford near the train station. Very basic place converted from a former auto shop that built a new place and moved. No frills, just beer (soda is available), menus for the local food places, and board games - maybe a TV if there is something to gather and watch.
They did a soft open by making a single announcement on Facebook an hour before and sold most of their kegged beer in about 4 hours. It is busy on weeknights and weekends. People walk there and meet friends and organize meetups. It's near the train station so people drop in and then walk home. Sunday seems to be stroller time meetup.
We need more of these informal, unstructured places to gather everywhere in the US. Places to meet with neighbors and bump elbows and play cards. Third spaces. Nightlife for neighborhoods.
Packy Connor's had great wings and
incomparable atmosphere, although it could get a bit dodgy late at night. Losing that one hurt, though the one that still chafes me to this day is T.C. Haviland's.
Mixed Bag
I do hope Reynolds is able to make positive changes here by connecting interested individuals with landlords and organizations who want to see nightlife thrive in Boston. Having someone dedicated to facilitating that can really help the whole process get going more quickly and easily than applicants navigating the system all on their own.
With that said, I don't think it's lack of desire that is the main issue that's stopping things. High rents both commercial and residential, nearly zero public transit after midnight, and odious liquor licensing policy are the things that are really holding us back. Those aren't addressable by only one section of the city gov't. It'll take a concerted city (and state) effort to fix a lot of this.
It's also worth noting that we're not the only place dealing with this. A number of other high cost of living cities are seeing a similar drain in the arts, and it would do us well to stay in touch with them to see how they handle things. This is going to be a big project, but I desperately want it to succeed.