About the Exit/Soundfactory closings...wtf??

[darkfyre]

I was up at Hunter mountain when I heard the news on TV, that exit and soundfactory were closed last week as a result of investigations showing drug use at those venues.

admittedly my first reaction was "time to celebrate!", but seriously though, i started thinking about the justification that led to the court order to shut them down..

let's just do some very approximate statistics. according to this article, Exit has a capacity of about 3,500, and although its likely that the place fills past capacity on many nights, lets assume that Exit plays host to 3,500 visitors twice a week. That's 7,000 people a week, and in a year with 52 weeks, that's about 364,000 clubbers passing through exit's doors. At 364,000 people a year, that comes out to about 1 million people who went to Exit over the 3 years that the nypd has arrest statistics for. The press releases (like this one) regarding the club closings state that about 170 arrests were made during this 3 year period. That's 170 drug arrests for 1,092,000 people. 170/1092000 = 1.56*10^-4, or .016%. .016 percent!!!

now, according to this article, there were 30,280 felony and 79,900 misdemeanor making for a total of 110,180 drug arrests in nyc during 2001. The nyc visitor website (http://www.nycvisit.com/content/index.cfm?pagePkey=598) shows there are about 36 million visitors a year to new york, and 8 million residents, for a total of 42 million people passing through or living in new york every year. 110180/42000000 = .00262 or basically a .26% (1/4 of 1 percent) drug arrest rate. thats a heck of a lot higher than the .016% arrest rate for Exit. on top of this, the number of police per square foot at any Exit night is probably a lot higher than the police per square foot of nyc in general, so we can probably deduce that the actual amount of drug use in the entire new york city is a lot higher than its arrest statistics state.

so we see that we have some serious drug proliferation going on in new york - a .26% arrest rate. the city just closed down exit for having a .016% arrest rate, so the logical conclusion to this finding would be to..... shut down new york city????

none of these drug enforcement actions make any sense to me. exit's entrance pat-downs are already some of the most stringent in the city and definitely stricter than anywhere else i've been to in the usa or the world for that matter (pat-downs are an unknown phenomenon in many places), to the point that i felt a little violated the last time i went. what more do they expect a nightclub owner to do to maintain an honest business? xray scans and drug dogs? urine tests?

i dont like exit as a club very much, and i doubt i'd like soundfactory much more, but these recent events set a very ugly precedent if you ask me...

[Twilo Beauty]

You're talking about 170 arrests that were consistent over 3-years in a confined space. ( I'm not certain what Exit's square footage is)

To compare that to the rest of NYC drug arrest rate is ridiculous.

.16 in Exit, .26 in NYC....

It looks like Exits' rate is kinda high for a club. Not to mention the amount of other evidence they have accumalated over the years and the many people they DID NOT arrest but made deals with.

There's nothing hard to decipher and closing down Exit is alot easier than closing down NYC, No?

-iliana

[donkeylick]

how many times did i here that SF and Exit were untouchable for this reason or that...people were being idiots, that was one of the reasons i stopped going to both....maybe if SF opens again, people will be a little more cautious and realize that the rest of their lives could be at jeopardy for doing something out in the open.....RESPECT yourself and the others around you....

what ever happened to people going out for the music....