City fights club bottle service

In January, a pair of undercover Providence Police Department agents entered Karma nightclub on Richmond Street to conduct a sting operation.
They weren’t looking for drugs or weapons, but establishments selling liquor to high-rollers by the bottle, a popular offering in clubs across the country that Providence officials have blamed repeatedly for nightlife violence.
At their request, the agents were seated at a VIP table in a special section of the club in exchange for agreeing to spend $240 on a bottle of Hennessey cognac, which was delivered along with glasses, a pitcher of cranberry juice and a bucket of ice.
While the bottle-service concept seems straightforward – the customer gets special treatment that the club can charge a premium for – Providence considers it an illegal menace that makes policing nightclubs difficult.
The practice was highlighted in a City Council report last December on nightclub violence that formed the basis for a package of new rules for the industry passed this spring.
“This issue is big, because when I sit in licensing-board hearings, all of this violence and stabbings is emanating from the VIP sections, which are all about bottle service,” said Andrew J. Annaldo, chairman of the Providence Board of Licenses.
Citing state law, the city fined Karma $1,000 for providing bottle service, plus $500 for letting patrons serve themselves alcohol and another $1,000 for serving a minor, according to state records of the case.
And the sting at Karma was part of a wider crackdown that resulted in fines on 13 clubs for bottle service worth at least $14,000.
But in addition to questioning the connection between VIP amenities and violence, Karma’s owners felt they had another reason to challenge the fines: according to their reading of the law, bottle service isn’t illegal in Rhode Island.
The city based its prohibition on a 2008 notice from the R.I. Department of Business Regulation saying clubs “may not sell or deliver any alcoholic beverages by the bottle, excluding Aquardiente or wine, to any patron.”
The exception for Aquardiente, a South American liquor known in some places as “guaro,” is actually the only place where bottle service is specifically addressed in statute and the section cited by the licensing board. “The law does not say what the DBR bulletin said it does,” said Peter J. Petrarca, a lawyer, former state representative and co-owner of Karma. The city also fined another Petrarca nightspot, the Federal Hill cigar-lounge Smoke, $2,000 after a similar sting. “What they are arguing is that, because there is an exception for Aguardiente, than it must be illegal for all other liquors.”
Failing to find a specific prohibition of bottle service in state law, Petrarca appealed the fine to the Department of Business Regulation and asked for a definitive legal ruling on the legality of bottle service.
In a decision signed by Director Paul McGreevy last month, the Department of Business Regulation agreed with Petrarca that its 2008 bulletin had gotten it wrong and state law does not prohibit bottle service.
On closer inspection, DBR ruled that the law prohibits patrons from serving themselves alcohol, with the exception of wine and Aquardiente, from a bottle, but not the sale of a bottle per se.
“There is no Rhode Island statute that directly permits or prohibits ‘VIP bottle service,’” the DBR response to Petrarca’s challenge said. “Accordingly, a licensee may engage in the practice of ‘VIP bottle service’ if and only if a qualified server, rather than the patrons themselves, dispense the distilled liquor into the patrons’ individual serving containers.”
When they learned that the basis for city liquor policy, and thousands of dollars in fines, had been pulled out from underneath them, Providence licensing officials appealed the decision.
They did not, however, stop enforcing the ban on bottle service and Smoke’s fines were made after the DBR ruling came down.
Providence asked DBR for a stay on its decision and last week the department granted it.
The licensing board has also appealed the original DBR ruling in Superior Court. The stay allows that case to proceed.
“I think it is a regulatory nightmare,” Annaldo said about what will happen if the courts allow bottle service. “It is tough enough as it is for the police to enforce the drinking age, with 18-year-olds and 21-year-olds in the club together, without them maintaining control of the bottle.” The legality of bottle service may hinge on the curious case of Aquardiente.
Annaldo argues that if the General Assembly had not intended to prohibit bottle service, then it wouldn’t have passed a law specifically authorizing liquor license holders to sell aquardiente by the bottle “because this beverage is generally purchased by the bottle by ethnic tradition.”
Regardless of why aquardiente got an exception, DBR and club owners say that exception alone cannot legally prohibit bottle sales of other drinks.
Annaldo said he doesn’t know exactly why bottle service leads to increased violence, only that in Providence there has been a direct correlation.
But William Kitsilis, attorney for the Van Gogh Lounge, a club on Harris Avenue formerly known as Monet Lounge, said bottle service isn’t the reason violence breaks out at some clubs, and controlling it by making a server pour all drinks is a smart.
“I think it is a very responsible decision considering what happens in every other city in the country,” Kitsilis said. “If you go to a club in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, they all have bottle service; it’s just a way to offer people a great experience.”
Kitsilis said Van Gogh’s owners had purchased special lock boxes at a Las Vegas club convention to keep bottles at VIP tables so only servers, and not patrons, could get them to make drinks. The lock boxes also prevented patrons from being able to pick up the bottles and use them as weapons, he said.
The Monet Lounge was no stranger to city licensing officials. After several incidents, including a fatal shooting, the city revoked Monet’s license last year. The state overruled the revocation.
After getting its license back, Monet was renamed Van Gogh and turned away from hip-hop music, which it blamed for attracting a violent crowd, and toward dance music.
“We’ve had clubs in this state that have been shut down that didn’t have bottle service – it is a gang element and underage crowd that’s the problem,” Kitsilis said.”Monet was playing a certain type of music that was attracting a crowd and gang violence. The owner stopped and reopened with a different style of music and we purged that gang element.” •

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