Report: Night Mayor Palitz Recommends 24-Hour Party Districts
The Office of Nightlife and its so-called “Night Mayor,” Ariel Palitz, recommend the creation of 24-hour entertainment districts where booze flows all hours of the day. All in an attempt to woo post-pandemic tourists from competing cities that already do the same.
“Everything is on the table right now,” Palitz told the New York Post over the weekend. “We do know that 24-hour usage is very successful in other parts of the world. People say it might be terrible for quality of life, but in fact we found the opposite.”
This recommendation is buried on page 136 of a 160-page report issued this month by the taxpayer-funded agency, itself a division of the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment. It advocates for “identifying potential areas with low residential density where a limited 24-hour program might be tested, allowing late-night activity to operate free from nuisance complaints or other conflicts.”
And argues that uniform closing times actually leads to “increased tensions when groups of people simultaneously exit venues into public streets and sidewalks.”
Nevertheless, Lower East Side locals understand the crosshairs are trained on its collective back. Does “everything on the table” translate to a Hell Square party zone?