Cafés Curfew

Sitting in a nice café on one of the busiest roads in Florence, we were up to la apericena, a late after dinner served in buffet style at a price of a glass of drink. It was Gallery Art Bar on Via dei Benci 30. While we were eating and drinking this guy came in, he was happened to be a singer who regularly performed live music there.  We greeted each other, a little introduction before he finally set for more talks.

Aperativo buffet at Gallery Art Bar.

I noted three things he mentioned :

1. Business has been slowing down a week before Christmas which was quite obvious. It was Saturday night at 8PM and we were the only customers they had;

2. Due to so many complaints from the neighborhood about people getting drunk and caused chaos, liquors or drinks with alcohol can be sold before 9PM only;  

3. The latest law regulation strictly obligated all cafés / bars to close their venues at 10PM, with an exception of one restaurant / bar located across the road, simply because they had more security guards who will drag drunk people away from their venue, or presumably, they had more money to ‘pay’ to the authorities.

I immediately felt bad especially when he mentioned ‘before Christmas’, Christmas is about Christ coming to earth to redeem His people. It supposed to be great news that brought joy to people! How sad to see, when bad things happened before Christmas and people could easily blame Christmas as an event that caused troubles.

I couldn’t help to not feeling sorry for all these cafés/bar owners. If you only had two customers on Saturday night at 8pm, no more people step in and you must close at 10pm. How much bucks did they get? Not much I guess. Then if they didn’t make so much money, how could they survive? While I believe, in such a touristic city like Florence, restaurants, cafés and bars played quite important roles in making this city life more vibrant. Many tourists stroll and hangout downtown up until late at night, if all these choices of entertainment closed at 10pm, what would they do? Walking around on the piazzas for sightseeing maybe an option, however, especially during a cold winter like this, most people would prefer to sit inside a warm room while chatting with friends and enjoying some drinks.

The guy continued, mentioned how too many drunken people made lots of mess in the city. While maybe the authorities saw shutting down cafés/bars/shops that sells alcohols earlier as the easiest way to reduce the number of drunken people.  Many questions raised: What about the responsibilities of the people? What about the life of cafés/bars business? What about people losing jobs if these cafés/bars don’t survive this difficult moment? What about the vibrant of the city? What about the responsibilities and disciplining those misbehave drunken tourists or drunken spoiled teenagers?

A moment later, we walked out to the nearby square to watch a concert of Gregorian chants.  While we were waiting in line to enter, I felt a bit chill from the cold wind. There was a German Christmas market at that time where they sell some ‘vin brule’ a spiced warm red wine which surprisingly has become my fave drink in the cold weather. So I decided to spend some pennies and get a cup of this warm indulgence, that was when I saw a sign pasted behind the seller “DRINKS WITH ALCOHOL CAN BE BOUGHT UNTIL 9PM ONLY.” It was a little confirmation to what I heard earlier. I was wondering, could it be the cause of lesser people to go and eat at nearby cafés? Perhaps, anyhow, I checked my watch, it was 8.45PM, there was still enough time for me to get a cup of my ‘vin brule’.