Coupled with the noise complaints directed at Philosopher’s Stone, what else explains this heavy-handed city of Charlotte play directed at next door Jackalope Jack’s?
Please read this then email it to anyone including Mr. Fowler. Also show it to any restaurant owners you know.
CHARLOTTE AND ITS NEW FOUND NAZI HABITS!I thought I wanted to live here for a long time,
…I thought I wanted friends and fellow small business owners to move to charlotte,
I thought this was a city that wanted to grow relationships with small business owners,
I thought I did’nt mind helping the city out by not complaining about tax increases, or building basketball stadiums for billionaires, or bringing in baseball when nobody voted on it.
I thought I did not mind being a major money maker for the city with my tax contributions.
I thought I should respect elected officials and people they have hired to run this city.
Well, I thought wrong. More and more I want to do less to help this seemingly almost fascist state run city which seems determined to help destroy great small businesses.
Last night at about 11 o’clock a city representative Mark Fowler, came into Jackalope Jacks Restaurant with about 7-9 police officers. Mr. Fowler is a code enforcement superivsor,
who usually only works days, but took it upon himself to come to Jackalopes with police protection, to view for himself the highly illegal activity of skeeballing and Karaoke.
I was unaware of the prohibition of these two activities.
Apparently he could not come in, in a professional manner, during the day and ask politely to see these skeeball machines or the Karaoke system and inform us of their apparently ‘highly illlegal’ nature. Instead he chose to barge in at 11p.m, on what he surely knows is one of the busiest nights with a full police escort, which I am assuming costs the city about $500 dollars per hour to ensure his safety from us evildoers! He then began taking pictures of various areas of the restaurant ,without announcing himself to any of my management I might add, presumably to provide proof of these ‘awful crimes’. When approached to ask exactly what he was doing, he very arrogantly stated that he would be sending me a violation because we were entertaining customers with those two activities. Also mentioning ,very unprofessionally, something about a totally unrelated minor building code issue. Is this perhaps some sort of vendetta for Mr Fowler as he seems to be taken a little personally. Who knows? Regardless, is 11p.m on a Friday night an appropriate vehicle for imparting this earth shattering information. From a strictly human being standpoint I would think not. Once again, perhaps between 9a.m and 5p.m Monday thru Friday would work better. During this very pleasant conversation, on my part, one of the police officers told me it would not be appropriate to talk to Mr Fowler at this point as I had had a few drinks even though I was nothing but polite. I was unaware that a citizen and business owner was not allowed to ask city officials relevant questions in reference to supposed violations. Perhaps if our city paid official had bothered to come at a reasonable hour I might not have had any drinks and would have been allowed to talk, as is my constitutional right I believe, to this person. Obviously the effect on the custom of the restaurant cannot even be determined. These kind of Gestapo tactics can only hurt as at the very least the appearance of so many police officers can only make people assume that we are some sort of arch criminals! This kind of behaviour is absolutely unconscionable. This action is infringing on my ability to do business not only now but in the forseeable future.
Introduce yourself, take some pictures and explain nicely what we may have been doing wrong. Is this an unreasonable request!!! 8 policemen!!!! Really? Is Al Capone in town and resurrected?
It looked like a major drug bust, SHAME ON THE CITY. Are there not more important things that police officers should be doing. Instead of running escort for Mark Fowler “The Code-inater”.
As far as I know in 16 years of business, I have had only one ALE warning, for a mislabeled bottle, and only one noise violation in the last 8 years, when a very nice policeman came and asked us to turn it down, and we as always complied. Yet we ,and our friends “The Philosopher,s Stone , seem to have been singled out for persecution above other places running similar operations both nearby and throughout the city. Even our other nearest neighbours seem to have somehow escaped a visit from the entertainment swat team. I am not sure why? And would love to know.
We checked out the licensing info on the charlotte.gov website and could find nothing that states anything about Karaoke, which is free, and we don’t charge at the door. Even so if this does exist perhaps a more moderate informative approach would have been more helpful and acceptable to all involved.
We have a privilege business license, that we thought covers everything as far as games are concerned. If this is not the case, once again, perhaps a pleasant phone call, e-mail or visit would have sufficed.
Restaurants are in the entertainment business, its our job to put people in the seat and keep them there. If I am in violation, then so are at least 400 hundred other bars/restaurants running Karaoke , trivia games, comedy nights, and of course the dreaded outside music.
So I assume the CITY of Charlotte expects its residents only function is to come in, eat in silence, and get the hell out. What a vibrant community!
Mr Fowler will undoubtedly be visiting every establishment in this city with his personal police force to take pictures of all the Karaoke rooms and all the machines and all of the pooltables before he sends me my violation.
If my skeeball machines are in violation then so must be all pool tables, foosball, Golden tee, Bowling games, Coin-operated machines, which by the way are tax-revenue, are in violation all over the city!
We generate great tax dollars for the city and state, employee 30 people, actively work with charities, and volunteer at the homeless mens shelter.
I personnaly purchased the last K-9 dog for the city, his name is Jax, and he work’s with Officer Matt Yoeder. He’s a great dog, I thought about donating the next dog to the city as well, because I believed in my community.I cannot express to you strongly enough my dissappointment with the totally unnacceptable way in which this occurred and my dissillusionment with the city’s attitude toward small business.
I’m starting to hate my community and find that I don’t want to be partners with people who seem to have no concern about my rights ,not only as a business owner, but as a citizen of the United States of America.
I would certainly appreciate your swift response to this matter as an indicator that you are at least interested in addressing our concerns.
Sincerely, Robert Nixon, Andy Wilson 704-502-8465, 704-502-8465
I have no problem contacting all media outlets. I have no issue with employing counsel. Prove to me that this is a city. Not a fascist state!
FWD to anyone, Restaurants beware.
Any guesses? I have one, but I’ll keep it to myself for now.
