I live in a fairly strict county when it comes to rules and laws governing nightlife and other things that young people enjoy.
It started with the laws restricting skate parks from operating within the area, effectively banning kids from being kids, even within the confines of a small gated park. Then the county started creating these arcane noise ordinance laws that effectively prevented outdoor bars from operating with any form of live music, even if they tried to keep the volume down. I was working as a freelance journalist at the time I had aspirations to work for a music magazine in the city, so I took the chance on reporting on the local music scene. One of my first articles was about the noise ordinance laws and how it was effectively killing our local music scene here in this city. A lot of bands who live here will drive an hour to get to the closest metropolitan city because they have an established music scene that isn’t under threat from ridiculous noise ordinance laws. It’s particularly bad nowadays now that we have legal cannabis in this state. Because of how the state law is written, cities and municipalities are able to craft their own rules regarding how dispensaries operate within the boundaries of the law. That means that they can decide how late they’re open everyday. It’s frustrating when your county forces all of the cannabis dispensaries to close at 7pm, regardless of what day of the week it is in reality. I wish they could stay open until 9pm like they do in neighboring counties.