Town’s Gone to Shit: The Founder of 121 Fest Thinks He Has a Solution
Words by Jamie Clumpas
Salient arts and culture reporter, Jamie Clumpas, took a brief break from raving to find out from one of Pōneke’s most prolific club and venue managers.
It’s 11.25 p.m. on Saturday in South Wairarapa, and 3500 people have descended on Tauherenikau Racecourse for 121 festival: a self-described “celebration of life, love, and the power of music and art.” While the bass is pumping and walls are rattling, it's the closest to a quiet moment I could get to sit down with festival director Tim Ward.
Tim has managed, founded, and owned numerous prolific Pōneke venues and clubs such as San Fran, Valhalla, Matterhorn, Club 121, the Hunter Lounge, and many others.
Tim has witnessed a dwindling nightlife scene in Pōneke, and he doesn’t think that the council’s ever-tightening window of when clubs can sell booze has helped. 4 a.m. is the de-facto mandatory close time in Pōneke, as in recent years, all liquor licences in the capital have been issued until 4 a.m. at the latest.
“By limiting a particular deadline to hit for all licences to close, it’s a target practice that everyone works to hit. It gets people to binge drink up until that time because they’ve got limited time,” Tim says. “We lose the incentive for businesses to craft themselves into awesome experiences […] That’s what hospitality is about, not just trying to swing as much piss as possible in a short amount of time.”
He says that nightclubs need to be seen like cafés. Cafés open themselves up at times that make sense, “but nightclubs are crafted to go from 10 in the evening until midday the next day. That’s their business model, that’s what customers enjoy the most.” In his experience, “alcohol consumption is very low in those environments, it’s part of the experience, but the music and the lights are the crafted experience.”
Even so, Tim has seen some improvement with other changes to the law. “I don’t think we need to make alcohol more accessible, and in general, I see an improvement in staff assessment of people who are intoxicated compared to the early part of my career 25 years ago.”
Once Tim returns from an unscheduled intermission dealing with a portaloo mishap, he turns his sights on off-licenses, or as students know them, liquor shops. “That’s where our focus needs to be in terms of future reform. More recent regulations have been centred around on-licence, while off-premises are the least regulated.”
This is a problem, he says, given that from 1986 to 2016, the proportion of all alcohol sold from off-licences went up from 59% to 75%. In parallel, pre-loading has been on a steady rise. This is a proven contributor to rapid alcohol consumption, alcohol poisoning, and violence committed by over-intoxicated people. Cheap and accessible off-licence drinks contribute to this, Tim says. “I think off-licences, particularly in a country like New Zealand, should be closed at certain times, but even certain days of the week. I think 90c per standard drink unit is too cheap… so there’s a gravitation towards pre-loading because of the pricing differential.”
Tim would make two simple changes to make town safer and more lively in the short term. Firstly, he would allow clubs flexibility to close when they get quiet. Secondly, he would disincentivise preloading by making it more expensive. “Alcohol in bars has become more and more expensive, but alcohol at off-licences has plateaued for years and years…. Something has to change.”
As students, changes to alcohol licensing impact us greatly. With election season coming up this year, we have one of our few chances to get a say. Maybe it’s time for us as students to start sticking up for town, ask the hard questions about how we tackle alcohol harm in this country, and see if the decisions at the top will have our — and our city’s — best interest in mind.