Minneapolis cannot make every doorway fair with one ordinance. But if a business plans to turn people away over what they are wearing, putting the rule where everybody can see it seems like a reasonable start.
Arlene taped a new sign to the Café door Tuesday morning.
WET SWIMSUITS: COUNTER STOOLS ONLY
This followed an incident involving two teenagers from the campground who came in for french fries and pop, sat in the back booth and left behind enough lake water to support limited aquatic life.
They had not meant any harm. They also had not known there was a rule.
“I thought everybody knew that,” Earl said.
Arlene smoothed the tape across the top of the sign.
“They didn’t.”
“We’ve always had that rule.”
“No,” she said. “You’ve always had that opinion.”
There is a difference, especially when Arlene is holding the mop.
This led to a discussion about the other unwritten rules of the Up North Café. Earl said bait buckets were not allowed. Old man Henderson said bait buckets were allowed by the door but not on tables. Arlene said allowed was a generous description of the arrangement.
I found a marker and began making a list.
No muddy boots.
“Too broad,” Henderson said. “All boots have mud.”
Please scrape muddy boots.
No bait buckets on tables.
No moving two tables together without putting them back.
Earl suggested something about removing hats. Then he looked around the room, where four men were wearing caps and one of them may not have removed his voluntarily since the first Bush administration.
We let that one go.
By the time we finished, the Café had eleven proposed rules, three exceptions and a dispute over whether a snowmobile helmet counted as clothing or equipment. Arlene read the list, crossed out nearly everything and handed the marker back to me.
“If I’m going to enforce a rule,” she said, “I’ll put it on the door.”
About then I checked the news from Minneapolis.
The City Council has approved an ordinance requiring bars, restaurants and other liquor-licensed businesses that maintain customer dress codes to post those rules near the entrance. If the dress code is not posted, the business cannot enforce it. Ordinary health-and-safety requirements are treated separately.
This does not prohibit a business from having a lawful dress code. It makes the business tell people what that code is before somebody reaches the door.
A business without a dress code does not have to invent one. City Hall is not asking every tavern to settle the cargo-shorts question.
Council members and residents described cases in which people wearing similar clothing were treated differently, or customers were confronted with rules they had no way of knowing existed. The concern is that an unwritten dress code can become whatever the person guarding the door decides it means for whoever happens to be standing there.
That is where this stops being a discussion about signs.
Discrimination is already illegal. That has led some people to ask why Minneapolis needs another ordinance. It is a fair question. We have no shortage of laws saying people should be treated fairly, and another sheet of paper in a window will not remove prejudice from the human heart.
But being turned away is easier to see than proving why it happened.
If a business posts a rule against certain clothing, customers can read it before entering. They can also see whether the same rule is applied to the next person. If no rule is posted, the business cannot suddenly discover one when somebody arrives whom it would rather not admit.
A posted rule can still be foolish. It can still be enforced dishonestly. It may even be written to accomplish something ugly without saying so plainly. Printer paper has limited moral powers.
But a visible rule creates a standard. It gives customers, employees and city regulators something to compare with what the business actually does. It makes arbitrary treatment a little harder to explain away.
And the burden is not especially mysterious. Minneapolis has not created a new department, hired a consultant or ordered a twelve-month study of doors. It has told businesses that if they intend to enforce a dress code, they need to write it down and put it where people can see it.
There are times when small is a compliment.
Back at the Café, Henderson was still studying Arlene’s sign.
“Wet swimsuits is too narrow,” he said. “What about somebody caught in the rain?”
Arlene looked at the sign, looked at Henderson and took it down.
A few minutes later, she put up a new one.
It started raining just before lunch.
Earl came through the door with water running off his cap. He read the sign, looked at the empty booth and sat down at the counter.
“Doesn’t say anything about wet people,” he said.
Arlene slid a towel under his elbows.
“Don’t give the sign ideas.”
This whole issue has nothing to do with a dress code. Establishments need a legal way to keep crackheads out, that is literally all this is. They used to do this with the id at the door thing but now Hennepin county just hands them new free ids every week so that doesn’t work anymore. Some businesses started telling them “sorry you don’t meet the dress code”. Obviously that is gonna backfire when there is no actual dress code. If these bouncers weren’t fully regarded they would tell the homeless that they can’t enter because they already appear intoxicated and it would violate mn law to serve them. A lawsuit is impossible this way because who can prove or disprove if someone smells like booze whereas a security camera can show they were dressed like other people who were allowed inside. After all this is mpls where most of us look half homeless at the bar.