Club Habana victim of politics

What a shame to watch the massacre at the Charleston City Council meeting this past Monday. My bar, Club Habana, brings in thousands of dollars to this city through licenses and taxes. We employ 14 people. We have over 30 vendors, from liquor, beer, wine, food, local baked goods, kitchen equipment and services, cleaning and hygienic services. All will be affected by our closing.

My question is: Whom did this vote serve? Who was made happy? Certainly not my 14 jobless employees.

When will we stop allowing our local governments to think for us?

Where is the diversity that this city so celebrates when each local business is a model of the next? I fear that in the future we will lose the ability to choose our food and drink. What will happen when the small interest groups attack red meat or salt or gay bars or anything they deem unhealthy or unsavory?

Will we outlaw everything that makes us individuals?

My fear is that the more we ask our local government to baby-sit us, the more they will. My view is and has always been to vote with my money. If I don't like a business I simply don't go and patronize that business. Was it necessary for them to disallow our move? Are the non-smokers of Charleston unable to restrain themselves from coming into my bar?

Who are we hurting? You have to want to smoke a cigar to walk through a tobacco shop and upstairs to a cigar bar.

And to watch this vote take place in such a celebrated room where men have fought and stood for freedom, and fought against tyranny, in front of a huge oil painting of George Washington was the absolute example of irony.

Way to go City Council, business preservation is of no concern to you. Keep up the good work and the progressive attitudes and we may just end up looking like the city we were in the early '80s.

Justin Valakis

Operating Partner

Club Habana

Meeting Street

Charleston