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Notable New     Yorkers
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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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Session:         Page of 617

But it started the coffee house entertainment -- that's really what we're talking about. It wasn't just the proverbial coffee house where you have coffee. They suddenly moved into entertainment.

Now, at that time there was no building category that coffee houses could come under. You had to be a cabaret or a restaurant with different qualifications for each. If you were a cabaret, then you were allowed to have music and singing. But if you were a cabaret, you had to have, enormous kinds of protection that you didn't have to have if you were a restaurant. And these places could not qualify as cabarets. There was some other ridiculous quirk in the law that said you could only be a cabaret if you sold liquor. So you had these coffee houses which did not sell liquor. Even if they wanted to, they could not become cabarets because they didn't fit under the classification that said a cabaret dispenses food and liquor. And therefore they were operating technically illegally, and Carmine began, in pursuit of his desire to beat me, make this his issue and cause them harassment. He'd get the fire department to come down, and people would be herded out of the establishment. The police department would come down. It was an incredible harassment operation. The building department would come down. And these people came to see the VID. It became a civil liberties issue, and I took up their issue. Lanigan was then the district leader.





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