Council shelves restaurant bill

A District Council committee delayed action on a bill last week that would have banned restaurants from charging a cover fee and limit the size of their dance floors to 100 square feet.

The bill, sponsored by Ward Two’s Jack Evans, was delayed pending an Alcohol and Beverage Control task force study into the bill’s effect on businesses. Evans put forth the bill to counter District establishments that are licensed as restaurants but act as nightclubs.

“(The bill) will in all likelihood die,” Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Sharon Ambrose said later, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “I think the bill was a little draconian. We have to get at this issue in a different way.”

District law dictates that a restaurant make 45 percent of its gross receipts from food, but many establishments have been skirting that rule, ABC board officials said. They earn more money instead from cover charges and alcoholic drinks.

Newsman talks at
Barnes and Noble

Peter Jennings, anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, spoke to a crowd of more than 100 at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Georgetown Thursday, addressing the challenges of being a newsman in the post September 11 world and promoting his new book, In Search of America.

“History is not about the past, it is about today,” Jennings said. He called his latest book, “a journey through the United States, and into the great themes of American identity.”

Jennings and his co-writer Todd Brewster said the book was not inspired by the events of September 11. Jennings described the book as “how the ideals and principles on which the United States was founded have withstood the inexorable march of time.”

Following questions about the book, the audience asked questions about how Jennings was able to maintain a relatively stoic persona during the events surrounding September 11.

“I didn’t realize how devastating it was,” Jennings said. “(The American people) gathered around the TV as if it was a campfire. But most of all, I tried not to let my personal emotions get involved.”

Jennings concluded his speech by quoting a phrase in his book. “American principles have been attacked, shaken, adapted and assaulted,” he said. “Yet, remarkably, they endure.”
-David Prager and Nicolo Nourafchan