Public Drinking Bid Spurs Divide Among Baysiders, Report Says

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — New Yorkers would be able to drink in public under a new proposal by the city's Nightlife Advisory Board, but Bayside business owners are split as to whether they support the recommendation.

Public drinking should be "regulated but not prohibited" to help the city's nightlife industry recover from pandemic-prompted curfews and restrictions, and to create more affordable gathering options for New Yorkers, board members argued in a report issued last week.

John Ryan, owner of One Station Plaza located off of Bayside's bustling Bell Boulevard, supports the idea after seeing the success of to-go cocktails, an alcohol sales policy that abruptly ended last month despite widespread support.

“[The to-go cups] were very successful," he told the Queens Chronicle. "It helped [customers] and it helped us."

Christine Silletti, the executive director of the Bayside Village Business Improvement District, agreed. She told the Queens Chronicle that drinks to-go are "convenient," and she could see the policy becoming a new standard.

In Ryan's experience, customers weren't using to-go drinks as a reason to be rowdy in public — just grabbing a drink on their way to a Mets game or after coming home from work — but some neighboring business owners fear that the new proposal would lead to chaos.

“It’s not ideal for the community ... It’s like opening a can of worms,” an anonymous manager at Golden Wine and Liquor, another Bell Boulevard business, told the Queens Chronicle.

He worries that the public drinking proposal would encourage drunk driving and outdoor partying, similar to parties in Washington Square Park, which have become the subject of a heated neighborhood divide.

Michael Feiner, president of the Bayside Hills Civic Association, takes a stance in the middle — while he supports the idea in the future, he thinks now is not be the right time for its implementation.

“Currently our city is in a very volatile state where crime has been on a surge perhaps like never before,” he told the Queens Chronicle. “Since everything is cyclical we should wait till these conditions improve, then little by little we can begin opening up these areas for nightlife entertainment on an experimental basis.”