Please Don't Talk About Government Tonight…

Cause that governing talk just brings me down, when you're destroying night life all over town. It's easy to forget some of the subtle ways overweening government sucks, but here's an example from an unlikely place: Ian Schrager of Studio 54 talking in Vanity Fair's "oral history of disco" article from its February issue about the death of disco:

It wasn't aids that made the nightclub business difficult. Government regulations did it in. Steve and I did our first nightclub [the Enchanted Garden, in Douglaston, Queens] for $27,000 and Studio 54 we did for $400,000. Now, with all the regulations, fire codes, sprinkler requirements, neighborhood issues, community planning boards … before you even put on the first coat of paint, you're into it for over a million dollars. What it's done is disenfranchise young people.