Friday night live music ban still on at Redheads Council renews liquor license but continues ban on entertainment BY SUE MORGAN Staff Writer EATONTOWN — Revelers at Redheads Bistro can still drink, but not dance or even listen to live music on Friday nights, at least not until after the New Year, under the terms attached to the Hope Road establishment’s renewed liquor license. Adhering to conditions imposed upon the restaurant and bar by the New Jersey’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) in July, the Borough Council decided last week to renew Redheads’ liquor license with a clause prohibiting the use of any live entertainment on Friday nights. The council’s Sept. 28 vote effectively maintains Redheads’ practice of doing business on Fridays without employing bands, disc jockeys or any other forms of live entertainment that began with the council’s initial renewal of the license on June 22, prior to the restaurant’s appeal of the borough’s decision to the ABC. This time around, the council chose to let the licensee, identified in the borough’s resolution as Red Inc. LLC, provide live entertainment on all other nights as “permitted by law” except Friday beginning this month and up to Jan. 1. If Redheads can operate without any “major incidents” requiring intervention from the Eatontown Borough police between October and Jan. 1, the council will allow Red Inc. to offer live entertainment beginning immediately after New Year’s Day, the resolution states. From Jan. 1 to June 30, Redheads will remain under the gun to prove that it can handle its Friday night clientele even while showcasing live entertainment without calling borough police to assist with any altercations, major vandalism or other unruly patron behavior, the resolution states. The council’s nearly 90-minute hearing on the Red Inc.’s renewal came about as the result of a July 13 order by the ABC requiring the governing body to review the conditions set on the license at that time. Apparently unhappy with the council’s ban on live entertainment at any time when the renewal came up in June, Red Inc. appealed to the ABC and appeared before that state agency on July 6. Eatontown Police Chief George Jackson testified before the ABC on the borough’s behalf at that time as well. After hearing testimony from both sides, the ABC issued its ruling a week later that allowed Red Inc. to continue its liquor license while offering live entertainment on all nights but Friday. The ABC also ordered the second hearing to come before the council within 90 days of July 13, Jackson explained. Though the council could have again prohibited live entertainment on all nights, the five members present agreed to keep Friday night as the exception, Jackson said. Police had been summoned to Redheads 94 times during the 12 months prior to June 22, Jackson has said. Most of those calls were to break up fights or to deal with heavily intoxicated patrons who became unruly, the police chief said. Those types of incidents would begin after 10 p.m. on Fridays and early on Saturday morning once Redheads would convert its dining area to a dance floor and take on a nightclub atmosphere, Jackson said. Each one of the 94 calls for service would take up at least an hour to 90 minutes of police time, often requiring assistance of two to three officers or more at a cost of about $10,000 in law enforcement salaries, the police chief has said. At times, Eatontown police even called upon law enforcement from nearby Tinton Falls, Shrewsbury or Fort Monmouth for mutual aid if circumstances warranted it, Jackson has said. With the terms of the present license, Redheads has been relatively trouble-free, the chief noted. “Things have been relatively quiet since then,” Jackson said. “There haven’t been any fight calls.” If Redheads fails to maintain a clean record after Jan. 1 and in the next five subsequent months, the council could choose to again attach conditions when the license renewal comes up again before June 30, 2006, the resolution states. Red Inc.’s attorney, Richard Stone, of the Ocean Township-based law firm of Stone Mandia, could not be reached for comment at press time. Redheads’ management did attempt several times to discourage disruptive patron behaviors by instituting a cover charge, a dress code and beefing up its security detail, Jackson said. However, those changes did little to discourage disturbances inside and outside of its space on Friday nights and early Saturday mornings. The restaurant and bar with an adjacent pool hall has a capacity of 260 patrons, according to borough officials.