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WILL THE SWAN RESURFACE? BY BEN ELLMAN The Black Swan has fallen on hard times. The Tivoli hot spot was closed after a sting on Dec. 7, 2012, in a joint operation by the Dutchess County Police in cooperation with the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA). Four arrests were made that night: Black Swan owner Michael Nickerson; two of his employees; and one Bard student, a nineteen-year-old patron. On Dec. 12, 2012, the SLA issued an Emergency Summary Order of Suspension to the Black Swan. The sting was conducted in part in response to a rising concern from the Tivoli community that the establishment was serving people who were underage. “There were phone calls and emails sent to my office from parents and others who were concerned about underage drinking in there,” Tivoli Mayor Bryan Cranna said. In January, Nickerson started a fundraising campaign on the website Indiegogo in an effort to raise $30,000 to get the pub back on its feet. They were fined $15,000 from the SLA, $2,000 for a state-of-the-art ID scanner, over $5,000 in lawyer’s fees, and general operating expenses: insurance, rent, heat, utilities, according to Nickerson. He was able to raise $24,685
in 30 days, just shy of his goal. He hopes to schedule a hearing with the SLA by late February, which would allow the bar to reopen in March. Regaining the bar’s liquor license is only the first step in the Black Swan’s return to business as usual. If it reopens, the establishment will have to figure out a new way to present live music. According to Cranna, “If you want to have acoustic music, that’s one thing, but the site plan that was agreed to a few years ago does not allow for amplified music. So you can’t come in there with amps, plug them in, and have electric guitars blasting.” However, Nickerson disagrees with this interpretation. “Acoustic is any sound. Also, within the law there is a very set amplification range—a decibel level, just like there’s a speed limit. If you drive through town at 25 miles per hour, you’re doing the speed limit. Much the same way, there’s a 60 decibel sound limit within the village, within the business district, after 10 p.m.— I never reach that level. I’m 58, 59, but not 60.” Ryan MacLean ‘12, whose band played the night of the raid, said that he will do whatever is needed to make sure that music returns to the Black Swan.
THE SWAN ON TRIAL Karen and Dave Cleveland have lived in Tivoli for 50 years and have never testified in a case involving Bard students—until now. Mike Nickerson, the owner of the Black Swan Pub in Tivoli, appeared in court charged with violating the village’s noise ordinance, a violation separate from those accrued from the recent sting. The prosecutor compiled a sizable amount of evidence against which Nickerson’s private attorney, Vincent Catalano, had a hard time defending his client. In an earlier hearing, Nickerson pled not guilty to the charges which forced the case to trial. Presiding was Judge Howard Clark, a professor at the Culinary Institute of America and a bald, Harley-riding, elderly man with tattoos on his wrists and hands. As an elected official, Clark does not have a law degree. He had to work hard to contain the testy tempers of the the opposing attorneys. The prosecutor first called to the stand Dutchess County Deputy Sheriff Joseph Wasilewski, a six-year veteran of the force who was dispatched to the Swan at 12:22 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 25. He testified that he pulled up in front of the bar with his car windows closed, waited for about a minute in the car, then reported that he could hear music and “hooting and hollering” coming from the bar and the porch in front
of the bar. Officer Wasilewski said that he entered the premises and issued a citation to Mike Nickerson. He testified that Nickerson told him that he would keep the noise level down, and after Nickerson received his ticket, Wasilewski left the area. Next on the stand were the Clevelands, who had the most substantive testimony for the case. The husband and wife, who have lived two houses west of the Swan for about 50 years, alerted the Sheriff’s department to the noise coming from the Swan. They testified that they were disturbed and annoyed by the yelling and loud music coming from bar. The terms they used to describe the noise matched the language used in the Tivoli Village Ordinance 151-6 that says any sound that “annoys, disturbs, injures or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace or safety of a reasonable person of normal sensibilities” is prohibited between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Catalano offered multiple motions to dismiss, all of which relied on the specific wording of the ordinance and did not seek to dispute the facts of the case. The judge declined to rule on any of these arguments, however, so Catalano moved on to a more adventurous defense. He argued that the court had seen no proof that Nickerson was the owner of the bar. The
“We don’t want to instantly create problems again,” MacLean said. “We want to avoid any possible confrontations with anyone that would get these [Black Swan] people in trouble again. Above all, we care about these people a lot, because they’ve been so good to us as business partners and also as friends, and they’ve done something for this college community that I feel like you don’t really find in too many other places.” The Tivoli bar still has a potential future, Cranna said. “I think there is a spot for the Black Swan,” he said, “and it contributes greatly to the character of the village. I know that there have been play readings; I know that there has been some really good acoustic music in there, and it’s a great gathering spot for a lot of local residents.” This is an adaptation of interviews conducted for the February edition of Audible Annandale. The audio version of this article can be heard on the Free Press website.
BY LEVI SHAW-FABER
defense showed documents stating that the bar was owned by a limited liability company (LLC) where Nickerson was the only shareholder. This defense was dismissed, however, when the prosecutor discovered that the LLC was dissolved before the night of the noise dispute. The last effort by the defense to dismiss the case was Catalano’s claim that there was no evidence that the Clevelands are “reasonable person(s) of normal sensibilities.” This argument was short-lived when the judge stated that the amount of time the Clevelands have lived in Tivoli deems them as such. Karen Cleveland’s grandfather built their home in 1910. Now a retired Red Hook High School teacher, she attended high school across the street in the building that has been converted into the Tivoli Schoolhouse apartments. The Clevelands, who live adjacent to Osaka Japanese Restaurant, complained that the music at the bar, combined with the noise of the students at the shuttle stop, frequently kept them up at night. “We just want Mike Nickerson to be a respectful neighbor,” Karen Cleveland said. She added that no other business or house in Tivoli disturbs her family. She said, “If they have parties