Live music in town scored another point this week, as word slipped out that Mimi’s in the Marigny has been granted its live music permit as of last Friday, September 6. So far there’s been no official announcement other than the permit itself, which was posted on the wall of the bar. Last month the long-besieged club Jimmy’s also got the go-ahead to re-open, but both cases point out the eternal catch-22: You can’t have great music venues without neighborhoods, and you can’t have neighborhoods without neighbors.
Mimi's in the Marigny received its Mayoralty Live Entertainment Permit on September 6.
In Mimi’s case, the suit was filed by Lorelei Cropley, who is a music fan but lives (as do the other four plaintiffs) within a block of the Franklin and Royal corner that Mimi’s occupies (Cropley has claimed she was unaware when she moved in that the shows at Mimi’s tend to run late). That suit last April was the second suspension Mimi’s faced in recent years; the club also fell on the wrong side of a crackdown on smaller, independent music venues in the summer of 2012. When the neighbors filed suit this April, Mimi’s scaled its Saturday closing time from 4 a.m. to 3 a.m., and the club worked with DJ Soul Sister, who was then running her popular dance nights there, to install the required soundproofing and a decibel meter. The club also kept its windows shut to minimize sound seepage—which of course meant more patrons hanging out on the sidewalks between sets for fresh air.
Mimi’s suspended music in April as part of a consent agreement with the group of plaintiff neighbors the business conceded to with Mimi’s advising attorney, Justin Schmidt, and Soul Sister moved her Saturday events to the Hi-Ho Lounge on St. Claude. Although Mimi’s has no noise ordinance violations on the books and has never been officially cited by the City of New Orleans for such offense, the small group of neighbors had filed several complaints and finally discovered that the bar did not have a registered live entertainment permit with the City Hall and therefore used this as the basis of their civil suit allegations, led by VCPORA leader and attorney Stuart Smith.
The 10-year music club then had to cease entertainment while it pursued officially obtaining its live music permit, which isn’t as easy as it sounds as this requires proof that it had operated continuously for a number of years as a live-music venue, even before live music permits were really required or enforced. This proof came, in part, via payroll to musicians and live-music ads that the club had purchased in OffBeat and other local pubs, which proved instrumental to the issuance of the Mayoralty Live Entertainment Permit from the Department of Safety and Permits under the “non-conforming use” clause from the Zoning Commission.
Mimi's has operated as a quiet bar without any live music since April of 2013.
The Mimi’s situation isn’t fully resolved: No formal music opening date has been announced (though an informal acoustic show took place Monday night, September 9) and no shows are officially scheduled as yet; Soul Sister has said she will not be reviving her events there. The only statements so far from owner Mimi Dykes have been social-media posts urging fans to hold tight for official word. Meanwhile, the neighborhood plaintiffs have said they’ll be pressing on. So if Mimi’s was your local and you’ve been waiting for more music, cautious optimism is the word of the day.
