City Refuses Extension Of Father's Six Hours

The bartender at Father's Six will still sound last call at 12:30 a.m., and still close the bar at 1 a.m.; the city Licensing Commission yesterday announced it will not grant the Bow St. bar a one-hour extension of its operating hours.

The commission also refused to grant extra-hour permits to Georgie's, a nightspot north of Cambridge Common on Mass Ave, and Father's Fore, a companion bar to Father's Six in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology area of Cambridgeport.

"We decided there were enough drinking places open in those areas, and that it wasn't in the public interest of the city of Cambridge to grant 2 a.m. licenses," Mary Calnan, a member of the licensing commission, said yesterday.

The licensing commission also refused to grant extension of operating hours to half a dozen other city bars, in part a reflection of increasing city and community opposition to the longer hours.

"There is some growing interest in the matter," Calnan said, adding that the commission will continue to conduct public hearings on every request for extended operating hours.

Some bar owners had argued they have trouble competing for customers with clubs that stay open an hour later.

"At 12:30 a.m. they get in their cars and head out around the city in search of bars that stay open an extra hour. They just don't want to stop drinking," one bar owner, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday.

And once patrons have found other bars, "they may like them and not come back to mine," Barry Bornstein, treasurer of Thursday Afternoon Inc., which owns Father's Six, said yesterday.

Some drinkers may even avoid the city altogether. "Some go into Boston, and Cambridge bars lose business," Calnan said, adding that most other cities and towns in the area allow bars to stay open until 2 a.m. "automatically."

But part of the controversy is the work of opponents of longer hours for bars, at least in some neighborhoods.

Cambridge mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 told the commission that it should avoid granting 2 a.m. licenses to taverns along streets bordering residential areas, and he added that a bar's reputation should be considered before any extensions are allowed.