SACRAMENTO-
A popular cycling tour in Sacramento is growing, but some who live nearby aren’t happy with what that means for their neighborhood.
The Sac Brew Bike is expanding its operations to include a tasting room at its midtown headquarters.
“When [our customers] finish their tour, or before they start, they can go ahead and sample local Sacramento craft beer,” said owner Chris Ferren-Cirino, about his planned tasting room located at 1519 19th Street.
But neighbors feel this may not the best address.
“[Maybe they should move to] the right location [where] it would be better, maybe the R Street corridor, where it’s mostly warehouses, load up there, come back and make lots of noise where there’s nobody around, not right in front of what are owner residents,” said Brad Hall who lives across 19th Street from the business. “These people come and they go, the people that are making the noise don’t live down there, they don’t say down there.”
At Thursday night’s planning meeting, neighbors complained the party bikes are already too loud. Hall is disappointed the planning commissioned allowed the tasting room, feeling customers will only get louder earlier on their tour.
“The commission pretty much addressed the fact that that’s not their job,” Hall told FOX40.
However Cirino said by keeping his customers inside, the noise should be reduced compare to having them wait outside, as is the case now. Plus he told FOX40 he’s working with his staff to be quieter.
“We have a few things in place we started implementing recently where people actually tune the music down as we’re entering our blocks,” he said.
Looking beyond Sacramento, new legislation recently passed by the state senate could allow bar bicycles to serve beer onboard. The bill would leaving restrictions up to individual cities if it becomes law.
Surprisingly both Cirino and Hall support the legislation.
“I think having beer on the bike — to sample a little bit of beer between stops — I think a lot of our customers have expressed interest in it,” Cirino said.
“If that bill includes a potential for strong regulation of this type of a business activity, I would be for it, even if it allows them to drink, because what I heard tonight is this isn’t really anyone’s job to regulate,” Hall said.
