Police harassed Village clubs until owners paid off the cops.

Evidence

Indeed, before dawn the order to vacate was itself vacated, although an additional summons noted the absence of a “no spitting” sign in the kitchen. The “Beatnik Sit-In” made the New York Times and the Village Voice front pages: GASLIGHT NIGHT OF TRAVAIL SPARKED BY FALSE ALARM. Mitchell beat the charges, then went to the state crime commission to complain of police shakedowns, blaming harassment on his decision to stop paying off the cops. (By late spring, he would also sell the Gaslight.) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 283

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how illegality and police extraction shaped avant-garde scenes; police shakedowns are a material condition of the Village scene.
• SHARE: The detail that a cop summons cited a missing ‘no spitting’ sign during a beatnik sit-in bust is the kind of absurdist detail a specific person interested in urban policing or Village history would love.