Village coffeehouses ran unlicensed and were fined for it.

Evidence

Café Bizarre and three other coffeehouses were fined for lacking cabaret licenses even as Shelton gave the movement its New York Times imprimatur: “Folk music is leaving the imprint of its big country boots on the night life of New York in unparalleled fashion, from the grimiest Greenwich Village espresso joint to the crooked-finger elegance of the Waldorf Astoria.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Illegality as a scene-enabling condition connects to the reader’s shelf on why culture stagnates now — cheapness through unlicensed space.