Great Balls on Tires, the food truck bringing a brick-and-mortar to Downtown’s Main Street, appears to be stuck in a rut when it comes to obtaining its liquor license. L.A. Downtown News reports that a recovery advocate non-profit that helps treat formerly homeless residents in Skid Row is now trying to curb so many alcoholic bosoms booming in the area that immediately surrounds a new recovery-specific housing complex called New Genesis. Great Balls is due to take the building’s ground level with twelve outdoor seats and 67 inside, serving alcohol with food, but not from a dedicated bar. The proposal is pushing New Genesis’s non-profit developer, Skid Row Housing Trust, to try and put the brakes on the serving of liquor in the same building, both for its own residents and those of similar, surrounding programs.
“It’s one thing to have alcohol here and there in the neighborhood, but when you have to walk by a restaurant serving liquor to get to your door, that’s a problem,” Skid Row’s rep in the Downtown Neighborhood Council told the paper. Currently, the Council is withholding a recommendation for the liquor license to get the green light, though the committee initially wanted a restaurant on the ground-level instead of a recovery center.
A decision on the future of GBOT’s license, which would determine whether the restaurant chooses to be a late-night hang or not, is now under consideration from Downtown reps with input coming in from residents and police officers. Meanwhile, no one so far seems to be raising a single concern about bad “ball” puns flooding the neighborhood.
