National City, CA Noise from Specific Sources: Bar & Nightclub Noise (2026)

Chapter 10.78, Entertainment Establishments, covers any venue offering live entertainment, dancing to live or recorded music, or a DJ. Section 10.78.010 records the City Council's finding that entertainment establishments can present an environment with the potential for excessive noise generation and disorderly conduct by patrons, particularly at closing times, and holds all permittees responsible for controlling patron conduct in and around the establishments.

Under § 10.78.030 it is unlawful to provide, allow or permit entertainment in an establishment or cabaret open to the public without a police permit. Section 10.78.040 exempts categories such as entertainment limited solely to a radio, sound system, jukebox, television or recorded music, including karaoke, with no dancing, and a venue of forty-nine persons or less under its maximum occupancy load with no admission charge, no alcohol license and no customer dancing. An exemption does not relieve any establishment from the noise control regulations in Title 12.

Three sections carry the noise rules. Section 10.78.050 requires all entertainment establishments subject to the chapter to be closed and all patrons to vacate between two a.m. and six a.m. Section 10.78.080 requires the responsible person to observe all noise abatement and control laws in Title 12 and adds that a regulated premise can be required to reduce music to a designated decibel level, despite the higher limit Title 12 allows, within one hour before closing. Section 10.78.090 requires reasonable steps to prevent or minimize noisy patron behavior and disorderly or unlawful conduct at the establishment and within one hundred feet of it on public sidewalks or rights-of-way, and the same one-hundred-foot responsibility extends along the sidewalks from any other property the venue owns, uses or leases for parking.

Noisy patron behavior has a test: yelling, shouting or loud talking after ten p.m. nightly that continues for more than one minute and disturbs two or more adult occupants of residential structures within one hundred feet of the premises or its parking property, even if the conduct is not otherwise unlawful. Distance is measured in a straight line from the boundary of the premises. Section 10.78.100 requires orderly dispersal at closing time and bars patrons from congregating on nearby sidewalks, rights-of-way or venue parking lots.

Under § 10.78.130 the chief of police can attach permit conditions on hours, licensed security guards and sound insulation or acoustic barriers.