Probably going to be unpopular thread; however, I think we need to do whatever we can to save Angie's. It's a C City institution and gives our neighborhood it's unique feel. Granted, some work needs to be done to clean up some of the bad elements; however, the vast majority of the time the folks in Angie's are friendly and welcoming.

You want a diverse neighborhood, Angie's is what it means to have diversity. You need establishments where people of differing financial and ethnic backgrounds can congregate comfortably. If you think C City could one day become more like Fremont, please move to Fremont.

I have no idea what the community could do to help Angie's and I highly doubt anyone really wants to; however, there are some folks in C City like myself that would be willing to do what they can.

Guess I'll be part of the unpopular crowd on this forum as I disagree with saving Angies.

The pinnacle of diversity does not rest on Angie's bar top, sorry. Yes it sucks that the Ale house is overpriced, Lottie's drinks can get a bit frou frou, and Verve, well, wine is inherently esoteric. Just because Angie's is cheap doesn't make it okay to be a crime magnet in our neighborhood. I shouldn't have to cross the street at night just so I can avoid Angies.

I've lived in Philly and New York City (in the outer boroughs, mind) where I've stayed in my share of rough neighborhoods. Truthfully, Seattle is the whitest city I've ever lived in, North or South. You want to know what all my old diverse neighbors wanted? Not another cheap place to buy beer, but cleaner streets. We all had to deal with it because that was the nature of that neighborhood. Crime had already been established and there was more than one corner I needed to avoid on the walk home.

From what I hear, Columbia City had a similar history but the community cleaned it up with dog walks and stringent community crime watches. That takes an incredible amount of courage from every neighbor and it invokes the true meaning of community.

Ok, so we know our neighborhood doesn't tolerate crime, so what could be the other reason why we're debating about Angie's? I say: Liberal guilt. I *guess* you can celebrate a bar with low-income patrons as a testament to something righteous. But not when you need flood lights to keep prostitutes away and have shootings occur every month or so. That's the same as saying you believe that all poor ethnic people in our area need to drink cheap alcohol in an unsafe environment just because it's always been that way. How is that fair?

Here's some media about the City Attorney's letter.

From the P-I: City targets South Seattle bar for state action

An assistant Seattle city attorney has told the state Liquor Control Board that Angie's Cocktails in South Seattle "endangers public safety and community welfare," and has asked that the bar's liquor license not be renewed.

South Precinct liaison attorney John McGoodwin, writing on behalf of City Attorney Tom Carr in a Sept. 9 letter, cited a list of police incidents and the alleged failure of the bar owner to address issues there.

The letter, addressed to licensing services director Alan Rathbun, started an investigation involving the control board licensing and enforcement divisions.

Rathbun can ultimately deny license renewal, after which the licensee can request an administrative hearing. The bar's license expires Saturday, according to a liquor control board document.

Click here to download the letter, obtained by seattlepi.com.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee scooped the story first, in the maiden post of his new Seattlecrime.com. He's been a reporter at the Stranger for years.

seattlecrime.com: City Seeks to Shut Down Columbia City Bar

He outlines the City's list of Angie's-related incidents over the last year, and offers this background:

While Angie's has certainly had its problems over the years, it's a monument to old, pre-gentrification Columbia City. It's decidedly diveyer (not necesarily a bad thing) than the other bars which have sprung up along Rainier Avenue South in the last few years, and has its fans in the neighborhood.

Paul Doyle, owner of the Columbia City Cinema, says Angie's is "like a clubhouse for the community."

Eric, a Columbia City resident and manager at the Columbia City Ale House—which is right across the street from Angie's—regularly shoots pool at Angie's, and doesn't think the bar is having a negative impact on the neighborhood. "I’ve never had a problem over at that spot," he says. "Most of the people that are inside the place are neighbors." Since Angie's new owners took over in December, Eric has noticed some changes at the bar. "They’re trying to clean up their image," he says, but "that’s kind of a slow process. [There is] drug activity and things that go on outside of the building. Once [customers] leave the front door of your bar, there’s not much you can do about it."

Angie's attorney, David Osgood, says he's surprised by the timing of the city's objection, as Lee only took over the bar in December. "The new owner has had it less than a year," Osgood says. "You don't turn a place around like that overnight. It's been a troubled location, [but their] the liquor record is ultimately clean."

There's also a hoppin' conversation over at the RVP.

as someone who has spend the last nine years living a short block from angies, i can talk all day about the crime, the muggings, the prostitution, the fights, and the drug dealing that not only occurs next to angies, but spills into the side alleys, the back streets and side streets. i would argue that the folks that are in support of angies don't live next door to it and don't witness on a daily basis the crime that happens.

i agree with rong — if you are concerned about losing our diversification, work for affordable housing in our area or volunteer at REWA or any other local not for profit that is assisting minorities (I do) —

I agree. There is much more to diversity than a business that shows so little respect for its community. Only a minimum effort has been made by Angie's to clean up its act. The vast majority of the drugs, prostitution, and violence in this neighborhood all stem from the loitering that is allowed (and I am even going to say encouraged) in the alleys surrounding the bar. I live less than 2 blocks away and I assure you that most CC residents have very little idea of how constant a problem Angie's can be.

To be fair, I am always amazed that there is not more of an active police presence at and around Angie's. The lack of effort on the city's part to be proactive is very discouraging. The crime is blatant (I cannot tell you how many times I've been
solicited for drugs when just simply walking by). Arrests could be made at any moment on any night…yet, it rarely happens.

It's a tricky situation. No one wants a business to go under. No one wants to see anyone displaced. But, to pretend that this is all about the evils of gentrification and not about the safety of the neighborhood is ridiculous. If Angie's was in any other neighborhood—the CD, Capitol Hill, R. Beach, Wallingord, wherever, I still think the city would be fighting to remove its liquor license.

"According to the comments of "South Seattle Cop" on the RVP link Scott provided, there's just not enough police manpower to keep checking in at Angie's all the time. We only get what we can get I suppose"

…funny how there's enough manpower to have a cop (yes, an actual police officer) sitting by the door at Lowe's and Safeway pretty much every time I go to either. Do those businesses pay for that service?…I have no idea. Could a business association hire its own officer to patrol a neighborhood? Are police officers for hire like that?

To follow up on my last comment,apparently some communities have done just that. From the comments on RV Post:

//Indeud 11.03.09 at 6:18 pm

Okay, local communities like ours are already hiring private security, for the same reasons…

Here are some articles about it –

Cash-Strapped Cities Try Private Guards Over Police
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027127337237011.html

Cops for hire: the rise of private police
http://kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist/2009/07/cops-for-hire-the-rise-of-private-police.html

Edgewood community hires security firm to combat crime
http://www.examiner.com/a-266328~Edgewood_community_hires_security_firm_to_combat_crime.html

Think about the decline in the value of your property, and the decline in your safety. What’s that worth to you? If everyone in the Rainier Valley chipped in a few bucks a year, we’d have one heck of a security force on our streets. And none of them would be there to write you a traffic ticket.//

There are undeniable class and race elements to any discussion like this. We can't ignore that. I do think, though, that we can distinguish the question of whether or not a dive bar "institution" should be cherished from whether or not what's going on at Angie's is acceptable.

I'm a dive bar fan. I've hung out in Angie's a couple times mid-week and watched the game. Many of its customers are classic dive-bar drunks and fine people. They're not the problem. I'm not even particularly concerned with civility laws (a little public disorder we can deal with from time to time).

But let's face it, Angie's — whatever its old-school dive bar charms — is (especially on the weekends) not so much a low-income institution as a magnet for crime. There's blatant drug-dealing; prostitution in the alleys; fights (which I've seen) and muggings (from what I hear) and drunk and aggressive behavior. That's not character, that's crime.

Angie's also has much more than its share of nuisance behavior (from broken bottles to people yelling down the street at 2:00 in the morning), but that probably wouldn't be a big deal at all, if the place wasn't an epicenter of crime in our neighborhood.

The cops will not fix this problem by patrolling more often; they don't have the resources.

So, if we want to save a neighborhood institution, fine; but let's be real about what's going on there and what it'll take to make it okay, and that won't happen through a little community love. Something real is going to have to change to fix that place… and it should get fixed.

Just my two cents. Thanks.

Well, I started this thread with what I now admit was a quick, not-that-well-thought-out post. Although I agree with some of my original sentiment, I didn't expect it to catalyze such an interesting and somewhat divisive conversation. I am impressed with the quality of discussion this wiki generates. I underestimated it. Had I known I would have put a bit more thought into the original post.

Having thought a bit more about the subject, I do believe Angie's serves a very real and underserved element of the Rainier Valley. Businesses should never be discriminated against due to their clientele, and I don't think they are in C City. I do believe the outrage against Angie's is not because of the ethnicity or socio-economic status of its clients but is due to the outright dangerous and criminal element it often attracts. This element is unacceptable, and I do not believe it really makes up the core business of Angie's. If the criminal element was not allowed to operate freely in and around Angie's I don't believe they would lose business. In fact, they may gain additional customers.

It is an easy fix, the management of Angie's needs to hire (at least on the weekends) a qualified staff of bouncers who know how to manage elements that are found in all bars. Experienced bouncers exist and can go a long way in keeping an establishment safe for its patrons and the neighborhood around it. Initially Angie's will also have to hire an off-duty police officer who is in uniform. I am not an expert in the rules surrounding off-duty police officers, but I am 99.9% sure that it is an off-duty police officer in uniform that is paid to be at Safeway. A uniformed police presence will eventually drive the criminal element away.

All this is predicated on the ownership wanting to make a change. If they owner is a good business person then they will know that this change will be necessary to protect their business. This is also where folks active in the neighborhood business district can help. Instead of being confrontational (I'm not saying they necessarily are, I don't really know), they need to support and encourage all the business owners in C City. Helping Angie's thrive as a business helps all members of our community.

Keep up the engaging discussion.

Brian

Last Call for Angie's

By Jonah Spangenthal-Lee
posted 05/12/10 12:31 PM | updated 05/12/10 03:16 PM

Two weeks ago, the Washington State Liquor Control Board sent the bar's owner, Woo Yong "Andy" Lee, a Statement of Intent to Not Renew License and a Request for Hearing/ Response to Statement of Intent to Not Renew, or SINRLRHRSINR for short. In non-WSLCB speak, that means the board won't grant them a new license to serve liquor.

More on this story:
http://www.seattlecrime.com/2010/05/12/last-call-for-angies