Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post
Newsgroups: americast.wpost
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com
Subject: Nightclub Means Trouble To Some D.C. Neighbors; Nearby Gunfire Shatters Peace
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 04:35:15 EST
Message-ID: <24.1992Nov2.043515@AmeriCast.com>

Nightclub Means Trouble To Some D.C. Neighbors; Nearby Gunfire
Shatters Peace on Weekends<By Michele L. Norris=Washington Post
Staff Writer=

By day the neighborhood near 13th and Upshur streets NW is a
quiet community of simple brick row homes adorned with ornamental
birdbaths and striped green awnings.  It's a neighborhood filled
mostly with middle-class retirees who stayed put when droves of
other upwardly mobile blacks fled for the suburbs.

But on weekend nights, the serenity of this tree-lined neighbor-
hood gives way to raucous, sometimes deadly street bashes as hun-
dreds of young people flock to the area to party at the Reggae
Clubhouse - a nightclub at 1298 Upshur St.  that operates from 1
to 4 a.m. and caters to a largely high-school age clientele.

Long lines form outside the club as patrons wait to plunk down $8
and get frisked by security guards before going inside. Hordes of
young hipsters show up just to hang out, standing amid parked
cars with high-performance stereos blasting from open hatchbacks.

And though the Reggae Clubhouse does not dispense alcohol, plenty
of it flows outside.  Drinkers pass around everything from flasks
of sloe gin to six-packs of beer.  Trouble almost inevitably
erupts from this critical mass. District police records show that
three homicides occurred on the residential streets within a
one-block radius of the club during the summer.

In two of those cases, the victims were young people who had just
left the nightclub. Police say they have received reports of
"shots fired" near the dance hall every weekend since July. Auto-
mobile break-ins were also reported almost every weekend during
the same period.

"It is sheer hell," said Thelma Hunter, who lives less than a
block from the club with her husband and a 26-year-old grandson.
"It feels like I'm a hostage in my own house. Every weekend, you
hear the rat-tat-tat of gunfire and wonder if they are out there
killing somebody or just shooting off their guns up in the air."

Neither District police nor the club owner have been able to con-
trol the unruly crowds sufficiently to suit the homeowners who
make up the Evergreen Neighborhood Association. Last month, they
mounted an effort to encourage city officials to shut down the
dance hall.

It's a battle that has raised anew questions about whether
nightclub owners are responsible for what happens outside, as
well as inside, their establishments.  It also focuses attention
on the city's tradition of nightclubs' catering to teenagers and
staying open until almost dawn.

Clubhouse owner Alton Gayle said that he empathizes with people
who live near his dance hall and that he has made a great effort
to step up security inside and around the immediate vicinity of
his club with walking security patrols and hand-held metal detec-
tors.

But he maintains that the police department is ultimately respon-
sible for patrolling the streets outside his club.

"It's not fair for me to be held responsible for a shooting that
occurs in the next block," Gayle said. "We make sure people are
safe when they are here (in the club), but we can't dictate what
happens once they leave the door."

Police disagree, saying Gayle could raise his minimum age from 16
to at least 18. Since the homicides this summer, police officials
have placed foot patrols outside the club and have been sending
at least two squad cars there at closing time.

"I don't understand why the parents let their kids stay out all
night," said Officer James Castelano, who regularly patrols the
club on weekends. "Some of these kids aren't even in high school
yet."

For now, it is up to the District's Department of Consumer and
Regulatory Affairs - the agency that grants operating licenses to
clubs - to determine whether the business is well suited to the
community. A public hearing will be held within 60 days.

For residents along Taylor and Upshur streets and a stretch of
13th, the frequent sounds of gunfire just beyond their bedroom
walls has shattered their sense of well-being and has forced them
to change even the simplest household habits.  On weekend nights,
Maura Johnson, a D.C. schoolteacher, avoids using the master bath
less than six feet from her bed because it requires "going past
too much glass." Instead, she uses a bathroom in the hall - a
move that entails only walking past an inside wall in her Upshur
Street row house.

In 77-year-old Jasper McEachern's house around the corner, there
is an unwritten family rule: When the sun sets on the weekend,
stay away from the windows.  McEachern's 17-year-old grandson
started sleeping in the basement recreation room last year after
a bullet crashed through the second-story bedroom window and
lodged in a pile of clothes next to his bed. And like Johnson,
McEachern said he has told family members to keep a glass of wa-
ter next to their beds so they won't have to venture to the
kitchen in the middle of the night if thirsty.

Some Evergreen residents stay away from their own neighborhood
when the club is hopping.

Hunter's grandson often makes arrangements to sleep with friends
or other relatives on weekend nights if he is not home by 1 a.m.
because, he says, it's too dangerous and too difficult to find
parking spaces when the crowd starts to arrive.

The Evergreen Neighborhood Association is among the first groups
to challenge a business's operating license under a new District
law that requires any establishment that charges admission for
social functions to go through the same public hearing and review
process that applies to bars that serve alcohol.

The neighborhood association's initial efforts to close down the
Clubhouse backfired. Lodging similar complaints, the group
blocked Gayle from renewing his liquor license last fall, think-
ing that the litter and late-night revelry might end.

They were wrong.

Instead, the nightclub, located across the street from Roosevelt
High School, went from being a bar that catered largely to Carib-
bean immigrants who drove in from as far away as Baltimore to a
dance hall that has become all the rage with those too young to
gain access to traditional nightclubs.

In the current challenge against the club's license, Evergreen
residents maintain that it is not an appropriate business for
their community because it is within one block of three District
public schools, a day-care center, a senior citizen community
center and a senior citizen apartment building.

"I understand where the neighbors are coming from," Gayle said.
"Most of them are older folks, and I have done so much to try to
make the neighborhood safe for them."

Gayle said such efforts include hiring a cleanup crew to pick up
bottles and trash, using canine patrols to help curb automobile
break-ins and requiring that deejays talk about respecting the
neighbors as they spin records toward closing time.  Gayle said
he is also trying to hire off-duty District police officers to
work in his club.

"When I started out, I just wanted to open a nice reggae club,"
he said. "But the youth of today are so hard to control, it makes
it hard for nightclub owners like me to try and make a decent
living doing business." Residents of the Evergreen neighborhood
see their effort to close down the club as more than just a fight
to stave off crime and noise. They say it's a battle to win back
basic comforts of life, such as a good night's sleep, a street
that's free of broken glass and the ability to park their cars
out front without worry about break-ins.

Arthur Freeman's Honda Accord has been broken into four times in
the last 18 months, and gunmen have shot bullets into the car,
leaving a frayed bullet hole in the passenger seat.

"This is no way to live," Freeman said. "We worked hard all our
lives, raised our children, paid for our house, and for what? To
live like we are in the middle of combat? I tell you, it's not
what I expected for my so-called golden years."02:21 11-02C9999-
----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)