Owner Abdul Khanu said H2O Restaurant & Lounge would reopen at 5 p.m. for happy hour tonight, following today’s decision from the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to give the establishment back its liquor license on a provisional basis. The board’s decision came just a week and a half after an H2O patron was killed outside the establishment on May 27.

According to board chair Charles Burger, for the next two weeks, the club must close by 1:30 a.m. every night, bottle service must end by 12:30 a.m., and the last call for all other drinks must be 12:45 a.m. The board also required that six Metropolitan Police Department officers monitor the establishment on Friday and Saturday nights.

The board will reconvene on June 20 to assess how well the club has met those requirements and determine whether it can stay open later. The board did not, at this time, decide to move forward with a “show cause” hearing, which could have resulted in a revocation of the establishment’s liquor license.

“If we thought this operation were an inherent danger to the community, we would be…going to a revocation,” ABC board chair Burger said. “We’re not playing with public safety here.”

In an interview, Khanu called the board decision “very fair…I’m just happy we got the license back.”

He also said that the establishment would be closing down its VIP room, permanently. “The VIP room is done. There is no more VIP room at H2O.”

Last week, Sgt. James Somers testified that the alleged gunman, Rashod Charles Holmes, said in a videotaped confession that the altercation that led to the victim’s death began over a spilled bottle of Cristal in the club’s VIP room. Today, Burger testified that none of the receipts handed over to the board by H2O show that a bottle of Cristal was sold that night. Still, last week, the board said it wanted more information about the “inner workings” of H2O’s VIP room.

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans motioned to table the Taleshia Ford Memorial Amendment Act of 2007 today so that the Committee on Public Works and the Environment could continue to revise it.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham introduced the bill shortly after 17-year-old Taleshia Ford was killed by a stray bullet at Smarta/Broadway on 9th Street NW in January. The bill, which has been controversial, would prohibit unaccompanied minors under age 18 from hanging out at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment after 11 p.m. on school nights and after 12 a.m. on weekends or during the summer. Kids could still attend events at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment if all the alcohol was locked up at the time.

According to Jeff Coudriet, committee clerk for the Committee on Finance and Revenue, Evans “had a variety of concerns” about the bill. “He definitely had a big concern with the prospect of allowing MPD to work [for] establishments again.”

It was a concern Evans shared with police chief Cathy Lanier. On June 1, council members received a letter from Lanier praising Graham’s efforts but raising questions about a provision in the bill that would allow liquor licensees to contract with overtime police officers to patrol their establishments.

“Jack was on the Special Committee on Police Misconduct and Personnel Management in 1998, so he knows this issue,” Coudriet says.

Lanier’s letter is after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new restaurant in Foggy Bottom: Tonic opened May 29 at 2036 G St. NW and occupies three floors of what was once Quigley’s Pharmacy, a drug store and soda fountain that opened in 1891. Co-owner Jeremy Pollok describes the place as “casual,” “homey,” and similar to the Mount Pleasant outpost. He adds that the restaurant’s shiny, wooden bar is absolutely “beautiful.”

Just don’t try to get any booze at that beautiful bar. The new Tonic is nestled within George Washington University’s campus, in a university-owned building, and the area is zoned as residential. That’s a problem for Tonic. On Feb. 21, the ABC Board denied Tonic’s liquor-license application, stating that D.C. Code prohibits liquor licenses in residential areas.

So why is there a bar at Tonic? “I’m hoping,” Pollok says. “I’m an optimistic person.” And he has reason to be. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has introduced a bill that would permit Tonic’s owners to acquire a liquor license for their GWU restaurant, even though code forbids it. By striking just two words, “type and,” from the code, Graham’s bill, the Retail Class Exemption Clarification Amendment Act of 2007, would make it possible for Tonic to acquire a license.

Why? As it’s currently written, D.C. Code prohibits retail licenses in residentially-zoned areas unless there’s a license of the same “type and class” within 400 feet. The Lisner Auditorium, which holds a CX multipurpose license, happens to be less than 400 feet away. The board considers Lisner the same class as Tonic, but not the same type.

Vince Micone, chair of the Foggy Bottom–West End advisory neighborhood commission, worries the Graham bill could pave the way for other liquor-licensed establishments to open in residential areas. The commission originally supported some university-sponsored food service establishment at the site, he says, but opposed Tonic’s liquor-license application. “Basically, what they want to do is change the entire law for this specific business,” he says. “I think it’s ridiculous.” Micone worries it “could impact on other parts of the city.”

Jeff Coudriet, who assisted then-Ward 6 Councilmember Sharon Ambrose in rewriting the liquor law in 2001, says the law is strict when it comes to residential areas for a reason. Ambrose didn’t want a proliferation of additional liquor licensees operating in residential zones, he says.

Graham declined to discuss details of the proposal, saying he has yet to officially endorse it. A hearing is scheduled for June 13.

Today’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board hearing on the May 27 shooting death at H2O Restaurant & Lounge has shed more light on how the incident came about.

The incident appears to have been sparked by a bottle of Cristal—or, rather, the loss of one. According to police Sgt. James Somers, alleged shooter Rashod Charles Holmes recorded a videotaped confession in which he explained that he bumped into the victim, who was carrying a bottle of the high-end champagne. Holmes testified that a dispute soon followed as to whether Holmes should pay for a replacement bottle. The argument soon spilled outside, leading to the patron’s shooting.

Holmes is currently being held on a charge of first-degree murder. How was he able to get a gun past H2O’s security detail? Simple—he says he bypassed it. Somers testified that Holmes described himself as a sparrer to a professional boxer, a job that gave him a privileged position at the club and allowed him to forgo the usual pat-down at the door. “If you’re known, they just walk you in—that’s how it works there,” Somers says he was told by Holmes.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals yesterday handed down a ruling affirming the revocation of Club U’s liquor license.

Terrence Brown, 31, died after a fight in the lobby outside the club, which was located in the government-owned Reeves Center at 2000 14th St. NW, in February 2005. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board revoked Club U’s liquor license in June of that year.

But Levelle Inc., which had operated the club, appealed the ABC Board’s decision to revoke the license, claiming it was “not supported by substantial evidence,” among other complaints.

The court disagreed. “Based on our review of the record, we conclude that there was substantial evidence to support the Board’s conclusion,” the court’s decision reads. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham circulated an e-mail to neighborhood listservs today calling the appeals court decision a “vindication.”

Call them adult entertainment. Call them nude dancing clubs. Just, whatever you do, don’t call them strip clubs.

“I am not a strip club,”� declared Nexus Gold Club owner Ron Hunt in an impassioned speech before Ward 5 residents at Bethesda Baptist Church last night. Hunt prefers the term “gentlemen’s club”� to describe Nexus, a glitzy nightclub that offered nude dancing until it was closed by the city last fall. Nexus was one of a series of clubs shuttered to make way for new stadium development.

In a lengthy oration that elicited intermittent boos from the audience, Hunt made grand claims, saying his club “was known as the largest on the East Coast,”� and that 80 percent of its patrons arrived via limousine. “This was for the upper-echelon people,”� he said, adding, “This club looked like a living room. We cater[ed] to husbands and wives.”

But the neighbors who packed the pews at Bethesda last night wouldn’t hear it. “If these clubs are so wonderful, why don’t they put some kind of subsidy to put them by the [new] stadium,”� one resident said.

Others suggested the clubs should be evenly distributed throughout the wards, or perhaps clustered in Ward 1. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has introduced legislation designed to permit one-time relocation of the clubs to similarly zoned locations—all of which are in Ward 5. “The issue before us is a simple issue. It’s a zoning issue,”� said Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., who convened the meeting. “No ward wants to be inundated with one type of business.”

At a Tuesday markup of the Taleshia Ford Memorial Amendment Act of 2007, the Committee on Public Works and the Environment voted to strike a section of the bill that would make it a crime for minors to buy alcohol at ABC-licensed establishments.

Currently, kids who buy alcoholic beverages at ABC-licensed establishments are subject to civil penalties and fines. Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham’s bill would have taken that punishment a step further. Under his legislation, a minor caught buying beer at a bar or nightclub would have had that purchase written into his or her criminal record. A provision within the bill also said the crime would be automatically expunged from the minor’s record after he or she turned 21, or through participation in the Time Dollar Youth Court, Graham says.

Ford, 17, was killed by a stray bullet at Smarta/Broadway on 9th Street NW in January. Graham introduced his bill shortly after her death and workshopped it for months with a coalition of community members, alcohol officials, and alcohol licensees. Some music-loving minors originally criticized the bill for threatening D.C.’s tradition of the all-ages show.

In its revised form, the Act prohibits unaccompanied minors under age 18 from hanging out at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment after 11 p.m. on school nights and after 12 a.m. on weekends or during the summer. They can attend events at alcohol-licensed establishments that provide entertainment if all the alcohol is locked up at the time.

At yesterday’s reading, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh offered an amendment to strike that section of the bill. In an interview, she called criminalization a “disproportionate and unnecessary” response to underage drinking at bars and clubs. “Who among us may not have tried to get a drink?” she asked. “The response is not to criminalize this behavior, but see that things are enforced that are already on the books.”

Said Graham: “It was as enlightened a provision as you could have and it seemed to be very important to our bar owners. For those reasons I voted in favor of it, but the majority of the committee opposed it.”

Cheh’s amendment was passed 2-1. The committee then voted unanimously to bring the bill before the full Council for a vote. A date for the vote has not been scheduled.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted yesterday to deny a transfer application for Edge/Wet, a nude dancing establishment, citing current laws and regulations. The club’s license was suspended last fall and then closed due to new baseball stadium development. It was located at 52 L St. SE.

Strip clubs like Edge/Wet have been searching for new homes for months. In November, I reported that ANC 5B, representing Ivy City, formally opposed the strip club’s efforts to move to its neighborhood. “They’re coming to us, and we’re sending them back,” advisory neighborhood commissioner William Shelton said at the time.

In a statement released yesterday, the alcohol board said it empathizes with the plight of D.C.’s squeezed-out strip clubs, which are finding it difficult to find sites with the right zoning. But, the board wrote, D.C. Code prevents Edge/Wet (which was zoned CM1) from moving to its proposed new location, which is zoned CM2. Transfers can happen only between identically zoned sites, it says. The board also “requested that Council review this issue in light of the displacement and relocation of these licensees.”

At least one club, however, is readying for a fight. Yesterday, attorney Jimmy Bell filed a lawsuit against the D.C. government on behalf of Club Rendezvous at 2840 Alabama Ave. SE. Club Rendezvous is also being closed by the city under eminent domain, Bell says, adding that the club’s owner was notified April 7 that he had 120 days to relocate. According to Bell, the D.C. statute governing where these clubs can transfer is “unconstitutionally vague.” He also said he will cite First Amendment protections when making his case for the club.

Mount Pleasant activist Laurie Collins has never had a problem taking on the merchants in her neighborhood. As head of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance, she spearheaded a successful effort to ban the sale of single servings of booze in the area and was willing to take on anyone who opposed the idea down at the Alcohol Beverage Control Board.

Her activism was understandable, given that the home she’s lived in for more than two decades on 17th Street NW is within earshot of the main drag.

So when a new neighborhood group was organized with the aim of lifting a ban on live music in Mount Pleasant, Collins wasn’t about to stay out of the fight. Live music is banned under another Collins initiative—voluntary agreements signed by bars and restaurants several years ago. She plans to protect those agreements.

No one was really surprised by the biting Collins money quote in reference to the live music proponents that appeared in a recent story by Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher. “I will be damned if people outside my neighborhood come in and do something that affects my property value,” she told the Post.

There’s only one little problem: Collins doesn’t live in the Mount Pleasant right now.

She’s a renter in a Cleveland Park apartment complex just down Porter Street NW. For the past few months she’s lived up the hill from her old neighborhood. “I am separated from my husband, which causes me to be temporarily away from Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Collins has delivered the “temporary” change of address report to the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance board. “They have absolutely no problem with it,” says Collins.

Her desire for full disclosure apparently did not extend to Fisher, who had previously interviewed Collins in her Mount Pleasant abode.

“I am not a hypocrite,” says Collins. “I’m not an outsider, so I can’t be a hypocrite….My body may not be there, but my head and my heart are there in Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has released a revised draft of his bill regulating minors in nightclubs. The bill is called the Taleshia Ford Memorial Amendment Act of 2007, after the 17-year-old who was killed by a stray bullet at Smarta/Broadway on 9th Street NW in January.

The new draft of the bill, which will be discussed by councilmembers at an April 18 hearing, prohibits kids under 18 from entering alcohol-licensed clubs or establishments with entertainment after 11 p.m. on weekdays. Under the bill, kids can stay at clubs later on weekends and during the summer. They are also permitted at these establishments afterhours if they fit one of a series of exceptions.

Those exceptions include: minors who are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, are paid employees of the establishment, are providing entertainment, are part of a compliance check, are involved in an emergency, or are attending an event where no alcoholic beverages are sold or served.

The bill also creates a new “underage endorsement,” which would be granted by the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and would permit kids under 18 to enter certain establishments.

In addition, the bill makes it a misdemeanor for a minor to obtain alcohol at one of the newly licensed establishments; makes establishment owners, not renters or promoters, responsible for security; and would allow clubs to hire individual police officers to patrol outside their establishments. Currently, club owners cannot choose which officers work as part of the reimbursable security detail they hire to patrol outside their establishments.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board has scheduled an April 4 hearing for Smarta/Broadway, the 9th Street NW nightclub where 17-year-old Taleshia Ford was shot and killed early in the morning of Jan. 20. The Board summarily suspended Smarta/Broadway’s liquor license on Jan. 24. It will now consider whether the nightclub’s license should be permanently revoked.

The Office of the Attorney General will be representing the District of Columbia in this case. Smart Aziken, owner of Smarta/Broadway, will be represented by attorneys Gregory L. Lattimer and Ted J. Williams.

In an interview, Lattimer said he and Williams have worked together before, notably on the fatal shooting of Prince C. Jones by a Prince George’s County Police officer in September 2000.

While the two attorneys typically serve as counselors to the plaintiffs, “this time,” Lattimer says, “we’re defense because, basically, we don’t like what’s going on.”

He calls Aziken a “legitimate businessman” who is being wrongfully punished for Ford’s death. Specifically, he says, if police officers had been posted along the stretch of 9th Street in front of the nightclub, as they were hired to be by a group of area business owners, the tragedy could have been avoided.

“They were supposed to be on that block. The 9th Street business owners hired the police to be on that block. If those police officers were where they were supposed to be, this would never have happened,” Lattimer says.

According to the alcohol board’s summary suspension notice, “although [D.C. police have] established a reimbursable police detail to cover the 1800 and 1900 blocks of 9th Street, which includes the block where the establishment is located, and that…officers were on duty the night of the homicide, they were not in proximity to the establishment at the time of the shooting because they were processing an unrelated arrest for assault with intent to kill at the Third District police station.”

Ford, however, was shot inside the establishment, not outside, after the gunman passed two security guards, and confronted another, the suspension notice says. The notice also lists a series of other incidents in and around the nightclub over the course of the last year.

In November 2006, a patron, also under 21 years old, was stabbed four times outside Smarta/Broadway. In June 2006, a Smarta patron exited the establishment, obtained a gun and fired twice onto the sidewalk. Also in June, D.C. police officers arrested a Smarta patron inside the establishment for cocaine possession. There were 62 calls for service to the nightclub in the 18 months leading up to the Jan. 20 shooting, the suspension notes.

Asked whether Aziken plans to fight to maintain his liquor license, Lattimer said, “He wants to be treated like everyone else and he’s not.”

Alcoholic Beverage Control Board Chairman Charles Burger clarified today that he has not yet made a decision on exactly when he will leave his post on the city’s alcohol board, but he expects to step down from the board sometime in March or April.

Last week, due to information from the D.C. Office of Boards and Commissions, I reported that Burger would leave the ABC Board March 15. In an interview today, Burger said he still had “some loose ends to tie up” before he leaves and had not settled on a specific departure date.

Burger also said that he was “honored” by his years on the board, and had decided to leave “due to certain business opportunities and time demands.”

Alcoholic Beverage Control Board Chairman Charles Burger has submitted his resignation, says Carla Brailey, director of the D.C. Office of Boards and Commissions. Burger’s last day as the board’s chair will be March 15, she says.

Councilmember Jim Graham, who has oversight of the ABC Board, said the board under Burger used to be too slow to act on violence at clubs, but that it had become more “energized” of late.

Burger’s term would have been up in May, along with three fellow ABC Board members, at which point Mayor Adrian Fenty could have elected to reappoint him. Instead, Burger cut his tenure short.

Meanwhile, Fenty has submitted advisory neighborhood commissioner Mital Gandhi’s name as a possible new ABC Board member to fill the board’s seventh slot, which has been vacant. Gandhi currently serves on the ANC serving North Cleveland Park, Forest Hills, and Tenleytown.

Thinking of heading to Dupont Circle’s Cloud tonight for some appetizers and aperitifs? Think again. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board served the swank Dupont Circle “restaurant” with a summary suspension yesterday, forcing it to close its doors and halt operations. The suspension comes after a patron was stabbed at Cloud on Feb. 16.

According to the suspension notice, the victim was stabbed three times, twice after security had already intervened in the altercation between the two club patrons. “The victim was extremely intoxicated, having been served at least six alcoholic beverages in the establishment,” the suspension notice says. At the time of the attack, security was being provided by Mad Power Unit, a promotional outfit associated with the nightclub Pearl, whose license was also revoked by the board following a spate of violent incidents.

In addition to Thursday night’s stabbing, the summary suspension details a litany of other violent incidents that have taken place over the course of the last two years at Cloud, many of them involving patrons who were hit by glass bottles and rushed to the hospital.

To make matters worse, the suspension letter says that when alcohol administration investigators arrived at the scene Thursday night, they discovered Cloud was providing entertainment, even though it had not gotten board approval to do so.

Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration director Maria Delaney says the board made the decision to suspend Cloud’s license on Wednesday “because of the pattern of violence” at the establishment. It delivered the suspension notice the next day.

On its Web site, Georgetown tavern The Third Edition guarantees “to have you jumping on the floor all night.”

I’ll say.

Take what happened on Sept. 16, 2006. At about 1:30 a.m., according to an Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration case report, Martha Eugenia Pelivanis was walking out of the establishment’s front entrance when she felt a jolt from behind.

It was more painful than a collision, more shocking than a grab. Pelivanis turned around to find the source of the sting, the report says, and saw a man wielding a stun gun. She immediately summoned security, who apprehended suspect Jerred James Ley as he tried to flee the building. Ley was arrested, according to the report, and Pelivanis received medical attention for her bruised and swollen leg.

The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board held a fact-finding hearing on the matter yesterday. “The board was concerned that this could happen. It could easily have been a gun,” an administration official said. The board called on The Third Edition to submit a security plan within the next 30 days.