The house is around the corner from one end of a street that is a collection of small restaurants. Neighborhood business types have labeled this 'Restaurant Row', which is more fitting than it is thrilling. Another one just opened, and a Thai place is coming in November, and since we moved in five months ago, ice cream and espresso places have opened, approximately in the same stretch. In the middle of this section is a bar called Angie's. I haven't been in.
I like a genuine dive bar, and in some cases (5 Point, Baranoff) have been known to defend everything from the jukebox to the quality of the food to, yes, the pee smell and the topless mermaid in the men's room. I haven't been into Angie's. I am divided as to whether this is a sign of my increasing timidity or simply a sign that I haven't been in the market to buy crack.
Exhibit A: Mike Seely, in the Seattle Weekly last March. Apparently the only people who don't love it are the lame-ass gentrifiers such as myself.
Exhibit B: Jonah Spangenthal-Lee's crime blog, which says Tom Carr is trying to shut Angie's down. It goes on to list the eight times the po-po has visited this year.
Exhibit C: The SeattlePI.com goes into more specific detail of the po-po visits, where we learn, among other things, that $18 is the price for both an unspecified sexual 'favor' and a rock of crack. (Isn't $20 easier, I mean, who carries all those singles around?)
None of these links really address why I haven't been into Angie's. I don't actually know what the inside of the place is like. Outside the place, starting around twilight pretty much every night, there are 1-4 dealers hanging around out front of the bar, and in the small parking lot next to the bar. Sometimes there are also just guys out having a smoke, the difference is apparent because the smokers all say hey, how you doin' baby and are casual/friendly. The other guys lurk, popping out into traffic for a drive-by client now and again; they also tag-team with partners in the park/illegal office on our corner and they are all hyper-alert, like nervous prey animals. It's routinely the same guys.
We end up with a fair amount of crack-n-sex litter on the street; we've traded the needles of our old 'hood for wee rock baggies and used condoms (and the one, exciting morning with ziploc bags of bullets!). The po-po is doing a lot of checks on the park/office since August, and they're obviously at Angie's a lot, too. If they were selling weed, I wouldn't care. Crack is weird. I don't entirely understand it (which is a good thing).
I am not a fan of the po-po, but I also am not a fan of seeing people so whacked out from their addictions that they're negotiating $18 worth of sex or, as happened regularly on the hill, nodding out on the sidewalk. Calling 911 for nodders was not seen as gentrification. I haven't called the cops for crack yet, but in part this is because calling 911 for a passed-out junkie gets her emergency medical attention. Calling 911 for a crack ho gets her jail time.
I probably won't go to Angie's soon. I doubt closing it would benefit the neighborhood. It does seem like the bigger issue--close or no close--is directly related to the current owner's failure to comply with the 'good neighbor agreement' he signed. Which strikes me as not so much a major social issue relating to race and finances, but more along the lines of a restaurant being closed by the health department if it doesn't follow the rules.