In Shaw, Pews vs. Bar Stools

It was like a scene out of "The People's Court" -- on one side the mostly white supporters of a gay-friendly bar, on the other the parishioners of a black church in Washington's historic Shaw neighborhood.

They all packed the hearing room of the city's Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration yesterday to make their case for or against the Be Bar, scheduled to open in June on Ninth Street NW.

"A bar ? Across from my church?" asked Barbara Campbell, who lives on Georgia Avenue NW and for three decades has gone to Scripture Cathedral in Shaw, where she works as a cook in the church's day-care center. "Don't they understand that there is a day-care center in the church?"

She and other parishioners opposed to the bar were seated in the small hearing room, their worries in their faces. Their pastor of more than 40 years, Bishop C.L. Long, was there, too, his staff in tow.

The bar's nearly two dozen supporters were mostly standing, light-blue ribbons pinned to their shirts. Michael Watson was busy handing out the ribbons. He's one of the bar's two owners, both of them D.C. residents, both of them gay.

"This fight here is really more than just about a liquor license, more than just about a bar," says Mark Lee, a 30-year District resident who now lives in Logan Circle. "This is about who gets to decide which establishments open where."

There's nothing new about fights over the location of a bar, gay or otherwise. It happens all the time. But the battle over Be Bar is unfolding in the midst of a wave of gentrification, where race, class and now sexual orientation get thrown into an already simmering pot.

Articles have been written in the gay press about the controversy. Lawyers were on hand yesterday to speak for their respective clients. And people from outside and inside Shaw have weighed in on the issue in recent weeks.

Yesterday ABRA dismissed a protest from the D.C. Black Church Initiative, partly because the group, in a letter to the board, didn't object to Be Bar on legal grounds but because it "will undermine the moral character" of Shaw and "only promote an alternative lifestyle that runs counter to the values" of the neighborhood.

Even Advisory Neighborhood Commissions are divided. Though the bar is within the bounds of ANC 2F, where the six commissioners (all white) have given their support, it's close enough to ANC 2C, where the four commissioners (one of whom is Latino, the rest black) voted 3 to 1 last month to protest the bar's liquor license.

The law states that no liquor license shall be issued to establishments "within 400 feet of a primary, elementary or high school," says Jeff Coudriet, an ABRA spokesman, but the proximity of an establishment to a day-care center "is an additional consideration."

On May 3, ABRA will decide if a group of Scripture parishioners and ANC 2C have legal standing to oppose the bar's license.