Grocery Is Flash Point for Changing Neighborhood

Store owner Abdela Mohammed opened Seven Days in 1989, seven years after arriving in the District from his native Ethiopia. The neighborhood's problems helped make the rent affordable.

As gleaming condominiums and chain stores appeared in recent years and Sotheby's real estate signs were planted outside rowhouses, he added the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal to his shelves and expanded his foreign beer and wine selection.

Brandon Griffiths, a former president of the association who moved to Fairmont Street about 2 1/2 years ago, said he often senses an "us versus them" mentality in the neighborhood.

When he strolls the neighborhood in his Navy lieutenant's uniform, he hears friendly banter about the military or politics.

Dressed in civilian clothes, people have called him "cracker" under their breath, he said.

"I chose to live here. I want to be here," he said. "I'm as much a part of the neighborhood if I lived here a day or if I've lived here 50 years. If there's a problem, you fix it."

To Griffiths, a key problem is that Seven Days was selling single cans of beer, which he said contributed to public drunkenness. He wanted to walk his mother-in-law to her car without being threatened by men with alcohol on their breath. He didn't want anyone urinating on his back stoop.

In June 2006, the association asked Mohammed to stop selling malt liquor and cold beer in single cans.

"We are all for small business," Griffiths said. "But when you have a liquor license, it's a privilege."

Despite the dispute, Griffiths and Whatling, a vice president of the neighborhood group, said they frequent Seven Days, stopping in for newspapers on the weekends or for Gatorade after bike rides.

More recently, the group learned that Mohammed signed a voluntary agreement in 1991, when he sought his liquor license, that he would not sell single cans of beer.

Mohammed said the voluntary agreement had never been mentioned during previous license renewals. Besides, he said, he isn't responsible for disorder in the area.