Newcomers, Longtimers Clash Over Beer Sales
By Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 10, 2007
For Paul Whatling, it was the yellow smiley faces that did it.
The Columbia Heights resident had long suspected that the white plastic bags with the cheery logo came from Seven Days Grocery. The telltale bags were wrapped around 80 percent of the empty beer cans and bottles he found on the streets around the store as he filled 55-gallon bags weekly with the trash. Then Whatling found that Seven Days was the only store within six blocks that used the bags.
Whatling knows that Columbia Heights, now seeing redevelopment after languishing since race riots almost 40 years ago, faces bigger problems, particularly violence and drug dealing. Still, he says, it's the principle of the thing: Seven Days has flouted legal agreements and is fostering public drunkenness.
Police "need to start at the simplest things to make people know the law means something," Whatling said. "It's not like we're trying to get rid of Seven Days Grocery."
But some residents suspect just that. In a dispute that has come to symbolize the tensions of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, factions have sparred in recent months over the liquor license that the store at 14th and Fairmont streets NW has held since 1991.
Whatling and other members of the South Columbia Heights Neighborhood Association, which includes many newcomers, enlisted an attorney and collected an accordion file folder full of witness statements about drunken brawls and public drinking and digital photos of litter they link to the store.
In April, they took the evidence to the city's alcohol-control board.
Supporters of Seven Days suspect the move is yet another against working-class establishments and longtime residents who already feel marginalized by change.
"This issue needs to be on people's radar screen. This is real. This is palpable," said Dorothy Brizill, a D.C. government watchdog who has lived in Columbia Heights for 25 years.
"I'm just amazed how people just talk about their property values, as opposed to talking about community," she said. "It's just a jumping-off point for tension."
For Brizill, Seven Days is a neighborhood institution, the place to go for a loaf of bread or a Diet Pepsi, a community resource that dared to open its doors when rowhouses were crumbling and drug-related violence was rampant.
Blaming community problems on the store is "doing a disservice to trying to fix the problems in the neighborhood," she said.
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.
"I'm serving the entire community, not only one group," he said. If the store lost its liquor license, he said, it likely would have to close.
In April, the neighborhood group and Mohammed brokered a deal, and the storekeeper stopped selling malt liquor. He still balked at banning single sales.
A day later, the group filed an official protest of the license. The board is expected to issue a ruling next month.
During hearings before the alcohol board in recent months, Mohammad heard complaints about property values declining and condo purchases falling through because of "negative elements" in the neighborhood.
He said he has been targeted unfairly, noting that other stores in the area sell single beers and that he has never been cited for violating alcohol-board rules.
But in November, after the board indicated that Mohammed's 1991 agreement not to sell single beers was still in force, Mohammed stopped selling singles.
Even so, the protest against his license continues. Association members say they have little faith that Mohammad will respect their concerns.
"It's a trust issue," said David Olsky, a lawyer representing the group for free.
Mohammed is angry and saddened. He thinks the protest is about moving a more upscale business into his storefront, an opinion shared by other backers of the store.
"Their agenda is not about single beer. Their agenda is they want me out," he said. "People can get single beer from anywhere."
After living in Columbia Heights for five decades, Beverly Holland is all too aware of the problems that never went away.
Two people, one of them a 13-year-old boy, were killed on nearby Girard Street -- her street -- in recent months, and gang feuds have heated up in the area.
Having raised three other children, Holland is trying to navigate her 16-year-old son through the neighborhood. She doesn't see Seven Days as a hindrance.
There haven't been any stabbings or shootings in front of the store, she said. "The white folks buy just as much beer as the African Americans. I don't know why they are trying to push the issue."
Brizill emphasizes the concepts of tolerance and community.
"While many new people have moved in, they're not accepting of the people who are there," she said.
"There is going to be friction, but the problem is compounded by lack of communication."
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