Update: The Drinkery's license is renewed; it's a good day for the city - Entrepreneur Generations

Update: Today (June 2), the Baltimore Liquor Board reversed their decision to take away The Drinkery's liquor license. The reversal occurred because one of the most vocal protesters of The Drinkery, Jason Curtis, holds a liquor license at Hotel Indigo, and it's against the rules for liquor board protests to be made by other (competing) liquor license holders.

As you can guess from my other entry, I'm very happy about the reversal, and hope that the smatterings of protests I read on Facebook and Twitter helped contribute to it, although it also could simply have been a clear rule violation. The targeting by largely white neighborhood members of the gay bar whose clientele is largely African American always had the stench of racism on it, and it seemed an especially egregious gentrification-fueled scapegoating of a decades-old institution when it occurred less than a year after The Hippo closed its doors. And it was sad to me on a personal level, because I liked The Drinkery, in my experience it easily was the friendliest and most laid-back gay bar in the Baltimore.

I do think The Drinkery's 87-year old owner Fred Allen should be more responsive, perhaps hire a door man, though. In a perfect world, Allen will sell The Drinkery in the next year or two to a more active and receptive owner, one who will usher this cool little bar to its 50th and 60th anniversaries, because I do think that this license renewal controversy could be an annual event. His own odiously racist letter to a protesting neighbor, threatening to sell the bar to a "black" owner who wanted to open a strip club, was especially repugnant.

I'm pleased, however, that Baltimore doesn't have the black eye of having a bunch of mostly white neighbors organizing to close down the most prominent black gay bar in the city. Anyone who has ever been through Federal Hill's Cross Street, the Canton Square, or Fells Point at around midnight or 1 a.m. know about the crowds of mostly white people loudly carousing int he streets; that this is allowed, and the overblown charges against The Drinkery (again, no arrest in its 40-year history, only 3 unsubstantiated noise complaints) smacks of white privilege. Ultimately, this feels like a victory against racist practices by city government, and I hope The Drinkery's ownership makes a few changes to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Now, with that being said, who's up for celebratory drinks?

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/1X1IDOe Update: The Drinkery's license is renewed; it's a good day for the city - Entrepreneur Generations

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