(no subject)
From The Stranger: With the Washington State Liquor Control Board seemingly on the brink of pulling its liquor license, Deano's Cafe & Lounge at 2030 East Madison Street needs a makeover. Badly. Even co-owner Darnell Parker concedes that "Deano's" is synonymous with criminal depravity, drug dealing, prostitution, and all the drive-by shootings that come with it. To exorcise the old demons, he's giving the club a new name: Deano's is now "Club Chocolate City." Parker says that he wants to attract more white customers to mix with the club's typically black clientele, and he says that the whites he's met have responded favorably to the name. Parker also believes that a more racially mixed crowd will help improve his turbulent relationship with the largely white homeowners in Madison Park. "I want to get along instead of getting it on," says Parker. "This business means as much to me as your house does to you." But Mayor Greg Nickels's office worked with police to compile a damning case against the renewal of Deano's liquor license, and the liquor board appears to agree: The board did not renew the license when it lapsed at the end of March and Parker is currently operating under a temporary license as he awaits a hearing that would decide his club's fate. "It could be a few months," says Parker. "It will give me an opportunity to prove that Chocolate City is not shitty."
Should I go to Club Chocolate City? Please advise. Also, FYI, the previous owner had part of his finger bitten off when breaking up a fight between two women in the bar, and a man was shot in the parking lot last year. Still, I think it is really sad that the city is trying to run Deano's out because it is the only black establishment left in an increasingly white neighborhood - the brand new apartment complex across the street calls it "Seattle's Emerging Neighborhood." Fuck that.
Charles Mudede on the politics of loitering: "The black patrons of Deano's seem to hang outside of the business as much as they hang inside of it. And it is this loitering about on the sidewalk and parking lot that most frustrates the bar's new neighbors. These new neighbors, most of them white, fail to appreciate the true cultural significance of black loitering. While strolling is the art of the white urban intellectual (the fláneur), loitering is the art of the black urban tough. The fláneur looks at the city as he moves along the street; the tough watches the city move as he stands on the corner. At the root of strolling is the considerable freedom that whites have always enjoyed in big American and European cities; at the root of loitering is the racist confinement of large minority populations to small parts of American cities. What the neighbors of Deano's want are middle-class strollers, not underclass loiterers, and inevitably they will get their way."
I am a middle-class stroller, oh noes. Residential mixing patterns aren't really complex - if blacks move in, whites move out, and if whites move in, blacks can't afford not to move out - they're just really hard to solve. :(
Should I go to Club Chocolate City? Please advise. Also, FYI, the previous owner had part of his finger bitten off when breaking up a fight between two women in the bar, and a man was shot in the parking lot last year. Still, I think it is really sad that the city is trying to run Deano's out because it is the only black establishment left in an increasingly white neighborhood - the brand new apartment complex across the street calls it "Seattle's Emerging Neighborhood." Fuck that.
Charles Mudede on the politics of loitering: "The black patrons of Deano's seem to hang outside of the business as much as they hang inside of it. And it is this loitering about on the sidewalk and parking lot that most frustrates the bar's new neighbors. These new neighbors, most of them white, fail to appreciate the true cultural significance of black loitering. While strolling is the art of the white urban intellectual (the fláneur), loitering is the art of the black urban tough. The fláneur looks at the city as he moves along the street; the tough watches the city move as he stands on the corner. At the root of strolling is the considerable freedom that whites have always enjoyed in big American and European cities; at the root of loitering is the racist confinement of large minority populations to small parts of American cities. What the neighbors of Deano's want are middle-class strollers, not underclass loiterers, and inevitably they will get their way."
I am a middle-class stroller, oh noes. Residential mixing patterns aren't really complex - if blacks move in, whites move out, and if whites move in, blacks can't afford not to move out - they're just really hard to solve. :(