HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
COMMENTS
 
Employees and supporters of the gay Latino dance party Fuego packed the room on Oct. 12 as the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board heard arguments at a hearing to determine whether the restaurant that hosts the Fuego event should be allowed to renew its liquor license.
The hearing took place four months after neighborhood activists who oppose the restaurant, Cada Vez, at 15th and U Streets, NW, startled Fuego’s mostly gay Latino patrons by photographing and videotaping them as they entered and left Cada Vez during the weekly Saturday night dance party.
Mark and Christina Parascandola, a husband and wife team who conducted the photographing and videotaping, said their aim was to gather evidence to show that the Fuego event contributes to neighborhood problems such as excessive crowds, noise, traffic congestion and trash. Some partygoers have objected to the tactic as intended to intimidate gay Latinos from attending the weekly party.
Others working with the Parascandolas, including gay Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Ramon Estrada, have accused Cada Vez of violating the terms of its license by operating as a nightclub disguised as a restaurant.
City nightlife advocates say the Cada Vez dispute is another example of the ongoing clash in popular city neighborhoods over whether entertainment and nighttime businesses such as restaurants, nightclubs and taverns should be allowed to operate in close proximity to residential areas.
Cada Vez supporters say the U Street, NW, corridor where the restaurant is located has been an historic nightlife zone for more than 100 years, beginning as the premier African-American entertainment district during the days of racial segregation.
Opponents insist their objections are unrelated to the sexual orientation of Fuego’s partygoers.
“We’re not anti-gay or anti-anything,” said Douglas Fierberg, an attorney representing various groups opposing the Cada Vez license at the ABC Board hearing. “My clients are not racist or homophobic.”
According to Fierberg, the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission, the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, and several ad hoc groups of nearby residents — including the Parascandolas — have challenged Cada Vez’s license because they believe the establishment is not in compliance with the terms of its original license as a restaurant.
Cada Vez attorney Andrea Bagwell disputed that assertion, saying inspectors with the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, which oversees the ABC Board, have found Cada Vez to be in full compliance with all city laws and regulations.
She pointed to a past voter referendum among nearby residents in which 85 percent of the voters supported Cada Vez’s application for a license over the objections of mostly the same neighborhood activists who are currently opposing the license.
“I believe more than 85 percent of the community supports Cada Vez now,” she said.
Fierberg said the residents who voted for Cada Vez in the referendum based their support on what he said were false promises by the restaurant’s previous owners. Among the promises, he said, was that Cada Vez would be a traditional sit-down restaurant and a conference and computer-learning center, with an upstairs room that was to include numerous computer workstations.
He said he would present witnesses who would testify that the upstairs room has a bar, sofas and cocktail tables rather than computers.
Gay nightlife advocate Mark Lee said he testified at the hearing that city laws and regulations allow restaurants to serve the “dual” functions of providing both food and entertainment.
Bagwell said ABRA just completed an audit of Cada Vez’s liquor and food sales and found it to be in compliance with a city law requiring restaurants to generate at least 45 percent of their revenue from the sale of food.
“There have been over 150 regulatory inspections of this establishment over the past several months,” Bagwell said. She called the inspections a form of harassment generated by Cada Vez opponents.
Cada Vez manager Charles Zhou has said he believes the inspections were triggered by anonymous calls from the restaurant’s opponents, who invoke a city regulation that requires city agencies to respond to all citizen complaints against businesses by dispatching an investigator to look into the complaint.
Zhou said all but a few of the inspections found no violations on the part of the restaurant, with a few finding minor violations such as customers dancing in places that are not allowed under the terms of the license. He said opponents, who come to the restaurant disguised as customers, “keep their eyes open for any little thing they can find” to report a violation.
Rick Rosendall, vice president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, who was scheduled to testify at the hearing as a witness for Cada ...
| 
