May 25, 2006  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

DEALE, Md. — The owner of a restaurant near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland says an unidentified prankster altered a sign outside the restaurant’s entrance earlier this month in a way that made it appear to prohibit gays and blacks from entering its premises.

But two people who reported seeing the sign on May 2 said it had all the markings of a professionally prepared sign, with uniformly painted letters reading, “ATTENTION BIKERS: NO COLOREDS, FAGS, CLUB ATTIRE, (no) EXCEPTIONS.”

While the origin of the words “fag” and “coloreds” on the sign is in dispute, everyone agrees that the sign has been displayed for some time next to the main entrance of the Happy Harbor Inn, a popular dockside restaurant in the Southern Maryland town of Deale.

On May 20, nearly three weeks after the two visitors reported seeing the words “coloreds” and “fags,” the sign had been changed. A visit to the restaurant by a Washington Blade reporter showed that the letters “eds” and “f” appeared to have been covered by white paint, with a faint outline of the letters still visible.

From a distance, the sign on May 20 read, “ATTENTION BIKERS: NO COLOR, AGS, CLUB ATTIRE (no) EXCEPTIONS.”

A story about the sign on the Washington Blade’s website on May 22 created a stir among the restaurant’s regular customers and gay activists, and prompted a flurry of commentaries posted on internet message boards.

At least two gay men familiar with the restaurant defended it, saying the owners had never discriminated against gay customers.

An official with the Maryland Human Relations Commission said his office would look into whether the sign violated the state’s human rights law.

Under Maryland law, discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations — such as restaurants and hotels — is prohibited based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and marital status, among other categories.

Happy Harbor co-owner Barbara Sturgell called the flap “much to do about nothing.” She said her son had the sign installed at least five years ago in an effort to discourage rowdy motorcyclists from disturbing her regular customers.

According to Sturgell, the original wording on the sign said no “colors” and no “rags,” which she said referred to motorcycle club insignias and head bandanas.

“It’s intended for bikers that cause problems,” she said. “There was a shooting on the highway by bikers in front of my parking lot,” Sturgell said, referring to an incident that occurred more than five years ago.

Sturgell said that about three weeks ago, one of her employees told her someone “altered” the sign by replacing the letter “r” with an “f” and made a similar substitution to change the word “colors” to “coloreds.”

“I think they wrote it in with magic markers,” Sturgell said in a telephone interview on May 23. “We took Clorox and wiped it off. It was at night when it happened.”

When told that two witnesses reported seeing the sign with the words “fag” and “coloreds” at lunchtime as far back as May 2, Sturgell said her employees most likely first noticed the altered letters during their nighttime shift.

“I never saw it,” she said. “I walk by there almost every day, but I didn’t notice anything until an employee brought it to my attention.”

Guests dispute owner’s account

Scott Edwards, an airline pilot and former D.C. resident who was visiting the city earlier this month, said he and two friends drove to Deale for lunch on May 2. He said the three were stunned as they noticed the sign when they walked along a deck next to a harbor, where the restaurant is located.

“It was very clear,” he said of the sign. “It said no coloreds, no fags, and no bikers. It just seemed weird,” Edwards said. “It was anachronistic.”

A friend of Edwards, D.C. resident Ted Harris, said he, too, saw the sign. He said he was certain that the words “fag” and “coloreds” were not penned in with a magic marker by a prankster.

“It was a professionally prepared sign,” said Harris, who is African American. “It was obvious that all the letters were uniform and painted the same way. It was enamel paint,” he said. “I was astonished to see something like that in this day and age.”

On May 20, when a reporter visited, the sign bore the word “color” and the letters “ags” in the space where the two witnesses said the words “coloreds” and “fags” had appeared. The surface of the sign covering those ...