On May 2, a crowd outside of Neumo’s on 10th Avenue and Pike Street
watched as Seattle police officers from Capitol Hill’s new nightlife
emphasis patrol descended on the crowded venue. SPD claimed the club’s
sold-out Tim and Eric show was over capacity and called in the fire
marshal.
The city came down hard on Neumo’s, forcing the club to drop its
capacity—although the club would not say how much its capacity
was reduced—and closing the VIP room in the club’s adjacent Moe
Bar.
“It’s devastating,” says Neumo’s co-owner Steven Severin. “I’ve had
the worst two and a half weeks of my professional career.”
The timing of the crackdown is suspicious. Last September, the city
raided 15 bars and nightclubs across town in an attempt, the city
claimed, to rein in problem clubs. The city charged 26 nightlife
workers for overserving and allowing minors and guns into clubs, but
the city has yet to win a single conviction. But while the city hasn’t
had much success in court, the raids had a chilling effect on
nightlife.
In the last year, clubs all across town have buckled under city
pressure. Belltown club Tabella closed and the building was sold to a
conservative church. Ximaica in Belltown, Sugar on Capitol Hill, and
Level 5 in Lower Queen Anne all closed their doors.
Now Capitol Hill club and bar owners claim they’ve become the latest
targets in the city’s war on nightlife.
Although the city eased up on Neumo’s late last week—allowing
for more flexibility in how the club distributes its crowd between the
bar, mezzanine, and dance floor (the club is pushing the city to raise
the venue’s capacity from 537 to 700)—several Capitol Hill gay
bars say they’ve become targets of overzealous, even prudish, police
attention.
Employees at the Seattle Eagle and R Place say two SPD
officers—John O’Neill and Ryan Gallagher—have been showing
up at their clubs, invoking state decency laws, and forcing them to
remove posters and videos they deem offensive—material the state
liquor board has deemed a “low priority.”
Michael Engel, a bartender at the Seattle Eagle, says he feels
harassed by the officers, who came in last week and sat for 20 minutes
monitoring a sexually suggestive video.
Not everyone sees the SPD’s increased presence on the hill as a
problem. Eli Baroh, head of security at Havana, says he’s been on a
ride-along with officers O’Neill and Gallagher, and he’s happy to have
them around. “It makes my job easier,” Baroh says. “People that are
going to cause problems aren’t going to do it in front of a police
officer.” King Cobra booker Jason Rothman says O’Neill and Gallagher
come into his club regularly during the week and they’ve never caused a
problem.
“I think there’s a point at which people are going to have to get
used to this,” Rothman says. “Fighting [the city] is never a winning
battle.”
While the officers may be welcome at some clubs, others are not
pleased by the attention. “They’re looking for something to get you
on,” the Eagle’s Engel says. “There are more important things to be
doing [than being] the morality police.” 
