A small Central District restaurant is quickly becoming notorious
with neighbors for shootings, late-night fights, loud music, and drug
deals. The neighborhood has called in the cavalry, in the form of the
city attorney’s office and the Seattle Police Department.
While Neighborhood animosity toward Central District businesses like
Deano’s, Haitian Lounge, and Thompson’s Point of View over the
last several years is common, this latest standoff is a little
different. Neighbors of Hidmo, the small Eritrean restaurant on 20th
Avenue South and South Jackson Street, say they actually want the place
to stay in their Squire Park neighborhood. They say they eat at Hidmo
and they support the community events the restaurant hosts, but they
say they don’t feel safe in their own neighborhood because of crowds
they associate with the club.
As the Central District gentrifies, area restaurants like
Thompson’s, Waid’s, Deano’s—and now Hidmo—have been the
targets of intense police and community scrutiny. However, these
black-owned businesses have become important cultural and social hubs
for longtime residents in a rapidly changing neighborhood.
In 1983, Rahwa and Asmeret Habte moved from Eritrea to the Central
District with their family. Almost 24 years later, the sisters
purchased Hidmo with hopes of creating a community gathering place. The
small, three-room restaurant—with its walls brightly painted in
pinks and oranges—soon became a home for a number of community
organizations like Youth Speaks Seattle and Washington Asian Pacific
Islander Families Against Substance Abuse, who hosted weekly meetings
and benefit nights. Hidmo has also become a “hiphop mecca” [“Soul
Food,” Charles Mudede, Feb 22, 2007], and it’s not unusual to find
local MCs and DJs in the back washing dishes.
Despite Hidmo’s socially conscious, youth-oriented programming, in
November, a group of neighbors asked for a meeting with the owner to
talk about problems they had with the club. Rahwa Habte, 29, says she
agreed to meet with community members, police, and city attorneys at
Seattle’s East Precinct. But, at the meeting, Habte says she was
shocked when confronted with complaints about drug deals and
disturbances on the streets surrounding her business. “I thought I was
just going to talk to some neighbors about noise,” Habte says.
“[Instead], every single person is telling us they hear gunshots [and
see] large groups and drug deals [near Hidmo].” Habte says the Central
District had gunfire, drugs, and crowds long before Hidmo, and thinks
it’s unfair that neighborhood problems are blamed on her business.
Hidmo has had a few problems. In June, bottles and glasses were
thrown during a fight in the restaurant, which ended when one man was
wounded by gunfire. According to the Washington State Liquor Control
Board, since the Habtes took over, Hidmo has also received two written
warnings for allowing minors into the bar, and another verbal warning
after a liquor enforcement officer intervened in an argument outside
the business. And, according to Noah Davis—one of several
neighbors who have been in talks with Hidmo—the restaurant’s
late-night dances and brightly painted bar sometimes draw unruly crowds
to the establishment.
“Loud music outside, drug dealing, reports of prostitution, gunfire,
shootings, that’s the issue for us,” Davis says. “It’s hard to sleep
when people are [outside your house] yelling profanity and fighting.”
Although Davis only moved to Squire Park less than a year ago, he’s not
completely naive about life in the Central District. “Gang and gun
violence, we’re going to have that,” he says. “It’s an element of our
neighborhood.” What’s more, Davis—who is white—says
neighbors’ issues aren’t the result of gentrification. “Rather than it
being any type of racial issue, it’s a quality-of-life issue. It’s an
expectation for safety. You don’t want to live in a community where
there’s gunfire and you’re trying to raise babies.”
For now, Davis says he and 20 other neighbors have been trying to
find ways to help Hidmo. On January 6, the Habtes took part in a
neighborhood cleanup, and neighbors helped install new, brighter lights
on Hidmo’s exterior and trimmed back bushes in the hopes of making some
of the problems go away. Davis says he’d like to see Hidmo hire
off-duty police officers on their busy nights, but at $32.50 an hour,
Habte says she just can’t afford it. “We have very little control over
the neighborhood, [but] we’ve worked really hard to have a safe
environment [at Hidmo],” Habte says. 
