THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501210075
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Saturday night at the Oceanfront in what's supposed to be the dead of winter isn't dead. At least along The Block, bounded by 21st and 22nd streets and Atlantic and Pacific av-e-nues, it gets right lively.
The Block's bars - in this state, that's a colloquial, not a legal term - brim with young pa-trons. Its sidewalks bustle from late night till early morning.
Winter and summer, it's mostly a local, Virginia Beach crowd. Winter and summer, it's mostly a well-behaved crowd. But particularly in summer The Block attracts three dissimilar crowds, and the relations among and between them and Oceanfront proprietors, law enforcement and residents roughen, strained by too many people, too much alcohol and too much attitude.
When the weather warms, a crowd too young to drink legally gathers on the sidewalk along The Block. An older crowd drinks in the bars. The drunks and the punks in those two crowds turn off a third: the tourists, who include families from Norfolk and Kempsville as well as points north. They might want to enjoy the breeze on the Boardwalk, browse the shops, sip Drambuie - but not enough to brave a gauntlet of rude, crude, intimidating youth.
Nobody likes this state of affairs. But nobody talks about it candidly. And everybody blames somebody else.
The bars on The Block and their patrons feel targeted by police, fire marshals and ABC agents. But a block that (arrest records show) draws more than its share of drunks and punks will naturally draw complaints, which naturally draw police and ABC agents. They naturally cite violators of laws and ABC regulations, who naturally holler unfair. One bar on The Block is fighting now for its liquor license, which means it's fighting for its very existence.
That bar is The Edge and suffice to say, for now, that this fight is uglier than it might have been had a couple of facts been widely known early on: According to ABC rec-ords and court transcripts, the violations of ABC regulations were more serious than was initially publicized, and the ABC Board's move to change the penalty for those violations from license suspension to license revocation initially came before the current Board members assumed their posts, not from a ``conspiracy'' hatched in a much-publicized meeting between current Board members and Beach officials.
Is revocation, even so, more harsh than the facts and precedent warrant? The courts, the Board and the lawyers will de-cide.
Meantime, this battle has drawn heavyweights into the ring: The Block's proprietors, their business and residential neighbors, law enforcement, the ABC Board, city of-fi-cials. If they'd drop the gloves, they could find common ground on what's wrong, and plenty of forums - the Resort Leadership Council? - to find ways to right it: more parking, more events along the strip, more police, more zoning restrictions, less anachronistic liquor-licensing requirements. All of which are in the mill.
The quickest way, however, is better law enforcement.
Bar owners want more consistent enforcement of laws governing conduct outside their establishments. Police say they'll get it.
Police, fire and ABC officials want better enforcement by the Block's proprietors of laws governing conduct inside their establishments. That's not just fair. It's good business. by CNB