My former colleague Jonah Spangenthal-Lee broke the story (of course) Wednesday that Angie's, a longtime dive bar in Columbia City, seems likely to close. The state liquor control board has said it will not renew the bar's liquor license.

Predictably, commenters are lamenting the demise of the neighborhood's last "authentic" bar. (E.g., "I wish Angies owners luck. You will most likely wind up like Oscars and Deanos, gone because you dont fit in with your new imposers..I mean neighbors.")

And they have a point. Angie's is the only bar in the neighborhood that isn't mostly white (although Lottie's has a pretty diverse mix of folks most nights), and many of the formerly empty storefronts are now filled with upscale restaurants serving $15 Thai entrees and overpriced sushi. The wine bar around the corner is unbearable, and the pub across the street from Angie's closes way too early.



But Angie's isn't a "cool" dive bar, as so many blog commenters insist. (How many of those commenters actually live in the neighborhood, or have ever visited Angie's, is impossible to know.) It's a constant source of problems for neighboring residents, many of whom are fed up with the drug dealing, gunshots, prostitution, and street harassment that happen inside and in the block immediately surrounding the bar.

Is if fair to blame Angie's for what happens outside their doors? Ordinarily, I'd say no. But the fact is,  Angie's is one of the only spots in the neighborhood (the other being a minimart down the street) where you see open drug dealing, fighting, and prostitution. I walk past Angie's probably once a day. In the years I've lived in the neighborhood, I've seen prostitution turning tricks in the alley behind the bar. I've been offered drugs. And I've been harassed (usually, the "hey, baby" type; occasionally, the following-me-down-the-street type), and witnessed other women being harassed, more times than I can count.

That's just my general impression based on living in the neighborhood, though. Want specific examples? Here are several, all from Jonah: Earlier this month, a man was arrested after he fired a gun inside the bar. In April, a man attacked police officers who were investigating a separate crime in the alley behind Angie's with "metal items" and his dog.  Last August, a man was arrested for firing a gun in front of the bar. In July, police broke up a fight between two women who had been inside Angie's, one of them a teenager who was "extremely intoxicated." Police have reported being able to buy drugs at the bar repeatedly. And back in February, police arrested a woman for prostitution and for buying crack inside the bar.

That's crime, not character. And the bar's owners—who've met with police and representatives of the city attorney's office repeatedly—have shown no indication that they're going to take any proactive steps to clean it up.

I have mixed feelings about gentrification. On one hand—the wine bar. Ugh. On the other, it's hard to take a tough position against gentrification when I'm part of it. (And cool stuff still does open up in Columbia City—see: Full Tilt Ice Cream). But does gentrification need to be "held back" by a bar that's routinely visited by police for drug dealing, gunshots, prostitution, and worse? Can it be? And is preventing gentrification by keeping around a bar that's a magnet for crime worth the tradeoff? Increasingly, I think not.

Addendum: My colleague Jonathan Cunningham points out that the crack problem in Belltown is far worse than the relatively tiny "problem" in Columbia City, yet police aren't pushing to shut down bars and clubs there. I absolutely agree—there are parts of Belltown that I don't like walking around at night.

But for the most part, those are areas where there are few or no bars or clubs (clubs, I think Jonathan would agree, are a good thing)—places that have a high concentration of empty storefronts or social services rather than a thriving nightlife scene. If drug dealers and prostitutes were concentrated around a single bar in Belltown—and only that bar—my guess is that the police and city attorney would notice it and try to shut it down.