Fair Haveners ​“Occupy” Problem Bar’s Lot

With wooden drums, lawn chairs, free pizza and board games, 30 Fair Haven neighbors ​“reclaimed” the parking lot outside of Grand Cafe — in a grassroots effort to calm a violent hotspot.

The three-hour sit in took place Tuesday evening atop the surface parking lot outside of Grand Cafe at 124 East Pearl St.

The event — which felt at times like a block party, at times like a protest — marked the first of two weeks’ worth of planned daily gatherings at the corner of Grand Avenue and East Pearl Street.

Fair Haven residents and lead organizers Kica Matos, Sarah Miller, and Karen DuBois-Walton said that neighbors will ​“occupy the space” outside of Grand Cafe from 6 to 9 p.m. every night for the rest of the month.

Their goals: to draw public attention to a venue neighbors have long described as a magnet for drug dealing and violence, and to transform a dangerous rundown corner into a vibrant, social, and safe community space.

The protest action comes at a time when Fair Haven in particular, and the city more broadly, have been struck by a wave of gun violence. A 32-year-old West Haven man was shot and injured in that very Grand Cafe parking lot the night of Sept. 7.

“Sometimes the best thing you can do with a place that’s a problem is fill it with something good,” said Miller, who lives nearby on Clinton Avenue and is the Democratic candidate for Ward 14 alder.

“People who live in the neighborhood are filled with fear” by this corner, said Matos, who lives down the block on East Pearl Street. ​“We want this to be a spot that the community has reclaimed, to create a space for community. We want this spot to be completely devoid of violence.”

By setting up outside of Grand Cafe every night and by organizing a parallel campaign to get the state to pull the bar’s liquor license, said fellow East Pearl Street resident DuBois-Walton, Fair Haven neighbors are issuing a clear call to the bar’s owner: Clean up your act and respect the community, or there will be consequences.

Matos said that the inspiration for the sit-in came from a violence-interruption effort in Minneapolis, where neighbors set up lawn chairs and sat for days on end at street corners beset by gun violence. Matos said the Fair Haven initiative seeks to build off of that idea by adding music and games in addition to lawn furniture.

Grand Cafe’s owner Jose Rivera as well as a dozen of the bar’s patrons pushed back throughout Tuesday night on the characterization of East Pearl Street bar as a problem spot.

They called their bar a working-class watering hole that is clean, safe, and community oriented on the inside.

They also argued that the bar’s workers and customers have little to no control over whatever nefarious activity may take place in the parking lot outside.

“This is a community spot where blue collars come and want to have a beer, want to have some wings, want to have a little food, watch a game, have a little bit of their time before going home from work,” said bartender India Rivera. ​“At night, when the creeps come out and things happen, we have no control. Anything that happened in this parking lot has nothing to do with inside of this bar. Nothing at all.”

Rivera and others argued that the bar’s bad reputation stems from when it was the Tee Off Cafe and under different ownership. Click here for a 2009 article about this exact same debate — about whether or not the bar, then recently renamed the Grand Cafe, was responsible for a stabbing and drug dealing that took place right outside its doors. The then-police chief described the Tee Off Cafe and Grand Cafe as a ​“nexus of crime.”

According to Asst. Chief Karl Jacobson, the New Haven Police Department has 66 reports on file regarding Grand Cafe.

“We’ve had a lot of issues at the bar.”

Police had a gun arrest and several drug-related arrests in the parking lot in the weeks prior to last Tuesday’s shooting, he said. Undercover police officers also recently conducted drug buys at the bar before securing a warrant from a judge to raid the venue. That raid admittedly resulted in few drugs being found, he said. Nevertheless, ​“there was drugs sold out of the bar.”

NHPD data tracking calls for service and arrests made around 124 East Pearl St. show that, through mid-August of this year, police have received 464 calls and have made 104 arrests around the bar’s address.

Those calls included 19 for breach/disorderly conduct, 16 for domestic disputes, 17 for suspicious persons, and 10 for theft. The arrests included four for third-degree assault, five for breach of peace, four for criminal possession of a firearm, nine for possessing more than half an ounce of marijuana, and eight for interfering with an officer.

From Curses To ​“Cleansing”

Tuesday evening’s gathering got off to a tense start.

As Miller, Matos and DuBois-Walton and a handful of neighbors and friends set up foldout tables and unpacked board games and bomba drums, they were met with vitriol by a half-dozen customers hanging watching with disapproval from outside the bar.

“I’m showing your kids how to smoke weed,” one woman said as she puffed by the door and mocked the organizers for bringing their kids out to a place unsafe for families. ​“Fucking dummies!”

Miller said the group had permission from the strip mall’s owner to set up in the parking lot. ​“We’re just here. We’re neighbors just being in the neighborhood,” Miller stated.

“Shut up, you fucking dumbass!” one of the customers responded.

As patrons cursed out the organizers, Miller pulled Matos aside and pointed out that the event was already having some of its desired effect: Some customers were pulling their cars out of the parking lot and driving away. Other drivers pulled into the lot to take a look — and then drove off.

The tone of the gathering shifted dramatically once a dozen more people showed up and the drummers, dancers and singers from Moviemiento Cultural kicked off an hour-long bomba concert.

Some of the previously antagonistic customers went back in the bar. Some lifted signs saying that Grand Cafe is a place of peace and fun. Some danced along to the flowing rhythm of the drums.

India Rivera, who said he’s been a bartender at Grand Cafe for eight years, passionately defended the bar’s reputation, but didn’t join in cursing out the organizers. He confessed that he loved the music. He called the atmosphere one of ​“rejoicing” and cleansing.”

“I’m all for cleansing,” he said,

Downing Street resident Connie Razza said that she and her kids Nico and Silin came out to the parking lot party-protest Tuesday night because of how concerned they’ve been about the recent increase in violence in the neighborhood.

“I’m really happy to be here in community” and to let everyone know that this corner spot has been a problem for a while, she said.

Atwater Street resident and Livable City Initiative (LCI) neighborhood specialist Carmen Mendez said she felt such pride in Fair Haven as she sat in a lawn chair and participated in Tuesday’s event.

“These neighbors are making a statement,” she said. ​“It’s bright, it’s bold, and it takes real strength of will. Why shouldn’t they have a good place to live?”

Downtown alder candidate Alex Guzhnay, who grew up nearby on Ferry Street, agreed.

“There shouldn’t be a need for this,” he said. But, given the persistent violence in the neighborhood and across the city, this is the type of innovative, grassroots action that needs to take place to keep the pressure on City Hall to make New Haven a safer place to live.

“I love it when a community actually steps up and reclaims space,” he said.

“I’ve never lived in a community where there’s this much crime,” said an Atwater Street resident named Gina (pictured), who said she only recently moved to Fair Haven from Milford. ​“I’m glad the community is being proactive. Because this is going to be an ongoing issue.”

Owner, Customers: ​“Nothing To Do With The Bar”

As the night wore on, music and poetry flowed from the parking lot, and many of the bar’s customers returned indoors. The bar’s owner Jose Rivera defended his business from what he saw as unfounded attacks. The owner identified himself as ​“Anonymous” four times before giving his name as Jose Rivera. The bar’s liquor license indicates the owner’s name is Cruz Vazquez.

Rivera said he has run Grand Cafe for the past 13 years, and takes pride in its cozy atmosphere and loyal customer base.

He said he grew up on Lloyd Street and Saltonstall Avenue in Fair Haven, and now lives with his family in the Heights. He sponsors a local softball team called the New Haven Giants, as well as a community softball team in Hartford, he said.

Like many bar customers interviewed on Tuesday night, he stressed that no violence or drug dealing takes place inside of Grand Cafe — and that he can’t control what happens outside of the bar.

He said he is so averse to drug dealing near his bar that he hit a drug dealer with a baseball bat when he refused to move away from the bar’s front door.

One week after that baseball bat-swinging incident, Rivera said, that same dealer got shot in the parking lot outside the bar.

“It had nothing to do with the bar,” he said about the shooting.

Other Grand Cafe customers, almost all of whom declined to be named or photographed for the story, said they enjoy coming to the bar and feel safe inside

They said that if Tuesday’s protesters want to act fairly, they should shut down every business in the city where a shooting has taken place.

“They can do what they want,” one customer said about the anti-violence sit in, ​“but it’s not going to make a difference.”

Click here, here, and here for videos from Tuesday night’s sit-in, which included music by Moviemiento Cultural and the Bregamos Healing Drums, and poetry by local poet Sun Queen.