Drowning their sorrows? Nope, they're after crime

The galvanized buckets hold chilled bottles of Corona beer. The music is loud, whether it's the Eurhythmics or Hank Williams. The air is smoky, the rug stained, the chairs worn, the dance floor scuffed, the decor largely Budweiser banners.

The County Line is a dive bar in the "sliver by the river," a finger of unincorporated King County that runs along the Duwamish River and pokes into Seattle's South Park neighborhood.


		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Friends hang out at the County Line Bar and Grill in South Park on a Monday night. Bill Pease, center, who was celebrating a recent birthday, is among neighbors trying to bring a positive presence to the bar. At left is Anna Kemnitz. Below left, a menu board is used to lay out the rules of the house.

Outside the fading bar and grill, neighbors and police say, dealers brazenly peddle drugs, and prostitutes ask passers-by if they "want a date."

But rather than shun the establishment, a group of South Park residents have embraced it the past seven Mondays, with unofficial happy hours, get-togethers intended to bring a positive presence to a crime magnet.

"These are my neighbors," landscaper Jesus Salas said at this week's gathering, surrounded by two dozen others engaged in conversations around tables. "Architects, lawyers, working class. Everybody is very nice."

The attempt to curb crime one beer at a time has made friends of neighbors, most of them members of the South Park Neighborhood Association, and helped the County Line on an otherwise slow night of the week.

South Park newcomer Joel Clement, who works for an environmental foundation in Fremont, said the crime outside the County Line initially scared him off.

"Seattle police started cracking down, and it started looking better," Clement said.

The improvement prompted him to institute the happy hours.

"It was time to show the proprietors that there's an upside to that trend," he said. "My theory is, crime tends to migrate toward sociocultural vacuums. So let's fill the vacuum. And drinking a beer is not a lot of work on anybody's part."

Clement brought in a chocolate birthday cake this week for Bill Pease, who does custom fabrication work and is active in neighborhood issues.

"When we say 'South Park,' people realize it's a real place and not the cartoon series," Pease said after blowing out his candle.

But the name has become closely linked locally with drug dealing and prostitution -- and, in the past 18 months, with four drive-by shootings.

"South Park gets a bad rap, but it's not like none of it is true," said J.B. Tellez, who makes educational video games and lives next door to Clement.

Unlike most of the participants in the recently instituted happy hours, Tellez already was a County Line customer.

"This place was fine," he said. "It didn't need 'rescuing.' "

City and county law enforcement agencies regularly patrol the area, working together to fight problems.


	A menu board is used to lay out the rules of the house.

As a crime deterrent, the happy-hours initiative has had "zero impact, as far as I can see," said Ralph Wilson, the Seattle community police officer who covers South Park. "It's great that they tried."

Sgt. John Urquhart, spokesman for the county Sheriff's Office, patrolled South Park for seven years in the 1990s, a time when community meetings were rare.

"To me, it's a tremendous positive sign that neighbors are upset and want to take their neighborhood back," he said, a sentiment shared by Wilson.

County Line manager Kevin Chun said he tells his bartenders to refuse service to "gang (members) and street people," fearing he'll lose his liquor license, which is up for renewal at the end of August. At the end of the bar counter, a sign with small letters warns patrons: "No begging or bumming. No drug dealing."

The bar was a hot topic at Tuesday's monthly meeting of the South Park Neighborhood Association, where dozens of residents considered ways to drive out crime.

The association plans to oppose the County Line's license renewal unless the bar makes improvements in security and outdoor lighting.

"I don't think they've been pressed hard enough," said Anna Marti, a nurse and president of the neighborhood association. "I want to give Kevin and the owners the chance to do the right thing."

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