TABC suspends Dallas-Fort Worth bars that opened for COVID rules protest last weekend
After hundreds of bars reportedly opened across the state on Saturday to protest their state-mandated closure during the coronavirus pandemic, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission suspended the liquor licenses of eight bars in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
The Eight Ball Billiard and Bar in Fort Worth and G Willickers Pub in Arlington were formally served with their suspensions, TABC spokesman Chris Porter said. The other six bars have not yet formally received their suspensions and were not identified.
Owners of the bars that have received notices did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Both had their licenses suspended for 30 days.
Porter said the commission conducted 1,600 inspections statewide from Thursday to Sunday, afterward issuing 44 warnings and 18 emergency suspensions to bars. Bars across the state opened Saturday for Freedom Fest, an event where owners defied Gov. Greg Abbott’s June 26 order that closed bars as the state’s coronavirus numbers surged.
Chris Polone, event organizer and owner of Fort Worth music venue The Rail Club Live, told the Star-Telegram on July 24 that he organized Freedom Fest to make the voices of bar owners heard and to show people that bars can open safely.
In Tarrant County, Arlington’s G Willickers Pub, Burleson’s Cooter Brown’s, and Fort Worth’s Rail Club Live and the Eight Ball Billiard and Bar participated in the event. Bars from Houston, Pasadena and Sabinal also participated, according to Polone.
Polone described Saturday’s event as a “home run” and claimed that none of the 800-plus bars that participated were shut down on the night of the event.
“In front of the eyes of the nation, we showed that we could safely reopen and operate responsibly,” he said.
Participating bars were required to follow safety guidelines such as taking people’s temperatures before they entered a venue, maintaining social distancing, requiring face coverings and having hand sanitizer available.
The Rail Club Live’s liquor license was previously suspended after the bar hosted a July Fourth party. Polone has said he didn’t serve alcohol at Saturday’s event.
Polone said Fort Worth health officials stopped at his venue on Saturday, inspected his safety guidelines and gave him the OK.
At The Rail Club Live, Polone said, his event was staged, meaning only family and close friends were invited. He claims the TABC told him it had an undercover agent at his venue, but he said that’s impossible because he only invited people he knows.
“[We did this] to prove that the TABC can do and say whatever they want to enforce whatever it is that they want,” he said.
Sonia Fennel, who manages G Willickers Pub in Arlington, said she doesn’t regret opening on Saturday despite the bar’s license being suspended.
“It was just really good to walk out there and see all the smiling faces,” Fennel said.
Bars have been closed for most of the past four months and owners still have expenses, such as liquor taxes. Fennel said she wants answers from Abbott.
Now, Polone alongside the rest of bar owners who opened up in protest will wait for a response from the governor, he said.
Polone said it wasn’t right that Abbott deemed bars as the place where COVID-19 spreads while other high-traffic service industry locations still operate. The most ideal situation is if Abbott allows bars to open with a set of safety guidelines that they must follow, he said.
He said it’d be different if Texas offered additional financial assistance, tax breaks or rebates to the bar industry, but instead they’re left to fend for themselves.
“[Abbott] put us in a position to be starved out,” Polone said. “He doomed our businesses on June 26.”
On June 26, Abbott told KVIA-TV in El Paso that in hindsight he regretted brief allowing bars to reopen — alongside restaurants and other businesses — in the first place.
“If I could go back and redo anything, it would have probably been to slow down the opening of bars, now seeing in the aftermath of how quickly the coronavirus spread in the bar setting,” Abbott said in the interview. “How a bar setting in reality just doesn’t work with a pandemic. People go to bars to get close and to drink and to socialize, and that’s the kind of thing that stokes the spread of the coronavirus.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 3:11 PM.
