Ridgewood bar out of control, residents say

By Jessica Meditz

jmeditz@queensledger.com

Neighbors say that Suad Sports Cafe is “unable” to keep its patrons in check.

A Ridgewood establishment has sparked concerns among residents, causing them to lose sleep—literally.

Neighbors say that the patrons of Suad Sports Cafe, a bar located on 60th Lane and 71st Avenue, have been a menace to their quality of life—acting inappropriately at all hours of the day, and what one neighbor suspects as possible illegal activity.

Nancy Watson, a longtime neighboring resident, recently started a petition against the bar, which has garnered around 70 signatures so far.

She also submitted a letter to the public forum of Queens Community Board 5’s meeting this month, regarding events that have left people on the block feeling uneasy.

“Although the business has been around for 10+ years, over the last two years things have changed significantly for the worse,” the letter said. “Almost every single evening/night, there are several cars blocking the crosswalks, making it difficult and unsafe for pedestrians. This especially affects seniors and children in the area.”

It is not uncommon to see cars illegally parked near Suad Sports Cafe.

In addition to the illegal parking, Watson said she has seen patrons of the establishment driving irresponsibly, including revving their engines, performing burnouts, and speeding around the block.

“Someone’s going to get hit by a car… there are children and elderly people in the neighborhood,” Watson said.

“They are probably driving drunk, or just sleeping in their cars to sleep it off,” she continued. “It’s not even young guys. It’s just so bad.”

Watson sent a collection of photos to CB5, which show blocked crosswalks, large groups of men congregating in the middle of the street, men urinating on people’s stoops, excessive garbage, and what she claims to be the appearance of  a man ingesting an unknown substance in public.

“Now we have rats. I have never seen a rat in my yard, and a couple of weeks ago, I had four,” Watson said.

“You see them running rampant because they put garbage out on the sidewalk days before their garbage truck shows up.”

Adding to the sanitation and hygiene issue, Watson said that the security cameras outside her home captured a man urinating on her stoop—directly facing the camera.

It has also been reported that the patrons have publicly urinated on other people’s stoops, cars, trees, and plants.

Another neighbor, who requested to remain anonymous, said that despite the fact that she lives toward the end of the street, her household still faces “a fair amount of abuse” from the bar’s patrons.

“I called the cops two weeks ago on one guy who was actually going to the front of people’s houses, looking at the doorbells, and making notes of the names on people’s doorbells. On Thursday afternoon, I called the cops again, because a family was sitting on our stoop and just observing who exits the houses near us… who goes in, who goes out,” she said.

“We don’t want to be robbed. We don’t want to have our property vandalized,” she continued. “I’ve been reaching out to 311 and 911, but this bar just doesn’t want to go away.”

The resident said that their loud and disruptive behavior continues into the wee hours of the morning, making it impossible to sleep or relax.

Due to the loud noise and smoke smells, neighbors do not want to open up their windows to get fresh air, like they normally do.

“They are just a shady bunch of people,” the resident said.

“If you come here on a Saturday night into Sunday, you will see $20 bills, $100 bills shredded up and down the street,” she continued. “You will see playing cards, either whole playing cards or shredded ones that are bent because they’ll gamble, they’ll get into fights, and then they’ll bring the fighting all the way down to my side.”

Watson and other neighbors believe that the bar should be shut down, but CB5 said that the first step would be to have their liquor license revoked if there is evidence of illegal activity.

“First, we go to the [104] Precinct, see what the Precinct has, and then we notify the State Liquor Authority,” Vincent Arcuri, chairperson of the board, said at the last meeting. “If they’re up for renewal, we send them a notice saying they’re not getting renewed by us, and they ask for a hearing.”

Suad Sports Cafe last notified CB5 of their intent to renew their liquor license in January of this year.

Although residents say they’ve seen officers ticket and tow some illegally parked vehicles, many of them feel as though the police are not doing all that they can to put a stop to the commotion.

“The cops have not been able to provide the relief we were hoping for either,” Watson wrote in her statement to CB5.

“I have pictures of multiple cars parked illegally every single day and very few getting ticketed. After many 311 calls about the parking issues, the cops have towed cars on a couple of instances. All the while talking and laughing with the patrons,” it continued. “This seems to have emboldened the crowds even more, now anyone complains about anything to these guys, they say, ‘go ahead and call the cops.’ They won’t help you.”

The anonymous resident said she spoke with Deputy Inspector Kevin Coleman, the new commanding officer of the 104th Precinct, about the persisting issue at a community meeting.

“We’ve been trying to have the precinct work with us, but the police are limited in what they can do. From what I was told the last time I called the cops on these people, it literally has to escalate to such a level. Basically, they can’t do anything unless somebody gets hurt,” she said. “We are trying to prevent that from happening…You claim at the meeting that you want us to work alongside you guys, what is it that you need in order to shut this place down?”

Officer Michael Berish of the 104th Precinct said that police were informed of the location about a month ago.

“We’ve done enforcement there and we are working on things to correct the situation,” he said.

When interviewed by the Queens Ledger/Glendale Register, a man who identified himself as the owner of Suad Sports Cafe declined to comment.

McGuinness’s taps into spirit of St. Paddy’s Day

Even a muggy St. Patrick’s day couldn’t keep Sunnyside regulars out of McGuinness’s Saloon.

Local bar-goers enjoy a pint

At the corner of Queens Boulevard and 45th place sits McGuiness’s – a tiny hole-in-the-wall Irish joint. The place was well decorated for the festivities. Green Christmas lights were strewn across the premises, corned beef was served at the typically drinks-only bar and bountiful irish accents drowned out the traditional music playing in the background. The men’s room is to the left of the bar, as a sign clearly denotes, “Men to the left ‘cos women are always RIGHT.”

When you walk into the bar, the first chair is typically occupied by Séan Gorham. For the 25 years McGuinness’s has been open, he has been sitting in that same seat.

When asked why this was his favorite bar Gorman simply said “because it was across the street” before giving his serious answer. It’s because Marie McGuinness makes everybody feel comfortable.

McGuinness immigrated to this country from Donegal in 1987 and moved out to Queens with her husband Brandon McGuinness in 1990. They had worked in the service and bar industry priorly and had always wanted to open a place of their own together. Brandon passed away in 1996, just under a year before the bar that is his namesake opened.

Marie McGuiness wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day

While that bar has its fair share of clientele from Ireland, Marie McGuiness described her customers as “the league of nations” and speculated that even though it was St Patricks Day, the bar had about 20 people from different countries in there.

“I want customers to feel that this is their home away from home – no matter what country in the world they’re from. We have the best bartenders in the world. I want every customer to feel welcomed. If I go into a bar, whether it’s in any country, I would want to feel as welcome as people would make feel here. I always say a woman should be able to walk into any bar alone, set up at the bar, and chat to the bartender about sports or whatever,” McGuinness said.

And the approach has worked.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Marie struggled to keep the bar afloat. The restrictions placed financial stress on her business but as soon as the options for outdoor dining opened, her crew of regulars sat outside every weekend, even in the snow and crummy weather, in order to help support their favorite bar.

Joe Mennicucci has been regular with his with Kim Hirsch for as long as they can remember. He agrees with McGuiness about the bartenders being the best in the world. Before there were cell phones, he used to pay the bartender five to ten bucks every time the bartender would tell Mennicucci’s wife that every time she called that he wasn’t at the bar.

“It’s been open 25 years since February 13,” McGuinness said. “Hopefully, it will be open another 25 years, I’ll be walking around with my cane.”

Campaign flyers and fisticuffs

It was just another day on the campaign trail for Curtis Sliwa.
The Republican candidate for mayor and some members of the Guardian Angel were meeting with voters at the San Gennaro festival on Friday night when things got a little out of hand.
As the group passed a bar in Little Italy, they came across a fight that had broken out and immediately rushed in to stop the fracas. We’ll just let Sliwa describe the scene for you:

“I and Guardian Angels were walking through the San Gennaro festival when all hell broke loose in this gin mill, this bar behind us. Women were swinging, winging, someone grabbed a bar stool and ‘boom’ over the head.
“The Guardian Angels came in, they had to push, they had to restrain. It was an all-out battle pouring into the streets. Ironically, even though there were hundreds of people watching, nobody intervened. So the Guardian Angels had to get control of the situation, even though windows were busted out, even though we were really threatened to the point where people were going to get stabbed or seriously injured.
“Then about 20 minutes later, the cops came. Reactive, not proactive. We don’t just campaign in the streets, we patrol the streets. When I’m mayor, we’re gonna make sure thing like this don’t happen at all anywhere in the city.”
Say what you want about Sliwa, there’s never a dull moment when he’s around. At the very least, Sliwa in charge at City Hall would be gold for penny-a-liners like ourselves. The copy would write itself!

We’ll raise a glass to that!

In a sign that things are starting to return to normal, drink lovers were finally able to return to their favorite haunts on Monday as the ban on bar seating was lifted.
Thirsty patrons packed the city’s watering holes, the first time they were able to knock back a drink bellied up to their favorite bar in over a year.
When announcing the return of bar seating last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo also said the curfew on food and beverage establishment would be lifted by May 31, with most capacity limits ending on May 19.
Patrons are still asked to follow social distance guidelines, but it’s a start.
And Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday that the city would fully reopen on July 1, just eight weeks from now. He said the city is making incredible progress in beating back COVID-19.
Many city residents continue to get vaccinated, and New York reached its lowest COVID rates since October over the weekend, with just 1.5 percent of residents testing positive for coronavirus.
This should be great news for the struggling restaurant and hospitality industry. But after a year of on-again, off-again closures, restarts, curfews and capacity limits, it’s going to be a long time before these struggling business owners fully recover.
In the meantime, there is more than $28 billion in pandemic relief grants now available through the Small Business Administration’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund. Online application opened Monday at noon. Restaurant owners can apply at restaurants.sba.gov.
The program will provide funding equal to pandemic-related revenue losses. The maximum grant size is $5 million for restaurants and $10 million for restaurant groups. The minimum amount is $1,000.
Recipients are not required to repay the money as long as funds are used by March 11, 2023.
Between the city reopening and these federal grants, hopefully the hospitality industry can get back on its feet and put the 300,000 New Yorkers employed in these businesses before the start of the pandemic back to work.

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