Unraveling the fuss over super beer
by David Madison
A theme song for The Underground dance club might go like this: The beat kicks in with steady drum and bass driving toward a dramatic pause. The dancing comes to a stop. A sobering stillness sets in. Then like a bar throwing open its doors to a waiting crowd, the beat kicks back in, faster, stronger.
In fact, that's exactly what's happened at The Underground over the past several months. The Knoxville Beer Board revoked the bar's beer permit in April after hearing testimony from an undercover police officer who says The Underground routinely serves the underaged. For three months, the popular Old City night spot sat closed. But the beat and beer returned in August; the beat just as fast, the beer even stronger than before.
In Tennessee, bars that lose their beer permits can continue selling malt beverages as long as they stock the most potent of beers. These brews contain more than 5 percent alcohol, are regulated by the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and have intimidating names like Arrogant Bastard Ale (the label for Arrogant Bastard tells drinkers, "You're not worthy.").
Budweiser, Miller Lite and other regular brands with less than 5 percent alcohol are controlled by local beer boards.
After the Knoxville Beer Board revoked The Underground's beer permit, many assumed the ABC would follow up immediately with its own investigation. But the state's alcohol enforcement system does not require the ABC to investigate bars in trouble with their local beer board.
A resolution passed recently by the City Council alerts Tennessee lawmakers to "establishments which have demonstrated a lack of responsibility to the extent of having their beer permit revoked." The resolution goes on to note how a bar with a no beer permit can continue "purveying alcoholic beverages which have greater alcoholic content than beer, including so-called 'super beer.'"
Overall, the resolution shows a keen grasp for the obvious, but little else. It asks the Legislature to "examine the circumstances and procedures" that allow places like The Underground to remain open after losing their beer permit. It urges lawmakers to take all "reasonable and necessary steps to protect the public from businesses which have been demonstrated to be irresponsible in selling alcoholic beverages of all sorts."
Members of the Knoxville Beer Board admit the resolution is nothing more than a memo to lawmakers, a kind of "heads up" about what's happened at The Underground. To push for stronger beer boards, ones that also regulate wine, spirits and super beer, would be futile, says Beer Board chairman Nick Pavlis.
"That gets municipalities into the control over spirits and it just wouldn't happen," says Pavlis. "I'm just interested in dealing with reality."
The reality of liquor law in Tennessee, explains Beer board member and City Councilman Ed Shouse, is dictated by a powerful liquor lobby through the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association. Any attempt to expand the authority of beer boards would face opposition from the liquor lobby and "meet a quick death in committee," says Shouse.
In addition to the brawn of liquor lobbyist Tom Hensley, who did not return calls from Metro Pulse, Tennessee's alcohol enforcement system is also buoyed by tradition. In 1935, two years after beer boards were established, the ABC began regulating liquor sales and the two have remained separate ever since.
The relationship between the ABC's office in Nashville and the Knoxville Beer Board seems especially distant. Or at least that's how ABC Director Gregg Harrison describes it.
"Knoxville will not cooperate with us one bit," he says. "We have always run into a situation with them playing hardball. It's like we're the enemy."
Harrison says Knoxville stonewalled his office when it attempted to gather information about The Underground.
"We begged them to give us that transcript," says Harrison, describing the ABC's efforts to secure documents detailing The Underground's hearing before the Knoxville Beer Board.
However, the ABC office in Knoxville and the investigator most familiar with The Underground case tell a different story. Special Agent Terry Hill says his office has never felt stonewalled nor begged for information. He and other agents monitor the work of the local beer boards, but don't always move in and conduct their own investigation. The Knoxville Police Department has been "real cooperative," says Hill, explaining how his office eventually built its own case against The Underground.
First the ABC had to wait until the dance club re-opened in August. It then sent in underage decoys who were allegedly served. The Underground now faces state charges for serving customers under 21 and could lose its ABC license when it goes before the ABC Commission next month.
Assistant ABC Director Danielle Elks will be there to prosecute the case. Like Director Harrison, she believes Knoxville harbors "hard feelings" toward the ABC. The ill will allegedly began in 1995 during a case involving a bar called Bristol's. Located on Walker Springs Road, the "show club" featured what it billed as an "adult cabaret." The Knoxville Beer Board says the cabaret contained nothing more than illegal nude dancing. So the board swooped in, using "emergency powers" to strip the club of its ability to serve alcohol of any kind.
After the bust, the ABC Commission reinstated Bristol's ABC permit and accused the Beer Board of overstepping its authority. Since then, the Knoxville Beer Board and the state's ABC office have become estranged bedfellows.
"We're going to agree to disagree," says Beer Board attorney Charles Swanson, who doesn't believe there's any bad blood between the ABC and Knoxville Beer Board. Swanson does say that during the rift over Bristol's, which later went out of business, the city and state "kind of nah, nah, nah, nah, nah-ed each other back and forth."
Unfortunately, the Beer Board's recent resolution does nothing to clear the air between local beer boards and the ABC. "All we can do is suggest they enforce their laws—period," says Councilwoman Carlene Malone, who describes the ABC as "responsive." The notion that Knoxville has a grudge against the ABC, she says, is "incomprehensible." And she believes it might be unreasonable to expect the ABC to track the work of "every little beer board in every little town."
But after repeatedly watching drunks pour out of The Underground, breaking into cars and waking neighbors, downtown resident Dick Franklin wanted to be certain the ABC followed up the Knoxville Beer Board with its own investigation of the bar. Franklin, a retiree and neighborhood watch coordinator who lives in a condo on the corner of Gay and Summit Hill, called the local ABC office shortly after The Underground re-opened this summer. He asked if the agency planned to investigate the bar.
"They truly just played dumb," says Franklin, who then began pestering the Nashville office of the ABC. He was told by Assistant Director Elks that the state was waiting for Knoxville to release its information on The Underground. So Franklin then called Knoxville Police Sergeant Rick Ferguson, who said there was a "bushel basket of evidence just sitting there." Ferguson said the ABC hadn't bothered to come pick it up.
That's when Franklin says, "I kind of lost it."
The conversations between Franklin and Assistant Director Elks became increasingly intense, and by coincidence or not, the agency eventually launched its undercover investigation.
Harold McKinney, The Underground's owner, defends his establishment, explaining how the bar checks more than 150,000 IDs every year. That's why he's not surprised the ABC's underage decoys were able to purchase drinks. "There's no such thing as a 100 percent system," he says.
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