Just steps from the DC/Maryland border across from Silver Spring in the NW DC neighborhood of Shepherd Park lies Nile Ethiopian Restaurant. The spot has been open since at least 2009, if not before. But, prior to that, the building, located at 7815 Georgia Ave. NW, housed the Shepherd Park Restaurant – which became a seedy strip club in the 1970s and 1980s, and in this observer’s estimation, is the most important drinking establishment in DC history.

For the story why, we have to go back to the end of Prohibition in DC on March 1, 1934. For the first time since Halloween 1917, alcohol could be legally consumed in DC. But for more than a half century afterwards, straight-up bars were technically illegal in DC. By law (with a few exceptions for places like theaters) spots that served booze to drink on site were required to be a “bona fide restaurants.” This was intentional – before Prohibition, DC was full of taverns and saloons that many in Congress (who passed and enacted DC laws) at the time still felt were immoral and lawless.

The statute (see excerpt below) by its language required spots to:

• Be sufficiently equipped and staffed so it is primarily intended to prepare, cook, and serve meals
• Obtain their chief source of revenue to from the sale of food, not sale of booze

However, in January 1956, the DC Attorney General’s office (then known as the Corporation Counsel) issued a legal opinion concluding that DC’s Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Board could issue liquor licenses to a spot so long as it was “satisfied that the space is intended for use, broadly speaking, as a bona fide restaurant.” That meant that for decades, the DC government never actually looked at revenues to see if more food was sold than booze, despite the text of the statute that referred to “chief source of revenue”. Nonetheless, every place had to at least pretend they were a restaurant, by having a full kitchen, and serving food. You may have heard from older generations of DC’s infamous 1970s and 1980s happy hours which were full of free food – this law was one reason.

Meanwhile, the fairly well-off racially mixed residential neighborhood of Shepherd Park, near the northern tip of DC, started to decline in the 1970s. The upper Georgia Ave. NW strip that formed its eastern edge that used to feature bakeries and neighborhood restaurants began to fade and soon, due to an economic downturn in DC in the early 1970s that made it hard for regular restaurants to survive, became home to several strip clubs (“go-go bars” as they were known then), fast food restaurants, and a massage parlour, even after a 1977 zoning change banned any new ones from the area.

In late 1982, a group of fed-up local businessmen and residents called the Upper Georgia Avenue Planning Committee (UGAPAC) formed with the aim of driving the 4 strip clubs in the area out of business. They were quickly successful, convincing the ABC Board to revoke the liquor licenses of 3 strip clubs-Sparky’s, Chances R, and The Other Place-by the end of the summer of 1983, as the ABC Board found 1) they were not appropriate based on community testimony and 2) they did not even pretend to be restaurants.

Still, one remained: The Shepherd Park Restaurant. The establishment was founded by a Greek immigrant in 1933 as a restaurant which included Greek dishes on the menu, but was not transformed into a go-go club until 1972 by Ben Zanganeh, the Iranian immigrant owner of the still-standing Glover Park Good Guys strip club (Zaganeh did not sell that spot until 2018). In September 5, 1977, the spot was victimized by a tragic firebombing by patrons who had been kicked out earlier that night for not buying any drinks and had vowed revenge, leaving 15 injured, including 1 dead (the spot reopened a couple months later). At the time, the strip clubs in the area were typically patronized by white collar professionals from Noon-9p when happy hour ended, but afterwards the crowd got seedier. Shepherd Park Restaurant specifically was frequented by, as patrons and workers said, “rednecks,” and members of Maryland biker bangs (the clientele was more racially diverse by the mid 80s). According to police, by the early 1980s, cocaine dealers were also conducting their business in the kitchen and behind the bar. The spot inspired one of the greatest, infamous works of art in DC in the 1980s, Fred Folsom’s 1987 epic “Last Call (at the Shepherd Go-Go Bar)” (NSFW).

The UGAPAC challenged the renewal of the Shepherd Park Restaurant’s liquor license in 1983 and again in late 1984. The new owner of the restaurant (purchased 1982) said he had fired all those involved in cocaine dealing and taken down the neon “Go-Go Dancers” sign, testifying that 25% of their sales came from food. On the other hand, neighbors testified that, although the place had red checker-cloth tablecloths and did serve food, they never saw anyone eating there and servers provided food menus only on request. The ABC Board nevertheless sided with the Shepherd Park Restaurant and granted the renewal. But the UGAPAC was not deterred, appealing the Board’s November 1983 renewal to the DC Court of Appeals.

Two years later, on November 15, 1985, the DC Court of Appeals finally issued its decision. In a monumental decision, perhaps the most important legal opinion in DC drinking history, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that the 1956 DC Attorney General opinion was flat out wrong, as it ignored the clear statutory language that said DC could only issue liquor licenses if the ABC Board found that an establishment’s “chief source of revenue” came from food not booze. The court left it up the ABC Board to figure out what type evidence to consider in determining this, suggesting they could review things like “cash register tapes, canceled checks, and paid invoices,” but not rely only on a “mere promise” as “hard evidence is required, not promises or good intentions.”

The ramifications were immediate – within a few months, the DC Council passed emergency/temporary legislation to essentially keep the “intent to be a restaurant” standard for 6 months while they studied permanent legislation. Mayor Marion’ Barry’s administration advocated for keeping the old 1956 intent standard (as did many restaurants), but in the end in the final legislation, the DC Council approved creating new license categories for “taverns” and “nightclubs” in addition to restaurants (which now included a 45% food sales requirement that was supposed to be validated with documentation).

But this was not the only momentous change in DC liquor law. The law also provided more standards/teeth for neighbors and Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs) to protest the issuance of liquor licenses, and explicitly legalized “voluntary agreements” (now called “settlement agreements”) that neighbors and ANCs could force bars/restaurants/liquor stores to accept and be legally binding and enforceable the ABC Board to get a license issued or renewed. Prior to this law, protests of bars and restaurants were rare – in 1986 only 25 out of the 611 (4%) DC restaurants’ liquor licenses were protested.

Although the bill became law in March 1987, the DC government still needed to issue regulations to implement it. Because of the massive changes, this process took a year. In the meantime, in September 1987 all of DC’s liquor licenses actually expired (government just let them operate as if they still were in effect) and DC government stopped collecting money, and by January 1988 DC stopped even issuing new liquor licenses.

Finally in March 1988, the proposed regulations were released by the ABC Board. The most controversial regulations included the creation of a nightclub zone around Franklin Square/14th and I NW (which would also allow strip clubs) where bars could be open til 6am on weekends and 4a on weekdays while squeezing them out of most other DC neighborhoods. Fierce lobbying led to this proposal being removed by the ABC Board in its final release in May. DC Council approved the regulations in June, though not until after a narrow 7-6 vote removed a provision that would have banned drink discounts outside a 5-9pm happy hour time-frame. The provision was stricken after fierce lobbying from gay groups who argued that thousands of dollars were raised for charities via cover charges paid at bars in exchange for discounted drinks for events lasting all night.

In 1989 or 1990, DC issued its first tavern and nightclub liquor licenses, which meant for the first time in over seven decades, bars could legally exist in DC without pretending they were restaurants that served food. Among the first that were issued went to the Tune Inn, The Bottom Line, Dan’s Cafe, The Good Guys, and Mr. Smith’s. Over 100 tavern licenses were approved by January 1992 (there are roughly 500 of them today). Also, a year after the regulations went into effect, in 1989 a liquor license moratorium was issued in Georgetown, DC’s most rowdy neighborhood at a time, which led it eventually losing its crown as DC’s biggest bar district. 17th Street in Dupont imposed one of its own the next year.

Still, the biggest impact of the new law may have been the voluntary agreement/settlement agreement provision – quickly ANCs and neighbors required bars to agree to things like specific days/hours for trash disposal, parking and other issues so they would agree not to challenge their liquor license. In Friendship Heights, neighbors agreed to drop their objections to the construction of an Embassy Suites with a liquor license, but only if they offered 150 local residents free health club/spa memberships. As one owner of a restaurant who sought to add jazz to his restaurant but neighbors protested when he refused a request to not advertise said jazz, “It’s an injustice to have amateurs hold the balance of power of your economic life in their hands …. It’s blackmail.”

But all this may not have happened (or, probably would have taken a while longer) had it not been for a strip club nearly in Maryland. For its part, Shepherd Park Restaurant finally had its liquor license revoked in December 1986, and lost court battles in 1987 that led to it shuttering that year after the loss of liquor sales dropped business by over 50%. But its legacy still lives on nearly four decades later.