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Notorious, but is it to blame?

Gene's Bar has been a headache for years. But maybe it's just in the wrong part of town.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published January 26, 2007

TAMPA - The DJ puts on Crazy by K-Ci & JoJo, and everyone in Gene's Bar sings along to the love ballad that bleeds with desperation.

I'm going crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, thinkin' about you lately ...

A man who goes by "Chicken Wing" says he's been coming to this hole-in-the-wall since he was a youth, and he struts proudly past the pool table, his red-bandana-covered head bobbing like an apple with each step.

The DJ sips out of a small cup in a back room with bars over the window and occasionally spices up his songs with emphatic raps and curses.

"I told y'all," the shrill voice of Clarence Smith, 43, says into a microphone, "love is a dangerous g------ game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose."

Someone sneaks out the side door, and a breeze blows in. The DJ interjects with another message: "Shut the door, baby."

It's an order meant to keep the pounding music inside, but it also represents a dividing line patrons respect. What goes on inside and outside Gene's Bar are separate matters, patrons say.

The police and City Council see it differently. Gene's Bar is Tampa's most notorious wet establishment, and after years of complaints, council members have called for it to be shut down. City officials have grown so tired that they are negotiating to buy the bar in order to put an end to it. They view Gene's as a cocktail glass that swirls with all the problems that take place on its East Tampa corner - 22nd Street and E Mallory Avenue - but customers say the drug deals, shootings and stabbings that have plagued police for years aren't the bar's fault.

"All that's on the outside," said Leroy Daniels, 26, whose forearm is imprinted with a tattooed fist and the name of the projects where he grew up.

The bar, Daniels said, "it's straight."

The wrong place

Tampa police Capt. Gerald Honeywell drops two notebooks, 8 inches thick, on his desk. They're reports from Gene's Bar since 1998.

As a child, Honeywell remembers hearing that the predominantly black bar, in existence since the 1950s, was where "tough people" hung out. But when cocaine moved up from Miami in the 1980s, it developed a different reputation.

He flips through some pages.

"Drug arrests," he said. "Selling and delivery of cocaine."

Fifteen drug arrests last year, 11 more than Tampa's second most problematic bar.

Police responded to Gene's 137 times in 2006, a 51 percent decrease from 2005, when police were called 283 times.

But that's still every other day.

"Not all of it's on the inside," Honeywell said of problems. Five of the drug arrests took place outside Gene's.

But Honeywell said that's immaterial when Gene's is the "base for bad ingredients."

Surrounded by vacant homes just a few blocks from the Belmont Heights Estates affordable housing complex, Gene's attracts law-abiding citizens, Honeywell said. Paper boys for the Florida Sentinel-Bulletin, across the street, also use the corner to sell fresh copies.

Both add up to a lot of traffic, by foot and car, on the corner - something drug dealers prize for sales and cover.

"Gene's Bar is not the whole problem," Honeywell said, "it's the area. Gene's is just one of the pockets that drug dealers look for relax and leisure."

They flit in and out of the bar and move merchandise in its dark corners and bathrooms. A longtime target for the City Council, police and even federal agents, who raided it years ago, Gene's responded by hiring security and stepping up carding, Honeywell said.

But complaints persist. Several prominent black leaders inundated the City Council two weeks ago, urging officials to put owner Gene O'Steen out of business.

"Even though Gene has made a great deal of improvements," Honeywell said, "I don't know if he can do anything because of that area. That's where drug dealers gather and flourish."

Seven or eight patrol officers drive by Gene's daily. As many as six narcotics agents can be working the corner every other day.

If the bar went away, Honeywell said, he could deploy more resources into East Tampa neighborhoods.

Ed Johnson, manager of the city-run East Tampa Redevelopment, confirmed the city is negotiating to buy Gene's, which has a just market value of nearly $130,000.

Bar owner O'Steen said turning the bar into a boys club is better than him continuing to fight the city's assessment that his bar - not the corner - is the root of the area's crime problems.

"I can't control what happens outside the bar," he said.

Patrons say it's a raw deal. Just look inside.

A long history

Tommy "Shug" Gay, 38, is built like a linebacker with a handshake like a vise. A thick gold chain dangles from his black "SECURITY" T-shirt, and he works at the bar Thursday through Saturday nights, along with his 290-pound cousin, Johnny "Peanut" Gay, 40, who remembers peeking in Gene's as a kid to watch his mom's band play there.

"In this bar," Tommy Gay said, "there is nothing here that me and the other security guard can't handle yet."

Most of the violence happens outside, and Gay said police could be more proactive on the corner. "You have to nitpick. The loiterers, you have to take them to jail."

He said he kicks out drug dealers and calls police when he sees them, but response is slow.

"We don't have any record of them calling or turning anybody in," Capt. Honeywell said.

Gay looked out over the dance floor last Friday night as the DJ put on Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Till You Get Enough. People danced.

"This is how the bar should be," Gay said. "This is how the bar should stay."

Smith, 43, recalled playing the song at Ray Park in the early days.

Decades later, the song still moved the crowd. Bartender Tracy Plair moved bottles of beer and pints of gin, whiskey and vodka, all for sale. At Gene's, you can buy $39 bottles of Hennessy Cognac. Condoms, in a box on the bar, are free.

Sharon Green, 40, puts on her black dress Friday nights and forgets her troubles here. She works two jobs and survived two fires, one that scarred her neck permanently. Gene's gave her hope, she said. She met her husband here.

Starla Williams, 36, said the bar gives her a break from taking care of seven kids. An elderly man who goes by "Greyhound" dances near the door. He's come here since before integration.

"Everybody here knows somebody. It's a family bar," said Charles Johnson, 41, who grew up nearby. It's for people with a few bucks and a lot of troubles, he said, an escape from the outside, where teens on bicycles and stereo-booming cars circle aimlessly after midnight.

"You've been here," Ray Johnson, 49, says to a reporter from a stool by the front door. "You seen a shooting? You seen a stabbing? You went to the bathroom, and did you see people getting high?"

No, the reporter responded.

Everyone knows the problems are outside, he said, although no one can see them inside.

Gene's Bar has no windows.

Times staff writer Janet Zink contributed to this report. Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 26, 2007, 01:05:21]