A guy was charged with vandalism and indecent exposure after urinating on an Islamic Mosque which is located close to the honky-tonk “Shady’s Corner”.
Who didn’t see this coming?
After all, the urinator had probably just left Shady’s Corner and felt the “urge” before heading home with his brother. Instead of looking for a dark, private secluded place to whip it out, he chose the front of a building with a Ring doorbell camera.
The urinator was identified roughly 45 seconds after the Ring video was posted on social media.
The cops were called.
Instead of telling the police he had a “public urination pass”, he softened the blow by claiming he did not know it was an Islamic Masque.
And I believe him.
Like the urinator, I would not fathom a honky-tonk being located next to an Islamic Masque. So I give the urinator a pass. When you gotta go, you gotta go.
But I cannot give a pass to the Chattanooga Beer Board by allowing a honky-tonk to violate the Chattanooga Beer code and allowing a business to sell beer 150-200 feet from an Islamic Mosque.
The Chattanooga beer code specifies that there “must be a distance of 500 feet from the doors of a church and a business that sells beer.”
The Chattanooga Beer Board must have a tape measure, but I do not whether any of them knows how to use it.
Instead of the lawful 500 feet, the Beer Board allowed Shady’s Corner to sell beer 150 feet from the Mosque.
The Chattanooga Beer Board violated the Chattanooga beer code by allowing a honky-tonk to sell beer unlawfully close to an Islamic Mosque.
A church.
After all, a church is not the actual building, it’s the family that worships inside that building. Before the building was an Islamic Mosque, it was a Baptist Church!
Exact same building, but a different family.
I have to wonder whether the Chattanooga Beer Board would have allowed Shady’s Corner to sell beer next to a Baptist Church.
In another Beer Board debacle, the Beer Board fined Brian Joyce, owner of the former Blue Light, for using a cell phone instead of a land line to report an incident. The Beer Board enforced the portion of the Beer code that specifies the use of land lines only.
In one case, the Beer Board violates the Beer code it is supposed to enforce, and in the other, the Beer Board harshly enforces the Beer code.
Seems like selective enforcement of the beer code.
So I applaud Mayor Kelly’s recent disbanding of the Beer Board for a more empathetic and transparent process.
Citizen Brian Joyce was relentless is his rightful criticism of the Beer Board. After all, it cost him his business.
Those two, with the unlikely help of a urinator, has made our City a more loving and accepting place.
Go figure.
C. Mark Warren
* * *
Please don’t be shocked, but I agree in theory with C. Mark Warren on his opinion letter. I even appreciate the fact that he articulated without any venom towards anyone. I agree that perhaps the Beer Board operated at times with a double standard and there is no room for that in governing authorities.
That said, if Mr. Warren was defending the urinator, and I was prosecuting the case, I would know that the bar had a rest room. One hundred and fifty feet is not a long way to walk before a man realizes his bladder needs to be emptied. He had opportunity to empty it in the restroom.
Instead, he chose to urinate on an Islamic Masque, a building for Holy Worship and clearly marked by signage as such. He knew what he was doing.
Hamas attacked Israel and each member should be hunted down and terminated. It is the only way to stop them. However, all members of the Islamic religion are not members of or in agreement with Hamas. I’m a devote Christian, members of Westboro Baptist Church claim to be Christians, and perhaps they are. However, I would like to see them all placed in jail when they disrupt a funeral of one of our fallen soldiers. I’m even going to bet that most Baptist churches are not in agreement with Westboro’s bad behavior.
The law stating that bars must be a minimum of 500 feet from a church means that Shady’s Corner is in violation of the law and the law should be enforced. Other complaints have been filed about Shady’s Corner being a nuisance. The Beer Board knew this but for some reason thought it was the job to chose winners and losers, rather than abide by the law.
Regardless of what religion the building housed, nobody has a right to desecrate it.
J. Pat Williams
* * *
I have to admit, J. Pat. I am definitely shocked! First that you actually support C. Mark Warren's opinion and appearing to support the Mosque on this issue. Although, I'll never be convinced that club was allowed to open in such close proximity to the Mosque for any other reason than as an insult and an attempt to force the Mosque from the area.
As for the Beer Board and other city departments of regulations in the city, the rules or laws have never applied to everyone. They've always been selective and controlled by a cowardly and shadowy group, operating behind the scenes that control the city.
That same group may have played a major role in the death of Mrs. Okie, affectionally known by everyone, but especially the children in the community. Her actual name was Ok'Hui Brown. She was Korean, her husband a military veteran. She operated a small snack store in the community with no problems. Even the old diehards fairly much left her alone. She and her husband lived in an apartment behind the store. But that shadowy group began to complain, as they'd always band together to run off anyone, especially a business attempting to open up in the area, who weren't in their clique. In this case, the group began to complain about the clientele and steady traffic in and out of the store. Their typical M.O., getting the police to come out and harass the patrons, city complaints about the building etc., whatever it took.
A sickly husband, and not making enough to hire security, her patrons were her greatest assets for security. But they began to slack off more and more. I actually passed the store walking the day she was shot and killed. The store appeared closed, I thought unusual, and maybe she was at the apartment tending to her husband. There's a certain negative energy that ooze from somewhere where something horrible has taken place. I felt that energy that day, but again thought maybe her husband's health had worsened. I had the urge to stop in, if only to say hi! And ask how she was doing or if there was anything she needed. I'll forever regret I didn't.
The person who shot and killed her that day was said to have been driving around looking for a business that appeared isolated, with no customers going in and out, and that's why he cased her store. He's guilty of course of taking a life, but the blood of Mrs. Oki also ooze from the invisible, cold, calculating hands on a mission to shut her down, by drying up her business. It wasn't the one and only time the group had run a business off. Just the one time their actions may have contributed to the loss of life. The other business, forced from the community, is thriving and doing quite well down in Georgia.
Those rules and laws the city claim are used for one purpose and one purpose only, and they're not applied across the board. But to keep others out while looking the other way to allow selective groups to do as they please.
Mrs Ok-Hui Brown is buried in Chattanooga's National Cemetery, not far from the very Mosque the subject is about, alongside her husband who died not long after she was killed.
Brenda Washington