The Richmond Beer Garden: Naked truckers, rowdy cops and gentrification

Map showing Richmond Beer Garden, JC Lounge (click to enlarge).

Is Plainfield getting ready for a clash of cultures?

Seems possible, given the reaction of elected officials to Chelas, a new bar replacing the old Richmond Beer Garden at the corner of East 3rd and Richmond Streets.

As the Ledger pointed out yesterday (see more here), the Richmond Beer Garden has been the site of a topless go-go bar for at least the past thirty years, as I can personally attest.

Shortly after moving to Plainfield in the early 1980s, a friend suggested that if I wanted to get a glimpse of one of the 'many Plainfields in Plainfield', I should check out the RBG, which I proceeded to do on a weekday afternoon.

The place was dimly lit, with a horseshoe bar on which the go-go girls attempted to dance to music piped over speakers, without knocking over the customers' drinks (mostly beers) or stepping on the live cigarettes parked in ashtrays here and there.

It was definitely a 'guy' bar, with maybe a dozen or so customers, mostly in groups of two or three and mostly engaged in conversation. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the dancers and some waved to friends across the bar as they came in, ignoring the dancers' legs as if they weren't even there.

Soon the place began to fill up with numbers of guys apparently getting off work.

I was told these were some of Plainfield's finest, off-duty cops who enjoyed stopping by for a brewski before heading home. I was also told that in the evenings and on weekends there were bouncers as occasionally customers got a little boisterous.

Being an alumnus of Knoblauch's Tavern and the ZanziBar in Reading, PA, it all seemed pretty ordinary to me. And I never went back, though I occasionally noted the joint made the news.

Once was a dozen or so years ago when a brief item appeared in the Courier. A truck driver, naked except for his socks, flagged down a passing patrol car on North Avenue about 2:30 AM one night, around the corner from the Richmond Beer Garden.

He told the cops that a woman had knocked on his window and asked directions. When he invited her and a companion to sit with him in the cab, the women took advantage of the poor man, fleeing with his clothes, his money and his keys.

What was he doing there at 2:30 AM the cops asked? 'Waiting to make a delivery,' was his reply. Nothing more was ever heard of the trucker or the women, nor were any clothes reported found.

The next time I remember reading about the bar was when an off-duty Plainfield police officer got into a fracas that spilled out into the street. I think he was suspended for assaulting another customer.

All this is relatively tame, considering that the word in the street is that drugs can be scored in other bars in town -- something I never heard about the Richmond Beer Garden -- and of which no mention has been made by public officials.

The new owners of Chelas say they haven't tried to hide anything from the City Council, which sits as the local Alcoholic Beverage Control Board in granting transfers and renewals of liquor licenses. This may well be true, as I seem to remember from Municipal Clerk classes that the ABC has to know that things like dancing are going on. Do we have a case of elected officials not reading the fine print?

With the news owners apparently being Hispanic, the question arises whether there is bias against Hispanics or whether it is just a garden-variety clash between middle-class folks who don't care for blue-collar lifestyles.

Are we witnessing the opening salvo in the campaign to gentrify Plainfield?

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• Ledger: "Go-go bar giving Plainfield pause"

-- Dan Damon

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