Morristown bar and neighbors: Difference between night and day?

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DeHart Street leads a double life in Morristown.

By day, it is home to an assortment of shops with a long pedigree downtown. Designer chocolates and vintage vinyl albums, Irish sweaters and diamond rings, fashion eyeglasses and stylish haircuts–they all can be purchased in the vicinity.

After dark, a young crowd comes to unwind at the Dark Horse Lounge, a nightclub in the basement under these shops. Slightly older patrons head a few doors down to Tashmoo, a bar owned by the same family as the Dark Horse.

Where these worlds intersect, there is friction.

Some area business people complain of “collateral damage” in the form of rowdy bar patrons; noise; discarded beer bottles, gum wads and cigarette butts; and vomit on the sidewalks.

Proprietors of the DeHart Street bars say they often are wrongly blamed for actions by patrons of other downtown bars, who use municipal and commercial parking lots on DeHart.

Tensions have reached the point where one businesswoman said she left town last summer partly in disgust over what she described as a constant mess on her front steps from bar customers.

A respected jeweler said he got so fed up with disputes involving his store parking lot that he swept up broken beer bottles and deposited them in the vestibules of the Dark Horse and Tashmoo — on Christmas Eve. One of the bars is pressing a criminal mischief complaint against him.

Mayor Tim Dougherty, when asked about all this, expressed concern and offered to play peacemaker.

“I would gladly facilitate a meeting with the [Morristown] Partnership and the business community to resolve any issues I am aware of — and some I am not aware of,” he said. “We all want to work together for the betterment of the community, no matter what issues we have.”

Michael Fabrizio, executive director of the Morristown Partnership, a downtown business organization, seconded the offer.

“I would be more than happy to meet with all the parties, as I have already offered to do, and will extend the invitation again today,” he said on Wednesday.

BROKEN GOBLETS: SUBWOOFERS OR JACKHAMMERS?

The latest flareup happened on Monday morning, when shop employee Terry Walters opened up Ginty’s Irish Gifts and discovered about $100 worth of wine glasses, beer goblets and coffee mugs in pieces on the floor.

It wasn’t “earth-shattering news,” she acknowledged. Yet it was enough to make her call the Morristown police to complain about the Dark Horse Lounge.

The Dark Horse sits below Ginty’s, and the music gets so loud on occasion that glasses skitter off shop shelves, according to Terry.

“We always make sure we push the stuff back so nothing is hanging over,” she said. Yet even heavy Waterford crystal dances when the bass starts rumbling downstairs, she said.

“It’s crazy. You could stand here and feel it coming up through your legs.”

A couple of doors down at J.C. Reiss Optician, Tom Harrigan said he had lost two mirrors and a wall clock because of vibrations from the Dark Horse.

“This has been going on for five years,” Tom said.

Linda Walsh, the matriarch of the Walsh family and majority owner of the Dark Horse and Tashmoo, said her family had enjoyed good relations with the optician. Operating hours of the Dark Horse and other businesses seldom overlap, she said, and problems are rare.

But the broken items at Ginty’s perplexed her, she said.

The Dark House sound system is not near the gift shop, Linda said, suggesting that jackhammers on the street might have been the culprit. As for the sidewalk, she said her husband and sons clean up the area outside the Dark Horse on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Members of the family also own stakes in two other Morristown bars, Sona Thirteen and Colonial Bar and Liquors.

Since becoming manager of the Dark Horse about 18 months ago, said Patrick Walsh, Linda’s son, he has taken steps to improve its reputation, which he agreed needed some polishing.

He spruced up the interior and added lighting. Two bar employees sweep the sidewalks within 30 yards of the Dark Horse every night at closing, he said. Alert bouncers have reduced altercations to just “two or three” over the last year, by his count.

“For a bar with 300 people every Friday and Saturday, that’s incredible,” he said.

And a new series of Monday night jam sessions at the Dark Horse has proven popular with serious musicians.

While Patrick said he rarely interacted with DeHart Street’s daytime community because of opposite schedules, he expressed willingness to  improve relations. He even welcomed the idea of creating a tavern association to collectively address public perceptions.

Some of those perceptions are unfair, he contends.

“At the end of the night, it’s not just Dark Horse people here. It’s people coming from every bar in the area,” Patrick said, referring to the municipal parking garage and Wells Fargo lot on DeHart. “The Dark Horse gets blamed for it.”

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“IMAGINARY FEUD”

Relations between Tashmoo and Braunschweiger Jewelers, a Morristown institution since 1958, have assumed a Hatfield-McCoy vibe since the Christmas Eve exchange between Bill Braunschweiger and Tashmoo manager Dave Walsh.

They share portions of a rear parking lot, where Tashmoo and the Dark Horse have trash dumpsters.

Bill, who has contributed funds for auxiliary police patrols downtown, and who is helping the Morristown Partnership provide gift baskets for new residents, said his complaints about blocked parking spaces, beer bottles spilling from garbage trucks, and bar employees dumping wash buckets in his dry well largely were ignored by Tashmoo.

Other incidents have compounded the irritation, he said. His security cameras have recorded a series of people urinating and throwing up in the lot.

On the afternoon of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, police arrested a 22-year-old Pennsylvania man who was charged with making drunken attempts to force his way into Enjou Chocolat from the same parking area.

After Bill made his dustpan delivery of broken bottles on Christmas Eve, he banned Tashmoo’s garbage hauler from crossing his property to access the bar’s dumpsters.

As a result, bar personnel must roll the heavy dumpsters to DeHart Street a few times each week.

“We just would like to see them be a little nicer,” Bill said of the bars. “To me, it almost feels like they’re bullying the people in the neighborhood. Their business is causing collateral damage, and they don’t seem to take responsibility for it.”

Mediation failed; Dave Walsh’s criminal mischief complaint against Bill is heading to court.

Dave said Bill’s behavior during the Christmas Eve episode “weirded me out.”

“Bill has imagined some sort of feud, and that we’re bullying him. That’s imaginary,” Dave said, adding, “he’s insane about his parking lot.”

“I like to have my property neat and tidy,” Bill said.

“CAN’T STAY HERE ANYMORE”

Pat Fiore moved her public relations business from a beautiful house on DeHart Street to Cedar Knolls last summer in part because of problems she ascribes to young bar patrons. They would sit on her porch, trigger her security system at all hours on weekends, trash holiday wreaths and flower pots and leave pools of vomit, she said.

The last straw came one morning when a client from Italy arrived early for a meeting and discovered “a disgusting display on the front steps.”

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Entrance to the Dark Horse Lounge in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

After 13 years in Morristown, Pat said, “I finally decided we just can’t stay here anymore.”

The Dark Horse has made its share of headlines over the years.

Its liquor license was suspended last summer for five days by the town council, to settle alleged license violations from 2008 and 2009.

A Dark Horse security video posted online helped defeat a councilman who assaulted a co-owner of the bar in 2006.

Bars owned by the Walsh family rescued the rained-out 2010 Morris County St. Patrick’s Day Parade, donating $35,000 to cover security costs for a second parade.

Pat Fiore said Morristown police were responding to her security alarm at least once a month when her business was on DeHart Street. Nobody could solve the problems, she said.

While her employees miss downtown Morristown, Pat said she would think hard before returning to a place that is starting to remind her of Hoboken.

Morristown “is a really wonderful town, potentially an incredible town with the demographics here. But I don’t know how it can be all things to all people. It has great residents, it’s a great walking town–and it’s also an out-of-control younger town.”

dehart street
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT? Neighbors of the Dark Horse Lounge say they are losing patience with the tavern. The tavern owners say they get a bad rap and want to improve relations with the community. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

3 COMMENTS

  1. Such a profound comment: “weirded me out”. Wow. I also find it strange that the matriarch of the Walsh family will offer any excuse instead of taking some responsibility for their business. A jackhammer? Really? The jackhammer work was being done during the middle of the day, not saturday night into monday morning. I literally laughed out loud. While bar clients may be hard to control, I’m sure lengths can be taken to keep them out of the parking lot behind Tashmoo. It is deplorable that business owners must open up their stores to the stench of urine and vomit. What ever happened to being a good neighbor, and working together?

  2. What kind of business is permitted to only have one fire exit? Especially one that is down one flight of stairs? Happyland social club’s fire in NYC obviously was a lesson forgotten.
    This place attracts the lowest common denominator of customers. Walking on Dehart Street on any weekend night is an invitation for a fight or worse from alcohol fueled young people cruising for trouble. It’s an embarrassment to the town who play up a family friendly area, while turning another cheek to slum bars like Dark Horse. Elections are one way to kick the bums out!

  3. The Walsh’s seem to feel entitled to special rules. They also don’t understand civil decency.

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