Collateral damage? Weekend mess in downtown Morristown

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“Every Saturday, it’s something,” said Tom Harrigan of J.C. Reiss Optician in Morristown.

On this Saturday morning, it was vomit outside his DeHart Street entrance and a broken bottle on the sidewalk in front of his South Street door.

Tom blames traffic from nearby bars; the bar owners say they are not to blame.

The DeHart Street entrance serves a doctor’s office. Patients had to be re-directed to the South Street side until Tom could haul buckets of water outside to douse the mess. A Seeing Eye instructor alerted Tom to the glass and the hazard it posed to Seeing Eye dogs on South Street.

Motorists, meanwhile, had to be alert in the Wells Fargo parking lot off DeHart Street. As of 11 am, a broken beer bottle was strewn across parking stall 23.

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DeHart Street is home to a pair of bars, the Dark Horse Lounge and Tashmoo. Several other nightclubs are nearby, and patrons park in lots on DeHart, and on neighboring streets.

Area business owners have been complaining for awhile about “collateral damage” from weekend bar crowds.

Members of the Walsh family, owners of the Dark Horse, Tashmoo and Sona Thirteen, have suggested they are unfairly blamed for misbehavior by patrons of other bars who park near them.

BLECCHH!!! Tom Harrigan found this outside his DeHart Street shop on Saturday. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
BLECCHH!!! Tom Harrigan found this outside his DeHart Street shop on Saturday. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

But Saturday’s vomit was not from the bar scene, said Linda Walsh.

“There was nothing there this morning,” she said. “I go by there every single morning around 7:30 and walk down the street and make sure there’s nothing there. If something’s there, I have our guy clean it up.”

The broken bottles also originated elsewhere, Linda said.

Patrons “can’t get out of our bar with any bottles. We have bouncers that watch everybody as they leave,” she said.

The Dark Horse had been exploring an expansion into the storefront occupied by Scotti’s Record Shop, at South and DeHart streets, a possibility that stirred residents of the 40 Park luxury condos to express their concerns at a council meeting last month.

But certain deadlines were missed and those plans have been set aside,  according to Linda.

Last spring, Mayor Tim Dougherty  brokered peace between Braunschweiger Jewelers and the Dark Horse in a dispute over beer bottle litter.

At the time, employees at Ginty’s gift shop also said loud music from the Dark Horse basement rattled about $100 worth of glassware off shelves. Dave Walsh said in May that the shop had been reimbursed; Kathleen Ginty Hyland said Saturday that no payment ever was received.

That’s because the Walsh family believes the shop damage resulted from jackhammers, not loud music, Linda Walsh said.

Cigarette butts, chewing gum and broken glass remain regular occurrences on DeHart Street, said Kathleen Hyland.

“It’s discouraging,” said Kathleen, a shopkeeper in town for nearly 30 years. “This is a beautiful town, an historic town. It wouldn’t take much [for the bars] to clean up.”

On Saturday, as he prepared to splash a bucket of water on the cold sidewalk, Tom said he had called the Walsh family and town officials but could not get through.

Things could have been worse. Tom said he has discovered blood, urine and excrement on his doorstep in the past. The DeHart Street wall of his shop was painted recently; almost immediately, he said, shoe prints scuffed it up.

“I’ve been at this location for more than 20 years,” he said. “It was never like this.”

Tom Harrigan of J.C. Reiss Optician and Kathleen Ginty Hyland of Ginty's in Morristown said they are tired of cleaning up after weekend bar crowds. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Tom Harrigan of J.C. Reiss Optician and Kathleen Ginty Hyland of Ginty's in Morristown said they are tired of cleaning up after weekend bar crowds. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

 

3 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Mike– It may be a party town three nights a week, but that still leaves five days a week for businesses, right?

  2. I’m in my early 40s now and don’t go to Morristown on the weekends anymore because the age group is too young for me now but in my 20s and 30s I used to go there alot. Morristown has been a smaller Hoboken type of party town for at least 20 years. The article above makes it seem like all of a sudden it became a party town in the last year or something. Its been like that for at least 20 years. Yes, I feel bad for any businesses that have been there 30 or 40 years because they probably bought their businesses before it was a party town, but anyone that bought their businesses in the last 20 years i don’t see how they couldn’t have known it was a party town when they bought. I remember going to a place called Jimmy’s in Morristown probably 15 to 20 years ago and I imagine all the problems listed above were happening then too.

  3. It’s too bad that instead of doing the “right” thing by taking responsibility for the damage their intoxicated patrons inflict the bar owners choose to deny any resposibility at all. Myself and other businesses that have been in this area for 20-50 years have never seen this amount of collateral damage until they opened. As for patrons never leaving with bottles….The police have a copy of my surveillance video from March 2011 showing an obviously intoxicated Tashmoo patron come out their back door with a beer in his hand and then (after a few minutes) urinate against the building and then try to get into the back door of a neighboring business. He had to walk behind their bar and through the kitchen in order to get out the back door. Are we to believe this is a one time occurence?

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