I run two bars in DC. Trump turned them into ghost towns.

What it’s like on the frontlines of this president’s war against the city.

Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

By Dave Perruzza

If you’ve spent any amount of time in Washington DC, chances are you’ve been out in Adams Morgan. It’s one of the city’s liveliest neighborhoods, lined with bars and restaurants serving up food, drinks, and live music for all kinds of visitors. It’s inviting, centrally located, close to plenty of green spaces, and an ideal destination for tourists and locals alike. All of which is why, during all my time as a business owner here, I’ve felt fortunate to call this place home.

Then came Donald Trump’s occupation of the city.

When Trump federalized the local police and deployed masked agents and National Guardsmen across the city, I saw the effects immediately. I run two bars, Pitchers and A League of Her Own, and both have taken a massive financial hit since the police crackdown started. Customers are afraid to leave their homes, shocked and horrified by the videos proliferating online of masked, unidentified federal agents violently subduing District residents.

Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, for a lot of people, this is enough to make you want to stay inside. Why run this risk of going out, having some drinks, and walking the streets if you know you’re going to be overseen by officers who the president is actively encouraging to “do whatever the hell they want”? So people stay in, the customers dry up, and businesses like mine start to feel an immediate squeeze.

Right after the crackdown started, I saw a loss of $7,000 on a single night. On a recent Friday, we were down $5,000. And on the following Saturday and Sunday, we were down $4,000. That’s $20,000 in losses in just four days. For any business—especially in the restaurant industry, which has razor-thin margins—that’s not sustainable. Having lived through COVID, and having seen what it did to this industry, I can say that this is a disruption of a similar magnitude. Except this time, it’s a man-made disaster.

What makes this even more frustrating is the fact that Adams Morgan—like many of the neighborhoods now seeing a heavy police presence—doesn’t need any of this. The area is densely populated, highly trafficked at night, and well lit. I’ve lived in this city for decades, and I can personally attest that I walk through the area and neighboring Meridian Hill Park at night all the time, and I’ve never seen the need for a crackdown or a police presence like this.

Is there crime, especially juvenile crime? Sure, just like any city, we see our share of problems. But the current occupation is doing nothing to address those problems. If anything, the fact that the police presence has driven foot traffic away means that criminals will have a freer hand to prey upon residents when they are alone and vulnerable. And even if that weren’t the case, it just doesn’t make sense for armed National Guardsmen in full military fatigues to be the ones addressing petty street crime.

All of this has a deteriorating effect on police-community relations more broadly. DC’s police force, the Metropolitan Police Department, operates an LGBT Liaison Unit whose mission is to focus “on the public safety needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and their allied communities.” The unit’s officers used to stop in at my bars, but since the occupation started, we’ve made the decision to keep them out. With everything else going on, it just isn’t worth it to scare customers any more than they’ve already been scared, even if it involves officers who we know and whose faces we’ve become accustomed to seeing. That’s unfortunate, and it’s Trump’s fault that it had to be this way.

It was Restaurant Week in DC recently, a major economic boon for places like ours all across the city, when bars and restaurants offer special deals and diners come out by the thousands. Except this year, reservation numbers and foot traffic are way down. Everywhere you go, places that are supposed to be packed instead look like ghost towns. Prior to Trump’s crackdown, we even set up multiple promotions and events to help draw customers out, and now we aren’t seeing anything like the numbers we had originally anticipated.

That’s money coming directly out of our pockets, and it affects staff members’ morale as well. Our people work hard, they’re on their feet constantly, and they really care for the customers who come in and see us day in and day out. It’s hard to see that level of dedication rewarded with open contempt aimed against the entire city by this administration. And, adding insult to injury, the drop-off in revenue has happened just before our annual sales tax came due, leaving us to foot a big bill at a time of massive losses when we should have been seeing record sales.

I feel confident in saying that the customers won’t return until the police and soldiers are gone. As a business owner, I can only hope that that happens sooner rather than later. And I can encourage everyone to come out and support your local bars and restaurants, if for no other reason than to help them stay afloat during this moment of uncertainty. Believe me, your local economy is more fragile than you think, and business owners rely on your support more than you know. Come out and support them.

As a business owner, it’s a sobering thing to know that I have no control over when, or even if, this dark cloud will be lifted; and that our success or failure as a business now depends in part on the mood swings of the angry, petty tyrant sitting in the Oval Office. It shouldn’t be this way.

Dave Perruzza owns Pitchers and A League of Her Own in Washington DC.