Tacoma arcade’s liquor license suspended for violating COVID gaming rules last year

The Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board has suspended a downtown Tacoma bar’s liquor license for violating COVID-19 gaming restrictions last year.

Dorky’s Arcade will operate without its liquor license for seven days, Oct. 22-29, and pay a $500 fine, according to a Sept. 14 decision. Caroline Dennewith, who co-owns the ‘80s-style arcade bar with her partner Les Voros-Bond, said they already paid the fine, without which they would have faced an additional five-day suspension.

LCB communications director Brian Smith confirmed the decision. The agency has recorded 24 COVID-19 violations against 18 businesses, including An American Tavern, also in Tacoma. That bar closed in May after receiving a 180-day liquor license suspension.

Writing on social media, Dennewith said they tried to appeal the complaints without a lawyer but failed.

LCB determined that Dorky’s allowed customers to play its arcade games during at least two instances, Oct. 2-Oct. 11 and on or around Nov. 6, which at the time violated the state’s COVID-19 rules for bars, restaurants and gaming facilities. Games such as pool, darts and pinball were off-limits for most of 2020 under Washington’s pandemic safety guidelines for indoor entertainment and only reinstated as of Feb. 18, 2021.

The agency fielded several COVID-related complaints regarding Dorky’s use of arcade games, Smith told The News Tribune by email.

“The bottom line is that we received several complaints, the licensee received education several times, was warned several times, then ultimately received violations for noncompliance,” he said.

An enforcement officer visited the bar Sept. 8; he noted games in use, educated the owners on the current regulations and issued a verbal warning. He spoke again with the owners by phone Sept. 19 and later issued a written warning Sept. 25.

The formal litigation process began Feb. 22; Dennewith requested a timely hearing, which she attended on May 3, according to the decision.

She did not file a response to the initial summary judgment on June 9 or the motion to send the decision to the LCB for final review on Aug. 9.

Licensees have the right to an attorney in these cases, but Dennewith said they could not afford one.

DORKY’S ARCADE FRUSTRATED BY SUSPENSION

In a phone call Friday, the first day of the seven-day suspension, Dennewith said she and Voros-Bond are frustrated because they felt their business was on the line and lamented that arcades were unfairly targeted.

“No one’s gonna come to the arcade if there’s no games on,” she said. “We learned that after desperately trying, and losing thousands of dollars in product.”

She said they offered only takeout food and drink in the first few months of the pandemic, as restaurants were not permitted to serve indoors in the spring of 2020. When they were able to reopen as a bar but not an arcade, they at first kept the games off-limits, but people sometimes threatened them, insisting that other businesses were letting people play games, she said. They sold their pizza-making equipment and used money they had saved for a down-payment on a house to “keep our doors open and not go out of business.”

“We were struggling with the no-games,” she continued. “We reopened for food, but people were very upset that people couldn’t play the games.”

Eventually, they decided that playing Mortal Kombat and Donkey Kong Jr. was no different than pushing a shopping cart — and was essential to their survival.

They enforced the rest of the COVID-19 requirements for bars and restaurants, including masking, distancing and sanitizing, she said, “to the point that people hated us.” They would wipe down games after each use and did a full sweep every 30 minutes, she said, and they also limited capacity to about 25 percent while requiring parties to be separated by at least one game.

At some point, she believes someone in the gaming community reported the bar to LCB for operating the arcade. Then, on the weekend of Nov. 6, 2020, she said “multiple groups came in … but they didn’t want to wear their masks, and they didn’t want to wait.” She thinks they, too, filed complaints with LCB.

Dennewith had hoped the case would be dismissed and feels that “being an arcade was the only reason to target us,” and that other businesses that violated COVID-19 regulations did so in more egregious ways.

This story was originally published October 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.