Mandingo will ride again.
The mechanical bull at popular East Point watering hole The U Bar will be back bucking next week, said Alre Alston, after the small city south of Atlanta chained shut the restaurant and sports bar last Friday.
Alston said his attorney filed an appeal Friday morning that lets him re-open, but the city says to hold the bull.
“The court did not issue an injunction or a temporary restraining order, therefore the Municipal Court Judges’ order to close still stands,” said East Point spokeswoman Shannon Wiggins.
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This latest misunderstanding is typical of the legal back-and-forth between the city and Camp Creek Parkway bar that has lasted months.
The city shut the party down, saying that U Bar had been operating under the wrong business license, was improperly charging people to enter and had multiple fire lane parking violations.
After a hearing in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday, U Bar's attorney Steven West appealed the closure of the popular bar, which has about 3,000 reviews on Google and 20,000 likes on Facebook.
Former Fulton Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, who is representing the city, said the bar is less popular with neighboring businesses that have found “feces and condoms” outside their stores.
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“They are creating a nuisance to other tenants,” said Moore, adding “they were not operating as a restaurant” and the fire lane violations are “endangering people’s lives.”
But West said that isn’t so. “They’re trying to kill these guys off,” he said of the city.
Alston said the shutdown has cost him $150,000 in business and $30,000 in food that has expired.
West said he felt he had to seek an emergency injunction in Superior Court because because the city hadn’t filed an order for them to appeal.
“(The city had) us stuck in a Twilight Zone,” West said.
The city told the court Friday they had filed the order West needed for an appeal.
Superior Court Judge Jane C. Barwick then ruled the case should remain in Municipal Court, adding that there is a recusal process if the bar owner felt like he wasn’t getting fair treatment.
“I’ve left you plenty of day,” she said at about 11 a.m. Friday. West rushed out of the courtroom to file his appeal.
Alston said he could have opened Friday but didn’t because he wanted time to get the space ready again for customers.
It remained unclear Friday evening when exactly Mandingo would be saddled up again.
Speaking of mechanical bulls...
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