UPPER WEST SIDE — The owners of an Upper West Side bar that police recently shut down say they lost their business because one vindictive neighbor spent nearly a decade plotting its doom.
Police declared the Blue Donkey Bar at 487 Amsterdam Avenue a neighborhood nuisance last week, saying the bar is a haven for drug use and underage drinking.
But owners Kim Kaufman and Jim Goldsmith say the charges against them are trumped up, and they're the victims of an over-zealous neighbor who vowed to shutter their establishment before it was even open.
"I don't understand a world that punishes us for the chronic complaining of a neighbor who will never be satisfied," Goldsmith told DNAinfo.
"I'm clean as a whistle and they made us look like the second coming of Al Capone. We are straight-up business people and the system raped us."
They plastered the front of their bar with signs blaming one man — neighbor Tim Tomlinson, a 55-year-old writer — for the Blue Donkey's demise. The signs, which list Tomlinson's home address, claim his endless complaints drove police and other officials to crack down on the bar.
"It didn't matter if it was children on the patio singing Happy Birthday...or adults enjoying a beer, he complained," the signs say.
But Tomlinson says if anyone is a victim, it's him and other residents of buildings near the bar. He told DNAinfo he's "ecstatic" that the Blue Donkey has closed.
"I'm happy to be a thorn in their side and if I could do it again, I would," Tomlinson said.
Tomlinson, who lives in a second-floor apartment overlooking the Blue Donkey's backyard patio, said he's far from a grumpy crank. The nightly assault of noise from the bar and "flagrant" drug use would have tested anyone's patience, Tomlinson said.
"Anybody — Gandhi, Mother Theresa — would have complained had they experienced what we were experiencing," Tomlinson said. "I like to be able to sleep at a decent hour and come home after a day of work and experience my home as a safe place. Instead, for eight years they turned it into a place of intense anxiety."
Police say two people were arrested May 5 at the bar on drug possession charges. Officers found marijuana on one person and marijuana, ecstasy and magic mushrooms on the other, a police source said.
Goldsmith said police could have walked into any bar on Amsterdam Avenue and made similar arrests. "It's not my job to search patrons," Goldsmith said. "How am I responsible for that?"
Police also say they caught the Blue Donkey selling alcohol to underage drinkers. The State Liquor Authority says underage booze sales took place on three separate occasions, but Kaufman said her employees are strict about carding patrons.
"We card everyone," she said. "The way we run the place, there's no way it could happen."
Police also have a photo — supplied by Tomlinson — of bar owner Kim Kaufman smoking pot on the bar's back patio, a police source said. Kaufman denies that claim.
Kaufman and Goldsmith say allegations that their bar was a haven for drug use are exaggerated. They say police and other city agencies conducted three unannounced raids on the Blue Donkey recently, and turned up little in the way of criminal activity.
Kaufman said she received summonses — later dropped — for not having a posted sign about a CPR kit and for not having a license to hire a security guard. The bar was also cited for playing music that was audible 100 feet from the front door, Kaufman said.
Kaufman and Goldsmith point to an incident involving 64-year-old regular Gary Carter as a prime example of overheated accusations against their bar. Carter, a retired car salesman, was arrested at the Blue Donkey in March with what he said was "less than a gram of pot" in a one-hitter pipe.
Carter said he smokes marijuana to treat pain from chronic knee injuries. He was sentenced to three days of drug education.
Carter said police shutting down the Blue Donkey is "scary" to him, because the action doesn't seem justified. "If you would have told me that people who are trying to run a business, who pay their taxes, who hire locally, could just arbitrarily have their business closed, I would have said, not in Manhattan," Carter said.
Kaufman and Goldsmith said the drug arrests were a blip on an otherwise clean record after eight years in the neighborhood. The Blue Donkey is the third business they've owned on the block — in 2003 they opened a restaurant, Homer's World Famous Malt Shop, next door to the bar, followed by a doughnut shop, both of which later closed.
The couple, both 55, live on West 81st Street and Central Park West and also run a restaurant in Stowe, Vt. They say they bent over backwards to meet neighborhood demands, soundproofing the bar to make it less noisy, keeping the front door closed so sound wouldn't escape onto Amsterdam Avenue, and closing the patio after 10 p.m.
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side, said she hosted "hours of meetings," including a formal mediation, between the Blue Donkey's owners, city agencies and neighbors. "We like small businesses, so we tried to support them," Brewer said.
But complaints against the bar continued, and Kaufman and Goldsmith say that's because Tomlinson was on a solo mission to bring them down. They say they first met Tomlinson in 2003, when construction started on Homer's, their now-closed restaurant. According to Kaufman, Tomlinson announced then that he would do everything he could to end their business.
But Tomlinson said his complaints weren't driven by a personal vendetta — he just wanted to sleep and to not live in a "frat house" atmosphere with "constant" drug use. After his frequent calls to 311 went unheeded, Tomlinson started a detailed log of incidents at the Blue Donkey, drawing on his skill as a writer to describe disturbances in almost novelistic language.
"This was one of those glorious nights when the rain is coming down so hard that I know I'll sleep well...but at 1:45 a.m. I'm awakened by loud back-slapping revelry, and sure enough, four or five guys are huddled under a table umbrella behind Homer's, and they are smoking something that passes hands," reads one entry from 2006.
Tomlinson scoffed at the idea that his complaints were solely responsible for the bar's closure, noting the police investigations backed up his claims of drug activity at the bar.
"The idea that they’ve been victimized is hilarious," Tomlinson said. "We were victimized for years by them and it took this long for the system to finally click in. We told everyone we could about this and the system works very slowly."
Kaufman and Goldsmith surrendered their liquor license after police shut down the Blue Donkey last week. But they're not done fighting Tomlinson. Kaufman said the couple has filed a libel lawsuit against their vocal neighbor.
