Owners of bar, overrun by crime, fight back

Jen Lawson

Monday, Nov. 24, 2003 | 10:57 a.m.

Joe and Stella Sobchik opened their Fremont Street bar 50 years ago when the stark Southern Nevada desert shook from atomic bomb detonations at the Nevada Test Site.

Downtown hotels served "atomic cocktails" at rooftop parties as revelers watched the mushroom clouds, and the Sobchiks, swept up in the trend, named their bar Atomic Liquors.

The bar at 971 E. Fremont St. thrived for years. FBI agents and judges were regulars. Barbra Streisand shot pool there and the Smothers Brothers stopped in. Several movies, including some westerns and 1995's "Casino," used the bar as a backdrop.

But as Fremont Street and the downtown area declined, so did the bar's clientele. The Sobchiks installed a security buzzer at the door three years ago to keep out suspicious characters. It wasn't enough.

Within the past year, the bar became a regular place for crack-dealing gang members to conduct business.

"We were days away from a shooting inside this bar," said Sgt. Eric Fricker, a member of the community policing team at the Metro Police Department's downtown area command and an advocate for cleaning up downtown. "We're talking notorious, violent gang members from California. ... The mix was very deadly."

Police were getting ready to recommend to the city that Atomic Liquors be closed down because of the rampant criminal activity. But police decided to give the couple the chance to clean up the bar before shuttering it.

They needed "serious police first aid," Fricker said.

Using a community policing approach -- working with business owners and helping come up with ways to reduce crime together -- Fricker and the Sobchiks implemented ideas that resulted in a 37 percent decrease in crime in the two blocks east and west of the bar in the past three months.

"I think all we needed was the police department to come in and show some muscle," Joe Sobchik said, sitting at the bar Wednesday afternoon.

The Sobchiks married in 1940 and opened their first business, a cafe called Virginia's, five years later. In 1953 they converted the cafe into the bar.

Atomic Liquors is one of the oldest continually open bars in Las Vegas still kept by the original owners, Jim DiFiore, business services manager of the city of Las Vegas, said.

Business hummed along uneventfully for decades. The Sobchiks didn't run into serious trouble until about a year ago when the Ambassador Hotel across the street -- the headquarters for gangs and drugs on that area of Fremont Street -- shut down.

The gang members and drug dealers moved their operations to Atomic Liquors.

They intimidated and threatened the night-shift bartender, Fricker said. He doesn't think the bartender was directly involved, but he knew the activity was occurring and didn't tell the Sobchiks or the police.

The Sobchiks, who are in their mid-80s, didn't realize how serious the problem was. The bad guys began drifting in at night, when the Sobchiks weren't there, Fricker said.

"Once the bartender gets involved, it's hard to get out," Fricker said. "The more he keeps quiet, the more they own him."

The activity caught the attention of the police, and Fricker worked with the Sobchiks on adding security features to their business, such as a mirror so they could see what was going on in the parking lot without leaving the building.

But when police heard from informants on the streets that "the problem was more severe," Fricker said, it became clear that security fixes were inadequate.

Metro started an investigation, Fricker said, which included a raid two months ago. Police pulled a vehicle up against the back door of the bar to keep people from escaping and arrested several people on outstanding warrants for violent crimes. They seized crack and drug paraphernalia.

"They kept their crack on top of the TV," Fricker said, gesturing to a television behind the bar.

Once word began to spread among the gang members and drug dealers that police were monitoring the bar, they stopped using it as a hangout.

But probably the most important thing the Sobchiks did was decide to close the bar at 10 p.m. -- something that's practically unheard of, especially in Las Vegas.

It takes a long time to get rid of a reputation as a drug den, Fricker said, and until the crime problem on Fremont Street is alleviated, it's not likely that the Sobchiks will be able to go back to being open around the clock.

They also hired new staff and got rid of the tables and chairs in the bar, where shady characters would sit for hours. Now there's a large open space at the front of the bar.

The switch has hurt the Sobchiks financially, which Fricker said is just more proof of how dedicated they are to solving the crime problem.

In the month and a half since they started closing early, the problems have cleared up and both Fricker and the Sobchiks are pleased.

"I fought (the criminals) every which way I could ... This is the guy we needed," Joe Sobchik said, patting Fricker on the back.

Now the officers who patrol that area are free to fight more serious crime problems, Fricker said.

"This is a case in which everybody wins except for the bad guys dealing dope," he said.