JJ's

This was a famous nightclub called JJ's during the seventies located at 501 N. Randolph.  Early on the place was known for a rough clientele including Ft. Myer soldiers and bikers coming to watch strippers.  The Arlington Pagans were regulars.  In the mid-seventies they tried to clean it up and feature local rock bands.  JJ's closed sometime in the later seventies.  Later it relocated as JJ's American Cafe at the intersection of Lee Highway and Harrison St. in the building that is now a mattress store. 

JJ's had some unwanted notierity in the Johnny Battle incident at Godfather's in Georgetown.  A crew of Pagans were celebrating mother club member Cheyenne Richter's birthday and they started out a JJ's and were kicked out after a fight broke out.  They moved on to Godfather's where they enountred Johnny Battle's group and got into a street fight on Wisconsin Ave.  Battle ended up stabbed to death and some Pagans went to jail for a long time.  The case has come up lately because some of the Pagans were released based on some falsified testimony.

UPDATE:  Prior to becoming JJ's this place was a topless bar called Ziggy's and was known as a rough place.  Ziggy's neighbor, American Service Center, complained about vulgar customers and beer cans, which led to the it's closing. 

The Herndon Riot

Years ago I remember watching the local news and seeing the Fairfax County Police triumphantly unveiling their brand new riot tank, which was a state of the art armored car equipped to handle any kind of crowd disturbance. It was a classic example of a police department with too much money and too much time on its hands. My buddies and I laughed at the prospect of frenzied looting masses on the boring streets of Fairfax County. It turns out we were wrong and there was a riot in Fairfax County and it was a critical moment in the county’s relationship with its black residents.

The incident on started on a Friday afternoon in August 1974 when Felix “Catman” Rorls entered the 7-11 on Elden Street in Herndon about 4:30 PM to get some chocolate milk. Rorls had turned 26 ten days prior and was out with a group of friends. FCPD Officer John Mueller entered the 7-11 behind Rorls and demanded to see his license. The two men had been involved in a previous confrontation when Mueller busted Rorls for driving on a suspended license. When Mueller demanded to see his license Rorls replied “Why do I need a license in 7-11?” The events that followed are a little sketchy, but it seems that Mueller shoved Rorls through the glass cooler and hit him with his nightstick. Rorls proceeded to the register, bleeding profusely, and tried to pay for his milk. Mueller put his nightstick down on the counter and tried to handcuff Rorls. Rorls grabbed the nightstick and began beating Mueller, who fell down and drew his gun firing four to five shots at Rorls. Mueller wept as he and Rorls went to the hospital for treatment, but Rorls died of his wounds.

Mueller was a 31 year old white 8 year veteran of the FCPD. The department had been racked by years of rising citizen complaints of brutality and inept policing. The police force had a rate of solving crimes well below the national average and had only reluctantly brought on a small number of minority and women officers. Female officers had filed multiple sexual harassment complaints and the five black officers complained of discrimination.

Rorls was a black man from Clifton originally and had struggled after losing his mother when he was 11 years old. He had learning disabilities and had moved between various relatives as he grew up. By 1974 he was working Smith’s Trash Service and lived in Apartment 102 in Herndon Gardens.

Shortly after the shooting, a crowd of 70-100 gathered at the 7-11 and began simmering about the Fairfax police. This crowd was quickly dispersed, but the fuse had been lit. A couple of hours later about 300 people gathered at the Dulles Park Shopping Center and began throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. Someone threw four firebombs into the Virginia ABC liquor store causing extensive damage. Police tried to disperse the crowd, but were met with a hail of rocks and bottles. For three hours police worked frantically to put out the many small fires caused by the rioters. Somehow the officer in charge, Cpl. Leonard Smith arranged a meeting with leaders of the mob and they demanded a meeting with Fairfax Prosecutor Robert Horan. Horan recently retired and had gained a reputation for being an exceptional prosecutor, but he was also known for not pursuing police brutality cases. The crowd demanded from Horan that he prosecute Mueller and Horan promised to examine the case and make a “prosecutorial judgment.” Amazingly, the mob agreed to these terms in withdrew.

The next night a small crowd gathered at the Dulles Park Apartments, but they dispersed when the riot police withdrew. The case was probed by a grand jury, which ultimately found no basis to indict Mueller. The county settled with Rorls’ family for a scant $25,000.

The riot was a culmination of years of building frustration in the Fairfax County black community. It laid bare the neglect and racism of a county transitioning from a sleepy southern backwater to a bustling suburb. The growth of the county placed enormous economic pressures on both white and black families that had originally lived in the county. The development boom brought rising land values, increasing property taxes, and a county hell-bent on growing. Many families had the option, and many exercised it, of selling out and moving on. However, blacks had the significant barrier of being excluded from much of the new housing stock whether through formal covenants or more informal methods. During this boom, the black population grew a tiny amount, but rapidly shrank as a percentage of the overall population. In 1960, blacks in the DC suburbs occupied 24% of deteriorating housing, 54% of dilapidated housing, and only 3% of sound housing. During the early seventies Fairfax built its first public housing, which had the effect of institutionally segregating them and enticing poor blacks off of valuable land. The two public housing developments, Herndon Gardens and Dulles Park which were both located in Herndon.

Herndon at one time was a sleepy railroad town, but it had boomed along with the rest of the county and had doubled in size in a few years. Mayor Lopp and Town Manager Noe handled the tense situation very badly. Noe admitted he had paid no attention to the concerns of black residents while Lopp declared they made up an insignificant portion of the town’s population. Lopp went on the blame the county for concentrating low-income residents in his town. Following the riot, a meeting was called with black residents to air concerns and seek solutions. Problems rattled off were a 10 pm street curfew, which was usually invoked only with black residents, lack of adequate shopping, recreation, and transportation. One leader summed it up as “if you don’t have a car, you’re lost.” Another resident said he had been stopped 35 times for “routine checks” by police since he had bought his ’53 panel truck two months earlier. However, the meeting did not go well as Mayor Lopp walked out after demanding that people stop shouting. Finally county leaders met with the residents and formed an ad hoc committee to find resolutions to the problems. The Citizens Committee of Fairfax County began meeting with police representatives and a federal mediator to come to an agreement. The Committee demanded increased minority hiring, training for police, and establishment of more citizen oversight. The county agreed to fill 18 vacancies with minority members and raise the minority representation on the force to 28.2%, which was the metro DC ratio.

The county continues to grapple with these problems today as housing it of reach to many, the police force continues to battle charges of excessive force, and Herndon is still a flash point for racial tensions, but now it is aimed at Latino immigrants. As for John Mueller, he served as a police officer until retiring in 1994 as a bomb technician. He was in the coast guard reserves and helped rescue people from the Air Florida crash. He died in Vienna in 2001.

Bull Run Grill

Thanks to J. Phillips who sent me this photo of the Bull Run Grill. The photo looks like it was taken in the 1980s or early 90s. The Bull Run Grill was legendary for drug busts, fights, and other nefarious activities, so this photo gives you an authentic view of a typical Saturday night. Of course such a place couldn't exist with the coming wave of big box stores and minivans, so it shut down sometime in the 90s (I think). It may have been called Ewells Grill before it became the Bull Run Grill.

The RIA Incident

Usually I focus on Northern Virginia in this blog, but I found an incident worth writing about in NE DC.

In 1973 the DC chapter of the Pagans had a club house at 3423 Eastern Ave. in Mt. Ranier, MD. A few blocks away, in the Woodridge neighborhood, they had picked RIA at 3112 Rhode Island Ave., NE as their hangout after being banned from two other nearby bars. The bar sits right on the border between DC and PG County in a regular middle class neighborhood once known for its country music clubs. However, the area was decaying and transitioning from a majority white to a majority black neighborhood causing racial tensions.

The Pagans were no strangers to racial violence. In August 1966 they had a protracted battle with black residents in Southeast at the 1023 club (see Mark Opsasnick's book Capitol Rock). Link Wray was playing one night as locals attacked the club and assaulted patrons. During the 68 riots one member of the Pagans was arrested at 14th and U shooting at rioters from a car. By 1973 DC had been through a massive transition to "Chocolate City" and was rapidly loosing its white population. This was not unusual for cities at the time as white residents fled integration and cities devasted by the start of deindustrialization.

Residents of the neighborhood had been complaining about drug dealing and rowdiness going on at the club. One person alleged that a member of the Pagans had a needle in his arm in a car outside the club, but their usual trip was "beer, and lots of it". Some residents claimed the Pagans were threatening them with racial epithets and displaying guns.

The real trouble at RIA started in July 1973 when a white woman and black woman got into an argument inside the bar. The dispute moved outside and two Pagans came to her aid, then a group of black men joined on the side of the black woman. The brawl involved about 40 people. One black guy named Michael Edward Jones, 23 of 3124 Newton St., NE was there and got involved in the fight. He lived around the corner from the Pagans club house and two blocks from RIA and it was not his first encounter with them. About a week earlier he had been run over by a car driven by a member of the Pagans. As the brawl got heated, he somehow got a hold of a stop sign and cracked it over the head of Bob Brown, the DC Pagans president. Brown died from his injuries. Jones was arrested for the murder of Brown, but a grand jury refused to indict him.

An enterprising Post reporter covering the story, gained admittance to the Pagans club house to interview members, but encountered a man named "tireiron" and thought better of it. He did interview a biker named Richard Sebastian two doors down who claimed not to be a member, but he did offer a warning that the Pagans were "stone crazy". He said everyone carried a gun in the area and "something has to be done over Bob Brown's death. He was righteous cat -- he had to be, he was the president".

The tension got the attention of the FBI, which was worried about retailiation and racial violence. The FBI issued a bulletin tha the Pagans had purchased guns and explosives in Florida and were planning to retaliate in September. PG Police raided a members home in September in Beltsville and found a cache of weapons, narcotics, and a copper still.

After the incident a group of white men shot at a group of black youths from a station wagon and two Pagans assaulted a black man in Woodridge. The shooting was never linked to the Pagans and the assault victim didn't show up to court. Residents fought the renewal of the liquor license for RIA, but the owner, Robert Pluebell, prevailed and gained his liquor license.

Apparently, the bar closed sometime later, but the building is still standing and was recently the offices for a surveying company.

Trouble at the Pool Hall

NOVA was home to dozens of pool halls serving as hubs for a lot of ilicit activities. One pool hall in Alexandria was the home to ongoing problems with drugs and murders. The building at 1101 Queen St. in Alexandria has an interesting history. It was built in 1921 and called the Lincoln Theater and was located in the heart of an African-American neighborhood called Uptown. The original building was replaced in 1939 and it later became the Capitol Theater. In the 1960s the theater continued to operate with "a pool hall and amusement arcade".

The pool hall was nothing but trouble. In 1961 police arrived to find a brawl outside the pool hall and tried to break it up. As a cop tried to take Douglas Beck's blackjack away, he got in one more smack on his victim. Beck's buddies James Allen and Nicholas Lafragiola were hauled in by police too. In 1969 Russell Robinson, who was a bouncer at the pool hall, was shot three times in the hallway of the pool room. Patrons told police that they heard gunfire and Robinson emerged clutching his throat. Charles Davis of 3627 S. Four Mile Run Dr. in Arlington claimed he shot Robinson in self defense because Robinson was trying to rob him. Davis was convicted to five years in prison.

In 1970 the Alexandria Vice Squad cracked down on the pool hall and arrested a lot of folks on drug charges and found it was a center of heroin dealing. It was likely that Guy Black's mini drug empire had its tentacles in the pool hall. He was the kingpin of the heroin market in NOVA for a few years. In 1975 Black was busted and cops found he had a $2.5 million operation that he was running while living in dumpy motels across Arlington. The heart of his drug operation was the Green Valley section of South Arlington, which is a historically black area of the county. Black had his junkies dealing out of teen centers, pool halls, motels, and shopping centers across NOVa.

An Alexandria Gazette article from 1970 notes the pool hall is the site of "frequent arrests for disorderly conduct, and several fights, and shootings have occured at the spot in recent months". In addition to heroin, the pool hall was the center of numbers betting in Alexandria.

John McClure

In NOVA’s redneck past, there are many colorful figures, but few have been as colorful as John C. McClure who was a paratrooper, Nazi, Pagan MC member, and a jail breaker. McClure was born in 1939 in West Palm Beach, FL and was an imposing presence with a full beard and shaggy red hair. He was in the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville in 1958 when he was arrested for narcotics possession and given a 3 year suspended sentence.

In 1962 he arrived in Arlington, VA to become a full-fledged member of the American Nazi Party after reading some of George Lincoln Rockwell’s literature. He went through several months of training in Arlington before heading back to Florida in February ’63 to lead an effort to set up an American Nazi Party (ANP) branch office. After training in Arlington, he moved his wife and three kids to Miami to open up the southeast division of the ANP. The effort caused a huge controversy in the newspapers in South Florida. McClure immediately gained notoriety when he and his cohorts got involved in a brawl while protesting outside a pro-Israel meeting. In March he was hauled into court because police found him with a handgun which his narcotics possession conviction precluded him from having. While in jail his cellmates beat him, but police claimed he fell off of the top bunk. The judge gave him a choice of serving time or leaving Dade County forever and he chose the latter. As he left the courtroom an unidentified woman slapped him and said it was because she had been in a concentration camp and couldn’t bear seeing a Nazi.

Undeterred, McClure opened an office in West Palm Beach to the dismay of residents. In an article he declared that if the ANP came to power “negroes would be sent back to Africa” but the party hadn’t yet decided what to do with the Jews. Evidently folks back at Nazi HQ weren’t happy with his progress because George Lincoln Rockwell decided to throw McClure under the bus and announced that McClure had no authority to set up anywhere but Miami (because that’s “where the enemy is”). Rockwell pointed out that McClure was not very high in the party echelon and went on to say that he was coming down to personally supervise setting up a Miami office. Politicians are politicians no matter how nutty and they will eat your left nut if they need to.

By 1965 he was back in the Washington area counter protesting the anti-Vietnam war protests. Around this time, he joined the Pagans and it seems likely that he was present for the founding of the club. His nickname among his Pagan brothers was “Big John”, but this seems like a weird moniker because he was only 5’11” and 140 pounds. My guess is the name referred to his big presence and he probably punched above his weight.

In 1968, while living at 5414 S. 8th Pl. in South Arlington, McClure was involved in an incident at the Georgetown Peoples Drug Store at Wisconsin and O Street. The Georgetown Peoples was a popular spot for bikers and the parking lot was a meeting place for hippies, bikers, and drug dealers. From what I can gather in the newspaper reports, the problem arose from a drug deal between two groups and McClure was aligned with one of the groups.

At 2 AM on a Sunday morning two groups of youths got into some kind of brief dispute in the Peoples parking lot. A few minutes later McClure joined one group and went with them to their car and a bit later the two groups confronted each other again and McClure shot one person dead and wounded another with a .22 caliber pistol. The two guys shot down by him, were recent Wilson High School graduates who came to Peoples from a post-graduation party. Something strange happened among this group of people and it seems like the two guys shot by McClure were monkeying around during a drug deal. McClure claimed self defense in the shooting and apparently thought the other group was some threat to him.

McClure went on the lam and the FBI produced a wanted poster. The poster describes him as:
“a former member of a motorcycle gang, usually wears boots and blue
jeans, may have upper front tooth missing. McClure is being sought for
Murder in which victim was shot with a .22 caliber revolver. Considered
extremely dangerous.

It lists his past crimes as AWOL from the military, narcotics possession, and the Georgetown murder. After the manhunt, in which McClure was almost placed on the Ten Most Wanted list, he was arrested in Providence, RI. He had shaved his beard and cut his hair to try to lay low. The WaPo notes that Big John appeared frail in court, which makes me wonder if he was involuntarily detoxing in jail during the trial. The trial was chaotic as two of Big John’s Pagan brothers, Aurin “Little Jesus” Little and Earl “Moochie” Swicegood made some gesture and comment that scared some folks in the courtroom. Swicegood was held in contempt of court for threatening a witness because he allegedly made a comment that a prosecution witness was lying and he was going to blow him away. The charge was later overturned by another court.

McClure was convicted to ten years in jail. In 1972 he and a fellow inmate, Francis Fletcher, escaped Lorton and went on the run. Fletcher was a notorious thug in South Arlington with multiple convictions including gunning down a gas station attendant during a robbery. A few days after the escape Fletcher got into an accident on Columbia Pike and took off running. A cop and a citizen took him down and his escape was done. The Post seems to drop the story at this part because I can’t figure out when or if police caught up with McClure. Lorton at the time was in the midst of a rash of escapes and would soon face a riot by inmates.

After this incident, I lost the trail of McClure. By the late 80s he was in Texas or Louisiana and he died in 1993 in Kenner, Louisiana.

UPDATE: McClure was also a mechanic at Crossroads Cycle in Baileys Crossroads in the late sixties.

UPDATE 2: In researching the hippie scene around Dupont Circle I came across a new article about Mcclure. In 1967 police raided an apartment at 1629 19th St. NW in DC and found pot, .30-caliber carbine, and a sawed-off shotgu with a bayonet attached. Mcclure and Elizabeth Mechline were inside the apartment. Mcclure identified himself as a member of the Pagans and former president of the Huns. The Huns MC were a local club that patched over to the Pagans sometime in 1967.

The Drag Racing Menace

During the fifties and sixties the DC area was a hot bed for hot rodders. In NOVA hot rodders gathered at the various Tops Drive-Inn locations like Fairfax Circle, Harrison and Lee Highway in Arlington and Glebe and Rte. 50 in Arlington. They'd bring their cars to the drive-in and hang with their gang of friends. In some cases, the hot rod friends became clubs and sometimes evolved into greaser gangs. The greaser gangs evolved into the sixties and in some places continued well into the seventies. In PG County they were known as Grits during the seventies, but in NOVA some of them evolved into the Pagans.

In 1960 WaPo did one of a number of articles on the menace of drag racing in the DC area. Naturally the hotspots were the redneck areas of PG County, Arlington, and Falls Church. The Post reported that motorcycles, trucks, and even women were drag racing!

The drag racing hotspots in NOVA were (according to the Post): East Broad St. and Hillwood St. in Falls Church; Williamsburg and Yorktown blvds; George Mason and Sycamore; and GW Parkway.