Owner John McAffrey describes the bizarre moment his staff found his bar bespattered with blueberries. (Screen captures via OKC)
A queer bar in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has been targeted by an anonymous homophobe who has vandalised the site across two nights.
But it’s the bizarre ways in which the bar has been defaced that has exasperated owners as they capped off an already dispiriting year.
Partners, a beloved midtown nightspot that has for years drawn both the younger and older sides of the LGBT+ community, was smeared with an assortment of food across 29 and 30 December.
The spate of “childish” attacks has jolted bar owners into tightening security, wary that current COVID-19 restrictions on bars – capping closing times to 11pm – is stoking violence among some disgruntled patrons or locals.
Owners shared photographs on social media of the front door smeared with blueberries, trailing down the walkway, coming just a night after they discovered vomit-like substance, believed to be soup, splashed on a vehicle parked outside, they local news outlet OKC.
Queer bar owner berates thug for ‘childish’ act of days-long vandalism
After combing local surveillance camera footage, owner John McAffrey said they had caught the culprit committing the acts but at the time of writing have chosen not to identify them, seeking legal counsel.
The blueberry bandit, he said, was driving an early 2000s Chevy Silverado. He explained that bartenders found “somebody vandalized one of the cars in the parking lot with apparently what was soup on it.”
But they arrived to similar scenes the following night, this time discovering blueberries splattered on the door. “It was everywhere,” McAffrey said.
“We first thought somebody got sick and then once we got closer, we realized that it was, it looks like blueberries.”
Security camera footage seen by McAffrey showed, he said, the suspect pulling up alongside the bar in their car: “‘They pull up, throw it out the window, slow down for probably like ten seconds.
“It was completely childish,” McAffrey added, noting that because of the defacing, he has hired a security guard to patrol the parking lot to ensure bargoers’ safety.
“There’s better ways to handle something if it is targeted at a certain individual but it’s not going to stop us for continuing and having somewhere safe for everyone in the community to come to.”