Skip to main contentYou wouldn't guess that Helena's Place sells a lot of French cognac. The low-slung bar and restaurant sits on a dust-blasted industrial stretch of Northeast Columbia Boulevard, flanked by heavy-equipment lots.
But Helena's trade in Hennessy cognac is at issue in the bar's heated battle with state booze regulators, who want to cancel its license in the wake of a fatal stabbing and other incidents. According to the Portland cop most closely involved, some problems spring from the working-class bar's decision to sling the toasty brown-red brandy distilled in southwestern France since 1765.
"It may sound funny," says Officer John Laws, a former gang-intelligence officer who now keeps tabs on licensed premises north of Burnside Street. "But certain drinks just become trendy in certain circles."
Hennessy and rival brands like Courvoisier are icons of hip-hop fashion. As far back as the classic 1990 Digital Underground single "The Humpty Dance," MC Shock G promised to "drink up all the Hennessy you got on your shelf."
Given the brandy's popularity with African Americans, Helena's owner Cindy Davison-Harmsen, who is white, and manager LeRue Edwards, who is black, interpreted Laws' comments as implicitly racist.
"They said, 'Stop serving this stuff and they'll be gone,'" recalls Edwards. "I told Cindy, 'They don't want you to have a black club. It's that simple.'"
Helena's tangle with authorities came to a head this spring, after a man named Aaron Allen Crews was murdered March 20. (Crews' family is suing the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and Helena's; meanwhile, the bar remains open while appealing the license revocation.) But the tavern has been in official cross hairs since shortly after Davison-Harmsen, a former cosmetics sales rep, bought it in 2002.
Davison-Harmsen inherited a mixed clientele: by day, old-timers and workers, both white and black; a largely African-American crowd by night. After Helena's added DJs on weekend nights, law enforcement zeroed in, saying the club was attracting gang members.
In the spring of 2002, Davison-Harmsen and Edwards--a corrections officer with gang-enforcement experience--sat down with OLCC and Portland police to talk over the club's perceived problems.
Laws noted that other North Portland establishments had solved gang problems by pulling Hennessy and other cognacs off the shelf--in particular, the Pop-A-Top, a strip club also on Northeast Columbia. He suggested Helena's follow suit.
Sharon Harrison, the Pop-A-Top's longtime manager, backs Laws' advice.
"People drink that stuff and it's like they get 'super hero' written on their chests," Harrison says. She adds that killing cognac was her club's idea, not a suggestion from cops or the OLCC.
Helena's, on the other hand, refused to drop Hennessy--in part, Edwards says, because it's so popular. According to OLCC stats, statewide sales of Hennessy products are up 10 percent since 2002. (Courvoisier, though its total sales are much smaller than Hennessy's, logged a 37 percent leap in that time.) Overall, cognac sales rose 5.4 percent in the last two years.
"We were going through two and a half cases a week," Edwards says. "That's what the customers wanted."
Helena's may still serve cognac, but it has ended dance-club nights and curtailed its hours. A hearing date for the bar's OLCC appeal has not yet been set.
WWeek 2015