The woman's shriek cut through the night, her voice breaking and echoing against empty storefronts.
"Help me! Help me! Fuck you!" she screamed, maybe at me, maybe at the few clusters of people strolling the upper blocks of Church Street in downtown Burlington on a recent Wednesday night.
Perhaps, like myself, the other people on the street had grown accustomed to such uncomfortable interactions with Burlington's homeless population. I kept my eyes forward with practiced discipline as I passed Ben & Jerry's and her distressed tones faded, but it was hard to miss her amid the other slumped figures sleeping rough in storefronts.
Despite what some cartoonishly shocked online commenters think, their presence isn't new. I've walked these streets countless times since I moved to Burlington in 2001. Before that, when I was a kid living in Underhill in the '80s, my folks brought me downtown all the time. I first saw a homeless person on Church Street when I was 8 years old; I bought a pencil from him.
But there's been a palpable edge downtown in recent years as homelessness and drug use have risen. As someone who spends a lot of time walking by myself at night, going from club to club, I've felt it steadily creeping in. Following an escalating curve of violence, August 24 brought things to a head with a fatal shooting in front of Red Square on lower Church Street.
Aaliyah Johnson, a 22-year-old from South Burlington, has been charged with the first-degree murder of Stowe's Teville Williams, 30. Security video from inside the bar shows Williams assaulting Johnson and grabbing her hair. As my Seven Days colleague Derek Brouwer reported, Johnson told a Burlington police officer after the shooting that she carried a gun downtown for her own protection and that she was "just tired of men putting their hands on [her]."
(Vermont has no laws specifically prohibiting firearms in bars, though Burlington passed one that was never approved by the state legislature.)
What does this latest episode of violence mean for nightlife in the Queen City? After a few weeks, it seemed like a good time to check the temperature and talk to some of the clubgoing — and club-owning — public.
"As we reopen, the safety of staff and patrons is paramount so we will be enhancing safety protocols," Red Square posted on social media five days after the shooting. "While we are still hurting, we look forward to opening tonight and continuing to be a place of positive energy and good times for this city that we all share and love."
I called and emailed Red Square staff for days, trying to get the vibe, but no one wanted to talk to a reporter. So I hauled my ass downtown on a Wednesday, which usually features a DJ residency at the club. Upper Church Street had ghost-town energy, but that feeling receded ever so slightly as I neared lower Church and encountered a group of students passing Leunig's Bistro & Café.
"Where you headed?" I asked them, eliciting a few weird looks that I was certainly prepared for. I quickly explained who I was and why I was asking.
"Einstein's," answered one of the students, a young woman with a Garfield T-shirt that read "I Hate Mondays." She was referring to the tap house just south of Main Street.
"Do you all feel safe downtown these days?" I asked the group.
"People are getting shot, so, uh, fuck no," another student responded, his face a study in incredulity.
"Only people from Vermont think this isn't safe," the woman with the Garfield tee pointed out. "It wasn't a homeless person who shot someone, by the way. If you want to go out in Boston, you know to keep your head on a swivel. That's just life."
"It gets shitty on this block. It doesn't feel as sketchy near the Needs," another member of the pack said, nodding to Pearl Street's Three Needs taproom.
That sentiment definitely worries owners of bars located on lower Church and Main, especially Ed Maier, one of Nectar's owners. He and the Main Street club's general manager, Tyler Nettleton, recently spoke with me about what they're observing downtown. While weekend attendance at the club hasn't changed, they said, midweek shows are hurting.
"I grew up here," Maier said. "And, no, it wasn't always like this. There used to be free shows on Wednesdays at Nectar's, and there would be 150 people there. I started that practice up again when I took over a few years ago, but it just doesn't work. People aren't coming down on those nights. They don't want to deal with the violence and the needles and the homeless everywhere."
Maier pointed out that the giant, rotating Nectar's sign above his club is one of the area's best-known and beloved landmarks.
"There are people sleeping beneath it every morning," he said. "No one wants to take a picture or share it to social media. There's a real danger that this block could be deserted."
Maier isn't just speaking from a place of fear but from institutional experience. Though he wasn't the owner of Nectar's at the time, the storied establishment experienced gun violence in 2018, when a clubgoer named Rashad Nashid shot and seriously injured a bystander, Chelsi Parker, outside the club, following an inside altercation with two brothers. Nectar's staff had initially taken away Nashid's firearm but returned it to him before the shooting. The incident earned the club a rebuke from then-police chief Brandon del Pozo.
I thought about what Maier said as I reached Red Square. The block was largely empty, with only a few patrons sitting outside Akes' Place. Red Square was closed with no explanation, despite the trio of DJs scheduled to play that night. (Further attempts to contact the venue were unsuccessful.)
Crime notwithstanding, Wednesday nights have never been particularly busy at Red Square, so I didn't jump to conclusions. When I returned to the club the next day, it was open for business as usual with the residency of local indie band Frankie & the Fuse, which has been holding down Thursday nights at the club for more than a year.
"Nothing has really felt that different," front woman Frankie White said about the scene at Red Square post-shooting. She's a Colchester native who started busking on Church Street when she was 16. "Generally, I feel safe here," she continued. "At a certain point at night, things can get a little sketchy, sure. But that's downtown in general, not a Red Square thing."
Local drummer Steve Hadeka (Seth Yacovone Band, Matthew Mercury) was even more bullish when he posted to social media following a recent gig at the club. "Had a super fun gig at Red Square last night with the Full Cleveland!" he wrote. "Downtown Burlington felt alive, happy and thriving ... nothing but good vibes and zero sketchiness."
Other clubs I contacted, such as Vermont Comedy Club and the 126 — both removed from Church Street — reported being largely unaffected by growing crime and homelessness.
"I bought all of the staff pepper spray for their personal use like a year ago, but no one has ever had to use it," comedy club co-owner Natalie Miller told me. "We also keep Narcan on hand but have never had to use it," she added, referring to the overdose-reversal nasal spray.
But Nettleton, who joined Nectar's after working security for Red Square and Mr. Mike's Pizza, sees plenty of sketchiness.
"I definitely feel less safe than in previous years," Nettleton said, revealing that he had a gun pointed at him in 2019 when he was working the door at SideBar, next to Mr. Mike's. "It was shocking at the time, and I've been around guns my whole life. Things like that are happening more and more."
Nettleton said he and his security team at Nectar's are adapting to the rise in violence.
"We're going to have to search bags and jackets more now, because you never know who's going to be a problem these days," he said. "Nectar's has a reputation as a place that promotes peace and love, and we try to embody that. But we also need to keep our patrons and staff safe, so it's a balancing act."
It's something he and Maier are increasingly concerned about as they're gearing up to reopen the club above Nectar's, previously called Club Metronome. Though they're keeping the details to themselves for the time being, they revealed that they plan to open the club in October.
"We've spent months and months renovating upstairs," Maier said. "If people are too scared to come down[town], it's obviously going to be a huge issue for us."
For White, as bad as the headlines have been lately, she doesn't feel much has changed when it comes to playing downtown shows.
"The whole thing with this area is that it's supposed to be a community where you can express yourself without fear, and once that's threatened, people are going to take notice and speak out," she said. "I totally get that. But as a band, there hasn't been anything close to preventing us from taking a gig."
So, in the wake of the shooting, the music plays on. For now.