Dead dog drama
There’s no doubt that No Name has neighbors who are upset about noise. Next-door neighbor James Lupo had approached the town board in 2012 to complain, and according to Carl King, who lives next to Lupo, the sound is so loud “they could probably hear it all the way up to Fisher Creek.”
But the folks at No Name are pretty sure that Drew Hooper, who is spearheading a petition against the bar’s existence, isn’t actually mad about the noise.
“I’ve had numerous customers come in and say it’s not about the noise. It’s about the dogs,” said Mary Harper, music booker and bar manager at No Name. She and her two teenagers live across the street, and the sound doesn’t bother them, she said.
Hooper, who lives across the street and up the hill from No Name, owns 11 hunting dogs. He hadn’t lost one to traffic in 30 years, he said, but in the past three he’s had three killed. He blames No Name.
“He had a good nose, and whenever the wind would blow from that place over there, it was just like ringing the dinner bell,” Hooper said of Wiggles, a feist who got run over in December 2014.
Hooper — who, until recently, did not have a fence to contain his dogs, despite the fact that town ordinance says dogs must be contained on their owner’s property — said that since No Name moved in, his dogs have been fixated on going over there to eat the trash. He believes owner Gregg Fuller should have barricaded his dumpster to keep that from happening.
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So, when Wiggles got run over, Hooper was angry.
“I went over and picked him up off the side of the road, and I was mad,” Hooper said.
That much was evident to Chip Govan, a No Name regular who lives about a quarter mile up Skyland Drive and was at the bar that night.
“All of a sudden, this older man comes in, and he just starts screaming, yelling at the top of his voice being extremely vulgar. He used profanity a lot and he was threatening,” Govan said.
“It took me a while to realize, but he had this small little dog,” Govan added. “It was bleeding all over him, he was bleeding all over the floor.”
It was a calm night at the bar, no music and only about a half a dozen people inside, another six outside, Govan said. Unsure of what Hooper was capable of, he followed him out to the patio, where he approached a group sitting by the fire.
“He starts just yelling at them as well, F-U to everyone, he’s going to get the place shut down,” Govan recalled.
Hooper punched the glass on the door leading outside so hard, Govan said, he was shocked it didn’t shatter all over Hooper’s fist. Then, “he started taking chairs and throwing them with one hand. He’s still holding the dog the entire time.”
“I probably went in there too mad,” Hooper admits, and he’s open about the fact that he’s still mad about the dog. But he also maintains that the noise is a problem.
“I just said, ‘Get rid of the noise and that will take care of the trash,’” he said. “I was mad about the noise a way long time ago anyway.”
Fuller, meanwhile, said the problem does not primarily lie with him.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do to make the man happy,” he said of Hooper. “He’s just flat after me.”
