Sixth Street's Lebanese 2000

Mike Yassine Enterprises was downtown Austin's largest nightclub operator until a 2012 bust sent three brothers and several associates to prison

After the 1933 repeal of Prohibition, the majority of liquor stores and bars on East Sixth and Red River Streets were owned by Lebanese-Americans. Twin brothers Theodore and Arthur Jabour opened a package store on East Sixth that served as the foundation for the Twin Liquors empire of almost 100 stores in Central Texas today. Their main competition was from the Attal brothers Wolfred and Gus, whose A&A Drugs across the street engaged in alcohol price wars with the Jabours. But that was only business. The sets of brothers were part of a bigger family that remains tight-knit and influential. (Wolfred is the grandfather of C3’s Charles Attal.)

Owned by Lebanese-American Joe J. Joseph, the JJJ Tavern, also known as “the Triple Hook” was where Esther’s Follies is today.

The Sabb family owned the Diamond Bar, next door to the Ritz on Sixth Street, where Gene Snowden began performing in the ‘40s, with the great guitarist Curly Top Clayton. The Diamond stage was six-feet high so the musicians could keep playing during fights. As evidenced by Austin’s Original Hillbilly Poet, a 2008 reissue of a 1970 home recording, Snowden was a lyricist of humor and pathos. “I’m the son of a railroad bum, with a one-track mind” he sang on the LP opener. But Snowden was just one of the first Austin songwriting talents whose voice didn’t give him much of a career, which contributed to alcohol use that further kept him down. (Listen to Snowden’s “Cool drink of Water.”)

Land and liquor were paths to prosperity for the original Lebanese settlers, who started coming to Austin in the 1880s to avoid being drafted into the Turkish army. Catholic and patriotic, the growing clan would camp out overnight at Zilker Park to claim large sections of picnic tables on Easter and the Fourth of July.

Though they held power in the fields of entertainment, fashion, real estate, retail, and politics, if anybody called the Josephs and the Attals “the Lebanese Mafia,” that was just a joke.

That tag would, decades later, better fit Mike Yassine Enterprises, led by a trio of Lebanese brothers- none U.S. citizens- who dominated the Sixth Street entertainment district from 2000 until a federal bust in 2012 sent ringleader Hussein Ali “Mike” Yassine and several associates to prison. With little interest in assimilating into Texas culture, the brash clubowners from the Middle East drove Hummers and tried to one-up each other in garish choices, like the shark that swam under the see-through dancefloor of Qua. The Yassines had a reputation for thuggish behavior, like in 1999 when they reneged on a deal to split the door with an independent promoter who packed Treasure Island with DJ Mark E. Quark. That confrontation over $2,000 turned violent.

They especially had a hard-on for Element at 5th and Lavaca, where Lebanese cousins Salim Salem and Jason Najjar pumped $2 million into the former Vreeland Graphics building and drew about 1,600 (at $10 a head) each weekend night. The Yassines countered with Chrome, boasting a $300,000 sound system. “Our club is the best Austin’s ever seen,” Hadi Yassine told Chris Riemenscheider of the Statesman in 2000. “Chrome is 10 times better than Element.”

Citing lies on liquor license applications, plus a preponderance of underage drinking, the TABC tried to shut down most of the group’s nine clubs, including Treasure Island, Pure, Spill, Kiss & Fly, Platinum X, Chrome and Hyde. But it took a five-year investigation of cocaine distribution by the FBI to move Yassine associates from Dirty Sixth to federal prisons. The feds charged that Yassine’s nightclubs were fronts to launder drug money. Fans of Neflix series Ozark can tell you how that works.

Paresh Patel, who co-owned several clubs with Mike Yassine, was reportedly murdered by the Texas Syndicate and buried under what is now the Buda HEB.

Mike Yassine received the longest sentence- 12 1/2 years for cocaine distribution and money laundering, with three years later tacked on for tax fraud. His brothers Hadi Yassine and Mohammed Ali “Steve” Yassine, received five and one-year sentences, respectively, followed by deportation to the Ivory Coast, the largest Lebanese diaspora community in West Africa.

The feds’ entire case was built on flipping the Yassines’ cousin Mohammed “Mo” Yassine in 2007, paying him $4,000 a month as an informant for the next five years. Defense attorneys argued that cousin Mo instigated the illegal transactions with FBI money. But he wore a wire which recorded Mike Yassine discussing how he planned to launder drug money through his clubs. Mo gave him cash in return for checks from Yassine Enterprises. Hadi Yassine’s Famous Vodka beverage company was seeded with $100,000 of drug money, an IRS agent testified.

Mike Yassine was also named a person of interest in the 2000 disappearance of Paresh Patel, his partner in the Azucar, Metro and Malagia nightclubs. Paresh, 36, known as “the Jerry Jones of Sixth Street” for his penchant for attention, as well as his business acumen, was last seen making collection rounds at those clubs on the afternoon of Sept. 25, 2000. His Lexus SUV was found that night on Airport Boulevard with the keys in the ignition.

Patel’s family owned motels in Alabama, but as a 22-year-old new Austinite, Paresh went into the dry cleaning business, buying Oxford Cleaners in 1986. His first club was Escape on Riverside and Congress in 1992. The liquor license was revoked in ‘95 when the club was caught refilling top shelf liquor bottles with cheaper booze. After that, Patel put liquor licenses in the names of associates, but that ruse was discovered after he went missing.

A member of the Texas Syndicate gang testified that they’d killed Patel and buried him in the foundation of the HEB in Buda, which was under construction from May to December 2000. Yassine associate Alejandro Melendrez, convicted of selling cocaine to Mo Yassine, had ties to the Syndicate, said investigators. Patel has never been found.

Mike Yassine was never charged with Patel’s disappearance or another accusation, in March 2012, that he’d been sending thousands of dollars to a relative in Lebanon connected to the anti-American terrorist group Hezbollah. No one has ever been charged with Patel’s murder 22 years ago.

The Yassine DJ clubs could not be considered vital to the Austin music scene. They rarely even participated in SXSW. But many of this town’s legendary music venues, including the Vulcan Gas Company and the Armadillo World Headquarters leased their buildings from Lebanese-Americans. The Mohawk still does.

The Hages owned the building and the land where the Armadillo put Austin on the national music map from 1970 to 1980. M.K. Hage Jr., whose sister Lee was married to Houston super lawyer and University of Texas benefactor Joe Jamail, built the Medical Park Towers in the Sixties, so when a long-haired Eddie Wilson signed the lease for the Armadillo (at $500 a month) he did so in Hage Jr.’s plush office in the Towers. Hage Jr. wasn’t the most popular Austinite when he sold the land at 525 Barton Springs Road to a developer and the Armadillo was torn down in 1981 to make way for an office building.

Some may think that was a bigger crime than laundering money. But Statesman country music columnist Townsend Miller defended Hage, who had bent over backwards to help keep the Armadillo going as long as it did.

Business owners on Congress Avenue pressured Joe Dacy to evict the Vulcan Gas Company, which was getting bad press and constant police surveillance for its counterculture clientele. So Dacy showed up one night, unannounced, and decided there was nothing wrong with these hippies enjoying music in his building. As long as they paid their rent on time.

Read more about Austin’s Lebanese legacy.