JL Beers & Vinyl Taco return to business after riots

Both businesses were damaged at the hands of rioters.

FARGO, N.D. — Of all the damage caused on Saturday in downtown Fargo, businesses located on 1st Avenue North between Broadway and 4th Street North seemed to have suffered the worst of it.

That includes JL Beers and Vinyl Taco; two popular restaurants that were vandalized at the hands of rioters.

“Rocks were thrown through our front windows,” said the owner of both restaurants Lance Thorson. “At JL Beers, we had a lot more looting going on here and people taking chairs out and throwing them into Hotel Donaldson glass. People stealing bottles of beer, opening up the tap lines and just letting them run.”

Thorson said that trying to pick up the pieces in the wake of Saturday night has been hard, but that the team at both places haven’t wasted any time trying to get things back to normal for their customers.

“We boarded those up late Saturday night,” said Thorson. “We have glass ordered so that will be in on Thursday. Come Thursday, hopefully it looks how it always did and we can move on and just look forward to the future.”

The one silver lining to the pain caused by this weekend’s events has been the way the community has responded.

At this point, things hardly look different in downtown then they did before Saturday and that is because of how many people took the time to clean up the aftermath.

“The community as a whole has come together through all of this and has helped us to clean up downtown. I would say by 9 a.m. everything outside was cleaned up,” said Thorson. “Even officers were out here. They had worked twenty four hours. They were out here Sunday morning, some of them still in riot gear picking up garbage. It kind of chokes you up thinking about.”

Thorson said the best way for people to help the businesses recover at this point is to visit both restaurants, order food and purchase gift cards. Vinyl Taco opened on Monday and JL Beers is opening on Tuesday.