Bill Cosby still eats free here: landmark diner continues to honour comedian

WASHINGTON – There’s an old diner in the U.S. capital that’s as beloved for its chili dogs as it is for its survival, having withstood calamitous riots and economic lean years.

Now it’s standing by a famous customer.

Bill Cosby has been eating at Ben’s Chili Bowl for over a half-century. In fact, he’s part of the decor. A huge mural outside has his face on it; the wall inside has his photos up; and there’s a sign behind the cash register that says he eats for free.

That won’t change with a string of sexual-assault allegations.

The owners say they have no plans to scrub Cosby off the walls or the sign behind the cash that says, “People who eat free: Bill Cosby. President Obama/Family. And no one else.”

“He has been part of our family for many, many years,” says Vida Ali, who helps run the business founded by her Trinidadian-born father-in-law, Ben Ali. “(The family) knew him back when he was dating Camille, before he was a celebrity…

“He’s family — that’s the best way to put it.”

A few blocks away, the guys behind the counter at a cellphone store were a little less deferential as they gossiped this week about the Ben’s mural.

Both agreed it should come down. One said Cosby has always elicited mixed emotions in the black community: “I can’t say I like seeing him go through this. But he spent a lot of years telling everyone else how to live.”

What he’s going through is a public repudiation — with several tour dates cancelled, a TV project scrubbed, and some schools withdrawing honours they’d bestowed on a man often called America’s favourite dad. His reputation has been shaken by allegations from multiple women, which he denies, that he drugged and assaulted them.

But the bond with Ben’s runs deep.

Cosby’s life story and that of the eatery are intertwined, dating back to 1958. That’s the year it opened on the bustling U Street thoroughfare through an African-American neighbourhood, sometimes described as “The Black Broadway.”

Jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday played the Lincoln Theater next door — and a number of them would drop by to eat after a show.

Another early customer was a young hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy, one William Cosby. In those days, while travelling with the Navy in the segregated south, there were places he couldn’t eat — but he was a regular at Ben’s in the years he was posted around Washington, D.C.

He came here on dates with his future wife, Camille.

Eventually, Cosby played the Lincoln Theater, too. He would joke about the theatre name, calling it a strange choice to honour a president assassinated in a theatre.

Years later, Cosby described how he would scarf down six of the diner’s signature half-smokes in a single sitting. That’s a half-dozen jumbo hot dogs slathered in chili, cheese and onions.

“In the ’50s there was no such thing as cholesterol. People just keeled over, and you died peacefully. Your friends said, ‘His time was up,’” Cosby told the Tom Joyner Morning Show in 2009, in an interview following the death of Ben Ali.

Cosby explained that when he later played benefits and fundraisers in town, he would send for half-smokes instead of eating the rubber chicken like other guests.

In 1985, he held a news conference in the diner to discuss the smash success of “The Cosby Show.” A few months ago, he attended the opening of a Ben’s branch in Virginia and quipped that he might be buried in the nearby Arlington National Cemetery — so that his ghost wouldn’t have to fly all the way to U Street for chili dogs.

That street went through rough times.

It was the epicenter of deadly riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Scores of businesses were burned, destroyed, and fled. The trail of destruction was visible for decades, with the charred remains of abandoned buildings blighting the neighbourhood.

But Ben’s survived.

The owner, Ali, scribbled the words, “Soul Brother,” in the window. Looters left the place alone, and it continued serving food not only to residents of the neighbourhood but also the authorities who made hundreds of arrests.

“The rioters passing by, breaking windows, throwing things, the two things they did not bother was the Lincoln Theater and Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Cosby recalled.

“So Ben’s meant a lot… It’s a great family and a great story.”

The neighbourhood has undergone an economic revival. It was helped, in part, by a new municipal building placed there by Marion Barry — who is remembered outside D.C. for his scandals but whose death Ben’s mourned this week with a poster in the front window.

Around the building, in the alley, a mural was put up as part of a community project to cover graffiti with art. It includes several faces, and Cosby’s has the most visible spot, near the front.

Vida Ali marvels at how the neighbourhood’s $25,000 homes of the early 1980s now fetch over US$1 million. The boarded-up buildings have been replaced with hipster bars and antique shops.

Ali said many of the old regulars from the neighbourhood have sold their homes and moved away — taking a piece of the neighbourhood’s historical character with them.

The crowd at Ben’s is a bit whiter now. Many are directed to the diner by travel guides. Barack Obama made a stop there upon being elected president, as a symbolic rite of passage.

Obama is on the mural, right next to Cosby.

A column in the Washington Post last weekend said it was unnerving to see the comedian’s face there now. Clinton Yates wrote that Ben’s is a landmark in its own right and, at this point, it doesn’t benefit from its association with Cosby.

But the family would rather not comment on the allegations. Vida Ali said the Cosby she knows is the same beloved performer who attends to every last request for a picture, autograph or chat.

“He’s generous to all. He’s so kind,” Ali said.

“I don’t know that other side… It’s (about) who he was to us all those years — that’s the message.”