Do you have an account with Chase? Do you want a free meal? Well, if you get rid of the former, Stefan Mollman will give you the latter. Mollman, the owner of Central District bar the Twilight Exit, is trying to kill two birds with one stone: drum up some publicity for his business and stick it to the lender that he says has him “by the short hairs.” “I want to hurt them,” he says of the bank.It all started when Mollman bought his house four years ago. Even though the bubble hadn’t yet burst, it was still hard, he says, for a self-employed dude like himself to get a line of credit.So his broker came up with a solution: get a stated loan. That is, forget about waiting for your taxes and just tell Chase how much money you make. Did you know Chase bank has a furry dog for a mascot? If you punch him in the stomach, Twilight Exit’s owner will buy you a dinette set.A vanguard of the wild-eyed times because it let bubble-mad speculators inflate their salaries, stated loans aren’t nearly as prevalent now that the real-estate world has sobered up. But back then Mollman saw it as one of his only options.Flash forward to today. Mollman, like a lot of homeowners, wants to refinance. With record-low interest rates, he bets even a conservative drop will save him an extra grand a month seeing as how his vig is currently 7.75 percent.The only thing standing in his way, he says, is Chase.Since February he says he’s cleared one obstacle after another thrown at him by the bank.First, he says, Chase secretly lowered his line of credit — the lifeline of any small business owner. Mollman had just moved the bar, so he was maxed out on his cards. As a result, Chase was able to tell him that his credit rating wasn’t good enough to qualify.”So I said fine; got that fixed. But then they come back and tell me my credit is too good.”Mollman would clear a hurdle, he says, only to find another, even stranger one in his path. Like the forms.Chase, he says, would send him these pre-filled-out forms. All he had to do was sign. So sign he did. And just to be safe, Mollman sent the forms back by fax, e-mail, snail mail — any form of communication he could think of.”And then they say they’re not legible. I’m thinking, ‘All I did was sign. How can a signature not be legible?'”The most recent Kafka-esque moment, says Mollman, came when he received this latest letter from Chase. It said that he couldn’t refinance until his home had a real-estate listing.Mollman got a Chase rep on the phone and point blank asked him, “Does my bank want me to list my home for sale?””And he says, ‘I don’t know. You just have to get the listing.'”After circling such a surreal drain for six months, Mollman said he finally got fed up. (A sentiment shared, it should be noted, by Bliss Soaps, a former Capitol Hill shop that says a Chase error put them in a financial squeeze they couldn’t shake.)He was watching customers pay with cards furnished by the company he felt was trying to screw him, all in the name of keeping a little extra of his money every month. It’s illegal to offer free booze to entice customers. But free meat? Fair game.”If someone wants a steak dinner,” he says. “I will feed them.”(H/T: Capitol Hill Blog)