The centrality of the Kuwaiti male guestrooms (sing. diwaniyya; pl. diwaniyyat or dawaween) to the livelihood of its citizens is unquestionable; these parlors are simultaneously markers of success, places of sociability, and the very sites that can personalize the distributive apparatuses of the rentier state. Yet, on April 6, 2008, visiting and hosting was disrupted for an unknown number of dawaween across every district in Kuwait City as the Committee to Remove Irregularities on State Property launched its campaign to raze those guestrooms that it deemed to be in violation of the Public Property Law. Although this prospect had been vehemently debated in the National Assembly before its eventual dissolution, what was referred to in local parlance as the “diwaniyya demolitions” proceeded amidst passionate popular scrutiny as municipality teams dismantled thousands of these establishments built without censure for decades on government land. By November of 2010, it was estimated that 13,000 dawaween had been destroyed, and this sum only includes those guestrooms officially razed by the municipality and not the ones voluntarily removed by owners who elected to avoid the whole spectacle altogether. The objective of this paper is to analyze the consequences and repercussions that have ensued in the wake of this unprecedented display of executive authority in Kuwait. Presumably, the casualties of this enforcement include the immeasurable elements of the civic framework: dispossessed hosts stripped of their guests, clients bereft of patronage, as well as political aspirants and current officeholders deprived of an essential channel between themselves and the general populace. In the words of one woman who was asked about the impacts of these removals: “Where will these people meet now? Are they supposed to meet in the streets?” The first section of this presentation will provide a general overview of the dawaween in Kuwait City to contextualize the impact of these demolitions within the broader societal fabric of the country. Next, an introduction to the Public Property Law and its unexpected implementation will be presented to show the debates that surrounded the law and why it became such a contentious issue in the early months of 2008. Finally, the last segment will explore the implications of the Public Property Law, with particular attention given to how it brought to light Kuwaiti hadhar conceptions that this whole episode was just another example of their badu neighbors engaging in civil disobedience.