Everybody’s Welcome – A Talk With Tabu

I’m learning that Septa is good for screwing with your plans. Thanks to a backed-up train, I was running late to a meeting with Jeffrey Sotland of Tabu Lounge & Sports Bar to talk about Philly Black Pride’s upcoming event, Black Friday. Seven minutes after our scheduled time, I finally arrived. I didn’t get to enjoy the beautiful temperature of a sunny day as much as I would have liked, but I was received warmly by the staff and Sotland, himself. I enjoyed the sports bar ambiance and an informative conversation about Tabu’s owner, what makes Tabu special, and the new event with Philly Black Pride.

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PBP After doing a little digging, I’ve seen on your Facebook profile that you’re originally from Newburgh, New York. When did you move to Philly and why?

JS I moved to Philly February 15, 2005 for a job at a law firm.

PBP What did the transition look like moving into being part owner of Tabu?

JS Back in 2004/2005, my brother who is a caterer in New York City had just opened a wine bar in Ingelwood, NJ and suggested that we look at something down here because it was much less expensive for rent. We looked for about a year for a space and we ended up opening up Mikey’s Bar & Grill up in West Philly next to Drexel University. We then had an opportunity. Our liquor attorney represented the building owner at what was once Sal’s back at 200 S. 12th street. We then opened it up as Tabu with the hope that a sports bar would find its legs in the gayborhood. I had asked, personally as the commissioner of the gay softball league in town, every bar owner to start showing games and nobody wanted to. So I decided that we’re just going to open up our own sports bar.

So we opened up Tabu and realized that people wanted something more than a sports bar. They wanted a performance space because there really wasn’t a very good performance space in the neighborhood for the smaller shows. And that’s how Tabu kinda turned into the dual space that it was back then. And as it grew, we grew out of our space. And the realities of not owning our own building forced us out of our space. We worked out a deal to stay there many years and then we had the opportunity to buy this building [at 254 S. 12th Street].

PBP You’ve mentioned being the softball commissioner and I know anyone who finds you on Facebook will see that your profile immediately screams “baseball”. Do you find that you’ve successfully married your love of sports with your business with Tabu?

JS I don’t know that you’re ever gonna get there because there’s still so much to do in engaging people in the sports aspect. We’ve engaged with every LGBT sports league in the city. We’ve also engaged a lot of leagues that are not LGBT that just want a space that’s more welcoming because they have some members who are LGBT. They’ve all made this…not necessarily their home, but a point where they like to come and hang out. It’s a great space, I believe. It’s got a lot of different spaces within it that gives everybody a bit of what they want.

PBP It’s been noted in an article by Philly Voice – and you even mentioned it before – that you felt you outgrew the smaller space of the old Tabu. The new space was previously iCandy, and its owner, Darryl DePiano’s, repeated use of a racial slur in a viral video put it in hot water. Do you think that contributed to the sale of this space to Tabu?

JS Yes. I believe that when the business dropped significantly and there was such an outcry for new ownership, Darryl saw an opportunity. We saw a very big opportunity. And through an intermediary we had approached Darryl without him knowing it was us. Quite frankly, he said he didn’t care who it was. He was happy to sell and be out of Philadelphia and look at other opportunities.

PBP Have you noticed any hesitation on the part of the community when you first announced moving into this space with its history?

JS Yes, I’ve heard everything from “It’s bad karma” to “It’s got a bad vibe” and I threw that all out the window for a variety of reasons. One is: I think that the people both who work for us and the people who are our customers and friends make the vibe and make the building what it is. It’s just a bunch of material. Also, this building has a history that dates back well before it was iCandy when it was Equus, Hepburn’s, and 12th Air Command. So, iCandy unfortunately was a six – seven year period of time, and it might not have been a very good period of time, but not everybody has a winning season so to speak.

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“Don’t look at somebody across the bar and say, ‘Well, you don’t really belong here’. Everybody belongs here.”

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PBP In the same article, you’re quoted as saying “Our goal is to have a diverse crowd that wants to have fun”. Do you think you’ve reached that goal?

JS I don’t know that you ever reach that goal. And the reason is because we get emails where something happened [where people will say] “I don’t feel safe in your building” or “I don’t feel comfortable because…”. And a lot of times it is a misunderstanding. [On-site] it’s hard to engage somebody in a meaningful discussion where they’re feeling threatened or unsafe and you have loud music playing and things like that. Every week, we’re dealing with a situation where something may have happened. And it’s not a connected incident. So it’s not as if we have people coming in here intending to do people harm, we just have differences of opinion or disagreements or misunderstandings. And we’re always working to facilitate better understandings. We’re about to embark on new staff training for implicit bias and things to that effect.

Do I believe that we have a very diverse crowd? I believe that we have the most diverse crowd in the neighborhood, if not, the whole city. I think that we have to continue to do more events that cater to a diverse crowd and I think we do.

PBP I’ve noticed that Tabu has always seemed to be more welcoming of people of color. What is it about this brand that’s different from the others to make that so?

JS I don’t know. I absolutely don’t know. I don’t think we’re doing anything special, so to me that tells me that somebody else is doing something wrong. We’ve never opened the doors and said “Hey we want to be the bar for queer people of color”, we opened the doors and said “Everybody’s welcome”. When I had my first meeting with our staff back in 2010, when we first opened, I said to them “Everybody’s welcome here. It doesn’t matter who they are. If we become the number one bar for little people in the city of Philadelphia, we will cut our bar down to make them more comfortable. Why? Because we’re going to cater to our clientele. That’s what you do. So don’t look at somebody across the bar and say, ‘Well, you don’t really belong here’. Everybody belongs here.” And that was really pummeled into every employee by our first general manager, Freddy Shelley.

PBP While there’s no shortage of Black club promoters, there’s certainly no Black-owned LGBT bars or clubs that I know of in the area. If there are any potential future Black LGBT club owners out there, What are the difficulties of not only launching a new bar, but of remaining successful throughout the years?

JS The City of Philadelphia. Flat out.  It is the hardest city to do business in. Nobody will help you. Nobody has a game plan from the perspective of the city on how to help you. It is always an obstacle. And your neighbors – I understand people want quiet at night, but they’re living in the city. And they have to understand that they’ve chosen to move next to a bar. But, it is a constant challenge.

PBP You’ve recently done some renovations to the back bar. What’s new?

JS So, we’ve ripped out the world’s ugliest coat check. We have turned it into a room that is designed to be very friendly for the Eagles. It’s green and a very light silver for the Eagles colors. We’ve installed two new TVs and a new sound system in the back area. So, we can now have a very, very significant duality of games up front on the first floor, games in the back on the first floor, and two sounds systems for showing games with two different commentators. We can host smaller groups back here. We also have the roof deck upstairs that shows the games and we’re in the process of designing a new dance floor. So, that’s the next step.

PBP Tabu and Philly Black Pride have teamed up to create Black Friday starting this Friday, September 13th. We’re excited to break in the new space with a fun event like this. What are your hopes for this event?

JS Our hopes are really to bring more people out. One of the problems that I had heard – and I admittedly did not understand the comments, and I had to do a lot of listening when the incident took place at iCandy – was people don’t feel safe in the neighborhood. And I said, “Well, you have Tabu. Why isn’t that safe?” They said, “Because iCandy’s a block away.” And I said, “But you’re not going to iCandy.” And they said, “That doesn’t matter. It’s not a safe area for us.” So, the goal is to really revitalize the neighborhood by bringing more people into it; making it a more welcoming environment without having this problem hanging over our heads that this used to be the iCandy building. From our perspective, we’d like to just get past that, but it just keeps coming up. So it’s okay. We’re okay with that.

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A lot of great things are in store for Tabu including various drag performances from the stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Dragula. During OutFest there will be an outdoor viewing of the Eagles game on a big screen at the new building and a dance party down at the old Tabu building.

Until then, you can enjoy partying with Philly Black Pride at the newly revamped back bar area during Black Friday starting this Friday, September 13. A portion of the proceeds go to our scholarship fund, so you can drink to a good cause. We’ll see you there!