Last night we brought my (gay) brother who is visiting from NYC to Knock for dinner. Drinks were great. Food sucked. Oh well.

Cool...thanks for clearing that up for me. In my thread I was vague as I was not sure where it was as I was only there once. I appreciate your response.

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"Love your neighbor; yet don't pull down your hedge."
-Benjamin Franklin

[quote=Valley Twin;585626][quote=thunda;585503]None at all? I understand that nightlife becomes less important to people as they age and settle down, but never to out ever? I see MarketStEl at Bump, Pure, and other places, and I think he's older than you.
Your are sooooo right it does all depend on the person. I am 53 and the last gay bar I was in was Bump in July 07 when I was up in Philly for two weeks visiting. The only reason I was there was to see my friend of 40 years who works there.

I have been with my lover for 31 years and we seldom go to clubs as our priorities have changed. Perhaps if we were back in Philly it would be different.

I guess my speed today would be more like the Entertainers Club (aka Louisa's) that use to be on Snake Alley in AC back in the days when New York Avenue was popular, but that is a whole other thread...LOL

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"Love your neighbor; yet don't pull down your hedge."
-Benjamin Franklin

"None at all? I understand that nightlife becomes less important to people as they age and settle down, but never to out ever?"

I only go out to eat in restaurants now which I do quite a lot. Plus I don't drink alcohol so
that lessens any interest. I attend lots of concerts(dance, music).

In the 90s/early 00s there was just
a lot of other stuff going on in my life which ended my involvement with gay
nightlife. I didn't like that fact at all but there was very little that I could
do about it. Family responsibilities took over.

Since I was away from the "gay scene", as it were, for so long, even though now I have
the time, it's simply no longer important to me. Additionally a lot of gay friends
I made back in the 80s(including my ex partner) no longer live in the Phila. area.

"You should check out Knock, the new bar/restaurant at 12th and Locust. It's a "dignified" gay bar with real food and classy decor. "

It sounds rather like the old Backstage(the food was always great) which I liked A LOT. So I may check it out!

Knock's drinks/bar may be alright, but stay very far away from the food. It may not be completely the chef's fault. Mgt may be forcing him to buy supplies from the street stands in Chinatown :P.

Agreed. Except I wouldn't be so kind to the chef. The food we had at Knock the other night was horrendous. And at least in the case of our particular three dinners (all 3 entrees as well as all 3 appetizers), I really don't know how one could blame the ingredients.

The queen of Halloween, Henri David, is still around, as is his shop of the same name at Juniper and Pine. I'm not sure that his annual Halloween party is quite as big as it was a few years ago, but it's still one of the biggest tickets in town on that night (or the Saturday closest to it--I forget which night it's on).

Again, all the places you mention in this installment of the Walk Down Memory Lane are defunct. A new condominium incorporating the Western Union Building next door is nearing completion on the site of the Savoy (thank Thomas Jefferson University for this: they bought the Savoy and the WU building, demolished the former, and sold both properties to a developer after deciding against building a parking garage there, thank God), and the Hasty Tasty -- which had become the Duck Soup Deli by the time I arrived here and later morphed into the Cheap Art Cafe; the service and the food both remained indifferent throughout this entire time period -- closed for good about five years ago. The space it occupied in the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows headquarters currently stands gutted; persistent rumors have the owners of the former Where Else Cafe (which had been in the Central Apartments at 11th and Spruce until fire destroyed that building) opening something here, but there hasn't been any visible work on the space for several months (metal wall studs were installed early this past spring). The club crowd's spot of choice for after-hours dining is now the Midtown II at 11th and Sansom, the sole remaining all-night eatery in the immediate vicinity, though the 13th Street Pizzeria around the corner from Pure, across the street from Woody's and a half block from Sisters and Key West, also gets plenty of business at closing time.

(Hmmm...I just realized after typing this that we've gone from three 24-hour diners in the Gayborhood to one and an almost-all-night pizza joint. Maybe it's a side effect of the double whammy of AIDS and aging Baby Boomers, but I guess there may be something to all this talk about how the nightlife in the Gayborhood was better back when. I still prefer to think that it's mainly because we're spending the money we used to spend on partying in restaurants instead. )

Sisters is the successor to Hepburn's, which followed Equus and preceded 12th Air Command in that space. Hepburn's, in turn, inherited the lesbian-bar mantle from Sneakers. It's located in the building that for years housed Frankie Bradley's steak house, known as Hesch's in its last years.

Well, I don't know if I'd call it great food, but it was--and still is--certainly at least decent. Pennsylvania's liquor laws are one of the big reasons why just about all the bars serve food -- and those that don't make a show of it from time to time. In order to sell liquor by the drink on Sundays in this state, a licensed establishment must derive at least 30% of its total revenue from the sale of food. I don't know how aggressively the PLCB enforces this provision of the liquor code, but the fact that Uncles trots out a menu every so often and the Bike Stop sometimes has a hot dog grill in the sports bar suggests to me that at minimum, they insist that the bars pay this rule lip service.

Key West took a different approach to satisfying this requirement: the current management (Mel Heifetz, my former landlord, sold it several years back; the only bar he owns now is Sisters) installed a Broaster Chicken take-out shop in what had been the coat check room.

Bill Wood never played kingmaker in the way your question above implies, and he still doesn't. I heard the allegations of Mob influence too, and while one of the things that surprised me about Philadelphia's gay bars after moving here was that their owners were by and large identifiable individuals who were known in and to the community, and were in most cases themselves openly gay, I can't dismiss those rumors as unfounded out of hand -- you can't be sure that identifiable individual isn't a front or doesn't do business with organized crime in some way. However, most of the better known owners, such as Woody and Mel Heifetz, weren't, aren't, didn't and don't.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

We've had eight years of "decisive," "experienced" "leadership." Why not try intelligence this time around?

It is enforced, and if not aggressively, then most certainly, assertively.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

You'd be surprised what the bars ring up as food at the till. Pay attention to the register when you're getting bottled water.

Although everyone knows about the food rule, I've never seen a bar shut down or slapped in CC for not aggressively making their ratio for the Sunday Rule.

TMK, the Commonwealth just wants to see if you're making some sort of attempt to serve food.


My personal opinion is that this is one of the most asenine Quaker rules we have! PA is a strange state when it comes to alcohol... it then becomes the Supreme Soviet.

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Buh-bye.