Punk rock at JR's dies as it lived: confusingly

JR's Bar has always been a strange place. It's kind of a DIY punk venue, but it's a real bar (one of few in which you can still smoke) way down in Grays Ferry, isolated from most of the rest of the DIY scene. The bar's owner and patrons on non-show nights tend to be old-school South Philly guys, too. And as for the atmosphere, imagine a band playing in a cramped corner as a singer stage-dives off the bar into the arms of maybe a dozen really, really amped people. It's not really a venue that ever made sense. 

Yesterday JR's announced, just as mysteriously, that after seven years it will stop hosting any shows, effective immediately:

JR's has decided to move away from putting on events that include musical acts, and no longer wishes to do so in order to pursue other business ventures.

So, what does that mean for everyone who booked a show for August? There are several spaces willing to take on these shows. Within a few days, it will be worked out.

We'll leave the Facebook page and other social media up for a few more days, but all of it will ultimately change into what we're working on for the future or be taken down completely.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY:
• All shows are canceled at JRS
• There will be no more shows in the future at JRS
• STEVE IS NO LONGER IN ANY CONTEXT INVOLVED WITH JRS.

That Steve is Steve Firth, who booked loud bands of all sorts (primarily punk and metal) as Sick Chattel Productions since 2007, also bartending and doing sound at JR's — sometimes as the only staff member in the bar. Aaron Stampa of Philly music blog Radio Static, who did some social media stuff for the venue, explains why he put JR's announcement in the "RIP houses" category, usually used to note the closing of a DIY house/basement venue rather than a bar with a liquor license: 

it wasn't technically a house but for christ sake it was as close as you got. Bands got the door, no show was over $5, the entire operation was held together by duct tape and string, ANY BAND COULD PLAY THERE and really the only difference was that there was a fully stoked bar with cold beer that wasn't over $4 a drink.

The closing of JR's was as inexplicable as its seven years of existence. We got Steve on the phone this afternoon to ask what the heck happened, but he seemed as confused as anybody. 

I noticed JR's Facebook page isn't up anymore — did that happen recently?

It was taken down when I was told all the shows needed to be cancelled. We just took everything down so people wouldn't be confused, and it was the end of the month anyway so we hadn't had anything posted for August yet.

How many shows did you have scheduled for August?

Quite a few... I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but I'd say maybe 16?

How much progress have you made rescheduling them?

It's pretty amazing the underground music community in Philadelphia — even before the announcement was made, the online people were reaching out with suggestions of places and people to talk to. So yeah — at this time everything's got a home, that's pretty awesome.

So what happened?

That's a great question... to be honest with you, I don't even really know. The other bartender that had been working there way way longer than I had was fired a couple days before I was, and I received a phone call from someone that wasn't even the owner firing me. And I said, "OK — what about all the rest of these shows?" And they instructed me to cancel them. So I said, "OK, that's fine — business is business, I won't take anything personally." I mean, my feelings are a little bit hurt, but I'll get over that.

You were at JR's for seven years?

Maybe eight. When I started working there, it was as an alternative to basement shows, which I'd been doing at a spot that got a little crazy; the police kept showing up and shows kept getting shut down. So we started to kind of move operations over to JR's.

So you'd never spoken to the person who called you to tell you you were fired before?

I'd rather not talk about my relationship with any people there, if that's OK. I certainly don't harbor any animosity toward anybody, and if it's business, it's business, and I'm OK with that. I just wish I had some real answers as to what happened.

That's too bad — the owner of JR's seems like a pretty strange and fascinating guy, and I was really curious about why he ended up letting you book a ton of shows at his bar. [NOTE: We've been trying to get in touch with the owner, but he does not appear to be interested in talking to us.]

When somebody writes the history of Philadelphia punk rock and DIY shows, I'm sure JR's will be one of the more interesting chapters in the book. They've always been very fair to all the bands coming through. They always let me run the shows how I wanted to run them, which was essentially based on a DIY house show model. I think that's great for the bands but sometime not the most, uh, economically lucrative approach to running a business. I mean, everybody knows you're not going to get rich playing punk rock. [Laughs.]

So how did you end up at JR's?

I was doing a lot of house shows — somebody approached me after one went horribly insane, with police and people smoking crack in the house and all sorts of crazy shit. And, I mean, you know the stuff that happens at house shows when everybody's way too young and not smart enough to take control of the situation.

"Not my house!"

[Laughs.] Not mine either! It would get really crazy over there, and there would be a lot of attention from police, probably rightfully so — I certainly wouldn't be happy if it was going on on my block. Eventually somebody made the introduction, and said if you want to do something like that here, you're welcome to try it. At that time — this is at least 8 years ago — I was in a lot of bands and spent a lot of time touring, so when we'd get back home all our buddies from wherever they were in the U.S. would get a hold of us. And all of a sudden we had more than one option — you can have a show at a basement that might get shut down (or inevitably would), or we have this other space that nobody had ever heard of and seemed quite far away from everything else. But it was an option. 

You bartended and did the sound, and also did most of the booking?

Yeah I ran pretty much a lot of it — there were nights when I was the only staff there. The booking is really DIY; if anybody wanted to play a show there, all they had to do was ask. We kept it as open and as accessible as possible. I don't know — I've played in a lot of crappy bands, and I'm sure whoever was booking that was like, "Oh god, this is awful." But hey you've got to give everybody a chance.

So that's the reason you did all this booking? To give bands a chance?

Yeah, I mean, it was fun, and then it became a job that was fun, you know? I had no bartending experience before, or even sound experience before, or even... it was just fun. It was a cool way to hang out with your friends and see bands play, make a couple bucks, drink some beers. It was a good time.

Does this have anything to do with the ... something that happened in the middle of June? There appear to be a several different accounts of what happened.

There were literally maybe only a dozen people there, I think there's 5000 different accounts of what happened [laughs], which I guess is testimony to, I don't know, the internet. And, yeah, it was something.

Pause! Brief explanation time.

The first and only comment on the post announcing that JR's wouldn't be hosting shows anymore is "good fucking riddance." Why? The bar, around 22nd and Passyunk, has always been kind of sketch, but only recently lost the favor of a chunk of the Philly DIY music community. DIYPHL, which does a pretty great job compiling an informal list of house and unlicensed-venue shows happening each month, posted that it would no longer be listing shows at JR's as of this month after a woman started circulating this account of an incident at a show on June 14: 

What i thought was a rowdy bar patron started getting very obnoxious shouting things at Jake [the performer], threatening him, shouting at someone else in the audience, and just generally being a huge belligerent jerk and making everyone feel uncomfortable. He was a typical older south Philly guy with a group of about 3 others and one young girl. The old man proclaimed he was the owner and that he hated what Jake was doing, that he wanted to hear an upbeat song, and kept mimicking the sound of gun shots all very loudly. 

Mind you, they were maybe 10 people in attendance for this weird folk show happening at Jr's on a Saturday night- if you haven't been there before, the space is small. The vibe was weird at this point, but we've all dealt with ass holes in the crowd before. ...

There's audio of what JR's owner heckling sounded like on the night it happened, though not of the fight:

The woman's account continues:

One of the 10 people in attendance ... was asked by one of the older South Philly guys if she had a problem. To which she replied, "no, I just think you're a douche bag." They then started shouting at her and told her to get the fuck out. She said ok and turned to grab her back pack and leave when one of the older south philly guys grabbed her by the shoulder and punched her hard in the face. ...

[The woman's sister] ran inside to see what was happening and found her sister trying to protect herself in what was almost a full throttled bar fight against 4 old south philly guys. ... The girl who was punched hit one of the older men in the head with a beer bottle. The man who threw the punch kept yelling "i didnt know it was a girl" and "he-she weirdos", the 4 south philly men, the owners of JR's, were yelling things like this. ...

They kicked everyone out, even the bartender Steve, who I guess is the one who handles the show bookings. They continued yelling hate filled obscenities at us the whole time the bands packed up.

It was kind of a big deal at the time. When George Miller at JUMP talked to Steve about what happened, the article got 87 comments, mostly arguing with each other. Firth told JUMP that, as he remembered it, the woman had physically walked up to the bar owner and given him a push on the shoulder when calling him a douche, twice, though that was no excuse for retaliating with violence:

If someone came to my house and touched me, I'd probably not want them to be there anymore. Granted, he was being a dick. But I guess he's allowed to be. It's his bar.

Granted, that is all happening in somebody's bar, a guy who is radically different from the majority of the people who are there. I probably disagree with 100 percent of what he thinks, says and does. He thinks I'm a jerkoff and an asshole.

Why does he keep you around?

I don't know. He loses money more often than he makes it from shows. He's constantly cleaning blood and puke off the ground. But any time there is a touring band, he'll buy a T-shirt from them and hang it up on the ceiling. I don't know why he's so patient. I don't understand why he lets me do half the shit I've done there.

And if you weren't there, there wouldn't be shows?

No. We butt heads a lot and he thinks I'm a prick but there's mutual respect. ... 

... To be honest, the owner wouldn't give a fuck if no one ever came back. He'd make a lot more money and sleep a lot better at night. ... at the end of the day, the only people I really care about or have an alliance to are the guys who drove five hours in a broken down van to play a 20-minute set and maybe get $50. Those are the people I got to look out for. We're a glorified house show. 

OK, so back to the Q&A with Steve:

Does this have anything to do with the fight in June?

To be honest, I don't know. It was really an unfortunate incident, and it was certainly something that a lot of people had an opinion about. I had to be the person who spoke about it, and I tried to be as fair as I could about it, because I did think it was something that did need to be addressed.

And... I really don't know. No one really sat me down and presented me with any sort of explanation for anything. I think they're probably just trying to do something different. Like, nothing lasts forever, and at the end of the day, they let me do shows there, I'm really grateful for that opportunity, and if they want to move in a different direction, they've got every right to do so. I'm just a dude that got to hang out there for a bit and do my thing. 

What are you doing now?

I don't know! The last couple days I was trying to make sure that all those shows were taken care of, and now I guess I need a job? [Laughs.] I did get very comfortable there — certainly it was a very nice alternative to working. Before I started working at JR's, I was working a normal person graphic design job, and yeah, I don't think it was quite as enjoyable as listening to bands play and swinging suds.

And so punk rock at JR's dies as it lived — in a way that makes no sense to anybody but suggests lots of stuff going on underneath the surface. Got info? Let us know.