Bar Rescue, "Piratz"

Piratz was--and is again--a bar in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. It is pirate-themed. And it is not doing well. Owner Tracy Rebelo is, we are told, $900,000 in debt and living with her teenage daughter in her parents' basement. Hence the bar being featured in an episode of a reality TV show (if it had been thriving, Piratz could've gotten a nine-episode deal for its own show).

Spike TV's Bar Rescue pits bar expert and nightclub consultant Jon Taffer against bar-owners and their failing businesses. Taffer is a self-aggrandizing asshole, who yells far more than should be necessary for an adult. But nice, reasonable people don't usually get reality shows, so there you go. And we quickly see that, despite his flaws, Taffer generally knows what he's talking about and that he has the connections and resources to give struggling bars anything they might dream of.

As soon as the episode begins, Taffer is hung up on the idea that a pirate bar is an innately awful idea--especially in Silver Spring. I think he's half-right. A pirate bar could feasibly do well in places like St. Petersburg, Florida, or Nassau, Bahamas, where people might reasonably be looking for piratey kitsch. Keeping it in DC, a friend remarked to me that a place like Piratz--albeit toned down--might perform well in an area like H Street, where quirkiness is rather more likely to be embraced. But what Rebelo has is a building in downtown Silver Spring, where office workers dominate the lunch and happy hours, and the nighttime crowd isn't so gung-ho about donning their pirate gear, either.

Taffer rightly decides to target the office workers. He less rightly decides on an office-themed establishment, complete with motivational posters and While You Were Out notepads. Because everyone wants to go drink and have lunch in the same atmosphere in which they were just working. He also renames the bar: "Corporate Bar and Grill" (for all that Taffer is good at, he has trouble with names. In another episode, he re-christens a California dive-bar "Racks." Did I mention that this was in an attempt to differentiate the bar from the strip club next door?). Before the makeover, Rebelo pleas to Taffer that she doesn't want her bar to become just another soulless enterprise. Taffer replies that businesses don't have souls. And that's true. But in the bar business, it seems to me--and I have no claim to the knowledge or experience that Taffer has--the successful businesses are the ones that can project the veneer of a soul. Ostentatiously removing any trace of that seems to invite only the ironic visitors, looking for a quick larf at the idea that they're sipping PBR's at a board room table. 

But any of these solutions (moving the bar, changing the bar) assumes good management to see them through. Piratz real problem is that neither Rebelo nor her staff know what they're doing. Worse still, they don't seem to know that they don't know what they're doing. I visited Piratz with some friends a few years back and it wasn't until watching Bar Rescue that I was able to identify exactly what was wrong. I owe Taffer that much credit.

When a couple of Taffer's acquaintances sit down to do some reconnaissance (while wearing pirate gear because--and this is true--such attire the only hope for quick attention from the servers at Piratz), they are greeted by would-be episode stealer One-Eyed Mike, who slurs "just gonna seat yerselves wherever the fuck ye like, are ye?". This is roughly the level of awkward that I recall. And we haven't even gotten into the more important aspects of bar hospitality. Taffer soon sees that the menu is too long, that the atmosphere is more distracting than it is enchanting, and that the staff manages to be both inattentive and intrusive. I can confirm all of these from experience. It's little surprise that the food and drinks are lousy; what kind of quality comes to mind when you think of the authentic pirate diet?

I won't even get into the push-back from the Piratz staff. Their attitude is that this is a pirate bar and that anyone who doesn't like it should leave. It's a twist on the "haters gonna hate" logic that's so insidious because it's simultaneously wrong and irrefutable.

When Rebelo asks her staff at the new Corporate Bar, "How bad do we just want a vat of grog right now?" it's genuinely depressing. She never wanted a bar. She wanted a place to dress up with simpatico Renn Faire dorks whose passion would be perfectly acceptable (healthy, even), if they could put it aside long enough to acknowledge the damage it was doing. What Rebelo has is an insanely expensive hobby. She knew enough to call Bar Rescue and set up the potential turnaround, but couldn't be bothered to look at all the problems Taffer loudly pointed out to her. She didn't need a streetwise consultant; she needed an intervention.

According to the episode's postscript, the pirates reclaimed Corporate Bar within days of Taffer's exit. I considered paying them a second visit, just to bookend this post. And I may yet do that, just for the curiosity of what Yelp tells me is now a disconcerting hybrid of the old Piratz and the former Corporate Bar. But curiosity is what led me to Piratz the first time. And if Bar Rescue has taught me anything, it's that you need to learn from your mistakes. Otherwise, Jon Taffer will yell at you a lot.