Men Full of Trouble

Tales from behind the Khyber bar.

by Brian Howard

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Published: Jun 2, 2010

 

[ oral history ]

The story of Philly’s beer renaissance could be told from a thousand vantages. Today we view it through the lens of Old City rock club turned beer nirvana The Khyber, whose bartenders have gone on to forge the foaming edge of the Philly beer scene. We rounded up five of the last six happy hour tap minders, the guys responsible both for the beer selection and for dealing with whatever mayhem happened the night before — Chris Morris (1989-96; ’99-2001, a Yards alum and “enabler” at Philadelphia Brewing Company), Brendan Hartranft (1997-99, owner of Memphis Taproom, Local 44 and Resurrection Ale House), Casey Parker (2004-06, owner of Jose Pistola’s), Paul Havelin (2006-09, of Bella Vista Beer Distributor) and 2009-present Jeremy Thomson (the missing sixth man, Tim Brown, 2001-04, lives in San Diego) — for a beer-soaked, early-morning discussion on the state of Philly beer and what it takes to hold it down at one of our most storied bars. With longtime “Duke of Khyber” Jason Giballo on hand, the discussion flowed.

City Paper: So what is it about this place and this shift that’s propelled you all on to greatness?

Chris Morris: I think we can all handle big disappointments first thing in the morning. That’s what sets up apart. [All laugh]

CP: So as day bartender, you’ve also been in charge of choosing the beer, is that correct?

Morris: We had free rein except in situations where costs were tightened.

Brendan Hartranft: I think both Dave Simons and Steve Simons were interested in owning the business, but …

Morris: … it was music promotion they were specializing in, and doing very well, obviously. But when we started, Coors Light, Rolling Rock, Guinness and Bass were the four drafts. And the first draft system that was put in, we put it in ourselves, basically, which was the most hilariously inefficient thing. Over time, thanks to [distributor] Eddie Friedland, there was a lot more beer available, small breweries opening up. It was kind of a nice harmonic convergence for a little while there.

CP: So you guys span the time from when Khyber was a Coors bar to now. How did we get here, and what about this place allowed you to craft this heritage?

Casey Parker: I know I didn’t believe it when I heard that this daytime job was a great job. … But even people who don’t work here care about this place like being good. I remember right when I came on, Chris Morris talked to me and kind of gave me a little bit of history on how badass the Khyber used to be with beer, so it was a good pep talk going into the job. When I started, I didn’t know shit about beer. This place taught me a lot.

Jeremy Thomson: You inherit a beer crowd here. You can’t not learn about beer. The people want to talk to me about not just the beer they’re drinking, but a beer they drank two years ago. They want to tell me about a beer they didn’t drink.

CP: What’s the keg you were most excited to put on tap here?

Hartranft: Young’s Old Nick in a firkin. When we did the Big Ass Beer Festival.

Morris: I have a most memorable, might not have been the best, but this beer called Ringnes Yule. Eddie Friedland got two kegs of this Danish Barleywine, but he didn’t bother telling anybody how strong it was. I tapped it right as I got off my shift, and it’s one of those, I’ve got to go shoot darts, boom boom boom, and I’m like “Man, this stuff is delicious, so easy. I go to shoot darts and I’m paralyzed at the dart line, not able to do it. I ended up coming back here, I forget what band was playing, but everybody I was serving at 6:30, 7 o’clock, two hours later were still in their seats, paralyzed. Everybody was like “what was that stuff?” Everybody was crunched, nobody could even talk or move. I asked Eddie, “How strong was that?” He was like, “oh, 10 or 11.” And I’m serving it in pints.

Parker: I’ll never forget mine, I put St. Bernardus 12 on. When I started tending bar, everything was still five bucks, everything had to be five bucks. You should have been involved in the conversation with me talking to the night staff saying, “This one can’t be five bucks and it can’t be in a pint glass.” After that conversation, I didn’t do too much of that.

Havelin:: Some of the fun beers that got people fired up here — being a music venue and having a lot of music fans coming in — one of them is the Brewer’s Art Ozzy Ale, but one of the other ones that they stopped doing on draft, Lagunitas did a series of Frank Zappa beers, they did the first two on draft, they did “Kill Ugly Radio” and “We’re Only in it for the Money,” and people were really fired up when those came out.

Thomson: I’m gonna throw two out there: One is the Founders Backwoods Bastard because that was such an interesting complex beer, got people coming back, people came back years after the fact. Aside from that, the PBC Shackamaximum.

CP: So what was your best shift and/or your worst shift?

Morris: I don’t know if it was the worst, but it was definitely the weirdest. It was 9/11. We had pretty much had a full bar all day, and I can remember hardly anybody making a noise. People kind of, they whispered to each other, they cried, they just looked at the TV, just a really strange day. That was one of those days where you felt like a psychiatrist and a bartender at the same time.

Hartranft: Would you have wanted to be anywhere else, though?

Morris: No, no.

Hartranft: I mean, on that day, of all the places you could be. I remember I was at Nodding Head on 9/11, and I just felt like I would have rather have been here.

Morris: Best day would have to be the first Guided by Voices show here. I think it was the first show they ever did outside of Ohio.

Thomson: That’s one of the great things about this bar. I got into this bar because of the music, then you realize there’s so much more to it. Every day someone comes in and says, “I haven’t been here in 30 years.” People remember this place. And it’s basically the same

Havelin:: Everyone who works here probably got it, the people who kinda just opened the door, and
they stick their head in, and they walk in real cautiously …

Parker: “I was a lot of trouble here … am I allowed back?” [laughter]

Havelin:: Best shift is tough, there were so many shows, I mean shit, the night Scissor sisters played here, the night Turbonegro played here, we had been shut down for a week and a half and then Turbonegro played here the opening night and I remember standing behind this bar and looking in this room when they went on and it was like a wall of people climbing over each other.

Thomson: I was one of those people.

Havelin:: You couldn’t hear the band because everyone was singing along and it was just one of those moments where you get goose bumps, like HOLY SHIT, somebody’s gonna die.

Hartranft: Like Bad Luck 13 [Riot Extravaganza] proportions.

Havelin:: Seeing Bad Luck 13 here, Jesus Christ.

Hartranft: Remember the fire? The chick who was blowing fire, the smoke eater ate it up, and this guy comes out of the bathroom with a fucking early Jason mask And I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But he’s all lined up with phone books and blood packets, and I see this fucking dude hit him in the stomach with a barbed wire baseball bat. Blood is pouring everywhere, and then a fucking ash tray hits my head and then hits and then hits another girl’s head. It was a Sunday night, the place was totally empty by 8:15 at night, and it was like blood and piss and broken glass everywhere.

Havelin:: I was here with a friend back by the sound board when Bad Luck went on. There’s fucking smoke everywhere, and there’s spotlights, so all you see are these light beams going around the crowd, and all of a sudden through the smoke and the light we see a folding metal chair just come flying at us, and we ducked and boom, it hit this girl behind us square in the face. We turn around and blood is gushing out of her face, and we’re like, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.” We came into the bar, like, “Beers?” And mayhem had just broken out, the cops were outside, they were checking out this barbed-wire baseball bat, and like, it was insane. … The worst shift, and I don’t know if the Superbowl party was going on when you guys were here, but any Monday after the Superbowl party was the worst fucking shift because this place was destroyed and we’d be closed until 5 o’clock because it took that long to clean up.

Thomson: It’s staff-only where everyone drinks for free.

Havelin:: Open bar, serve yourself. You do the math. As the guys who own this place were opening new places, the staff from the other places would get invited. I remember the first year the staff from the Royal Tavern came to the Khyber Superbowl party. It was like a showdown. Everyone had to make food, that was the deal, and we had food spread out on the bar. This dude who was working at the Royal came in, he was fucking hammered when he got here, He leaned on the bar down at the end and he did one of those where he couldn’t hold himself up, and half the food just [fell off] the end of the bar.

Thomson: I spent hours cleaning spaghetti sauce out from inside the cooler. That was the first week I worked here.

Hartranft: I think that’s the most common question daytime guys asks themselves: “How did this happen?” It’s just so coded, the efficiency with which people fuck shit up. Like, man, this person, if they got another idea, I’m sure they’d be wildly successful, because they are just nailing this.

Morris: I had a day where the first six handles I pulled were all kicked. And by the sixth one … it turns into your worst nightmare, in your nightmare you’re naked and every handle you pull is empty.

Hartranft: That’s the dialogue between the day and the night shift, there is that disconnect between the two because you spend so much time essentially getting told to go fuck yourself, y’know, through not kicking kegs, leaving the place in a state of beyond repair.

Parker: And god forbid you try to say something at happy hour.

Thomson: Day Man and Night Man are at odds with each other. Always Sunny was right. And I was night man for years, [I came into the day shift thinking] I’m gonna be Day Man who’s in touch with Night Man. And we’re all gonna get along. But now they tell me to go fuck myself, and I tell them to go fuck themselves.

Hartranft: When Tim Brown was here and Will Spear was here at the same time, there was like a two-month oasis of like, “Hey, this is amazing, like, I got a note.”

Parker: HAH! “I got a note!”

Morris: “Dear Brendan, Good morning. Sorry, you’re screwed.”

Hartranft: My best and worst was my first Labor Day here and [co-owner] Stephen [Simons] didn’t want to open. I had come in and I was like, “Ehhh, if you don’t want to open, y’know what, I’ll stay and clean.” I had taken a real fine steel wool and was doing the chandeliers, and this guy comes in and he’s like, “Hey boss, I’ve got to use your bathroom.” He walks out and he’s like, “Hey pal, there’s something wrong with that toilet.” I hand him a plunger and I’m like, “No pal, you’ve got to take care of that yourself.” So he plunges it out, and I hear the toilet flush, so I’m like, “I told that guy,” and I’m just thinking, that guy’s a little weird, let me just walk in … [and he’d] shit fucking all over the bathroom. It was just so much shit, it was like he brought a bag of 10 other people’s shit in with him. … So I clean up all this shit, and at this point I’m thinking man, I should not have stayed open, but I tell you what, the next guest who walked in the door was my wife, and she was on this date …

Morris: Oh, she was your wife but she didn’t know it yet.

Hartranft: She was on this date that was totally going of the rails, it was probably the first and last time that I was ever kinda “guy bartender,” he’s in the bathroom and I’m like hey, what do you say you drop that creep and roll back, and that’s a big move for me. But she came back, but that hour and a half was like, I’m relatively cool character, but I was just so nervous, and we ended up going to Brownies. We went to Anthony’s had some Colt 45. It was the start of my new life.

Thomson: That’s awesome.

Hartranft: Best and worst, same day. Talk about a 180, it was actually two 180s, ever since then is when I started to think about fate and luck and you never know. You should take every challenge because you never know what’s going to walk through the door. There was that one guy Jason [not Giballo], he spent the whole shift complaining, “It’s so fucking slow.” Finally, I’m like, “How about you leave and I stay and tend bar. We have to be here till 2. That’s it.” He was like oh, cool, that’s great. The Sixth Sense was being filmed, and at 20 after 1 Bruce Willis and four guys walked in, and we’re hanging out. He tended bar in Jersey for a long time and was treating me with a lot of respect. That was like a $200 tip right there and it’s like, y’know what, you never leave because you never know what’s going to walk through the door. If you think that it’s not going to walk in, you should leave right now. As long as you’re open for the possibility, anything can happen.

Havelin:: I was hoping for a Tim Brown phone call, it might have been you who was here, too, when Will Ferrell and I think Horatio Sanz came in here one day.

Morris: I was tending bar. I had Will Ferrell, he had just bleached his hair white for Zoolander. His hair was like ivory white. Finally Bryan Dilworth just walked over and was like, “Dude, Harry Caray, fucking incredible.” He had a couple beers and chatted, just a regular dude.

Thomson: I’m surprised Paul didn’t mention the giant pile of puke and the guy trying to find his teeth in it. [Erupts in laughter]

Havelin:: Chris still has that picture — it looks like somebody took the biggest box of cereal you could get, and poured three of them into the corner, and then poured water on it. This guy just went and fucking puked everywhere, and then he came back in and I think he asked for a trash bag. The guy came back in and he was sifting through his puke to look for a tooth, a gold tooth.

Thomson: He threw up, left, and then realized he’d lost his tooth.

Hartranft: He might really be thinking, “Oh man, somebody got to it.”

Havelin:: He left with a trash bag full of puke. He walked out with it.

Parker: I don’t have a lot of bad bartending shifts. I have a lot of bad mornings. [One of the best] was Jason and I had a Riptide moment that made me pretty happy. I was fucking getting my ass kicked Friday, tending bar during happy hour. It was so fucking packed in here, and like my girlfriend and her construction crew came in, the place is packed and the biggest guy on her crew is like sitting here, dude’s like fucking close to 7 foot, he’s fucking huge. But people are pushing through and the first couple times I see this [other] guy pushing through to try to get beer from me. I hear this [tall] guy mutter a couple of times, “That guy keeps pushing up on me,” … and the guy who was pushing up was like a small dude, and out of nowhere [the tall guy] just turns around and starts pounding on the small dude, and me and Jason, in like unison, just fucking jumped over the bar — like it should have been a freeze-frame like [sings A-Team theme] — and we fucking broke it up and went back to tending bar and it was great. … He was big. Also drunk. Best thing about being a bartender, if you ever get in a fight, they’re really drunk.

Thomson: I’m with Casey, I don’t really have a worst, any shift you can walk away from is a good shift, a pretty good crash landing. But I’m also gonna take a page from Paul’s’ book and say whenever I had to work after the Superbowl party, my god, the Superbowl party is just insane.

Morris: When we first started doing that party, we picked one customer, and the customer that ran us around the most was the only bartender that day — that day was great, because we would run our friend ragged. But they would walk out with $700. It was John O’Brien a couple of years, and Susan, with her cart. She lives up in Frankford, but she basically goes to Rotten Ralph’s, here and Nick’s. She’s been doing this happy hour circuit since I started working here.

Hartranft: She knows every happy hour.

Morris: She knows every price. She doesn’t tip you all year long, but on your birthday she brings you a present.

Parker: She came to Jose Pistola’s one day. One of you guys set me the fuck up. [Room explodes in laughter] “Ahh, the guys over at the Khyber told me to come over, that you’d be happy to see me.”

Thomson: She has permanent happy hour status. She’s grandfathered into dollar beers forever.

Jason Giballo: One thing that sticks out for me is that you rarely called out sick or took a day off.

Hartranft: When you start out you’re only making $300 bucks a week, so if you call out, you’re only making $228.62 a week.

Thomson: The day bartender can’t call out because all the night bartenders are asleep.

Hartranft: And nobody wants the shift.

Thomson: I mean, they’re not going to wake up till 4 o’clock.

Parker: When I started people were like really? Good luck, man, you’ll make money at happy hour.

Thomson: I knew going in it would be a dead zone from whenever you walk in here — you get your shit done, order liquor, take your stock, do your beer orders …

Parker: Listen to Jason call the porno theater. [Laughter] It was my favorite skit.

Thomson: We still do it.

Parker: It was like [imitates Jason on the phone with an adult theater] “Really, Anal Sisters 3? I can’t wait because I want to know if that was really her cousin.”

Thomson: I knew going in it was like, 5 to 7 is when you make your money, and it’s like those two hours and boom. … I just love drinking here during the day. You come here for the rock ’n’ roll show and it’s awesome, but it’s so packed. You come here during the day and you appreciate the bar and the beer and you just sit here and it’s dark.

Morris: It’s half church. This has always been half church.

Havelin:: [Calling out] was one of those things where — somebody’s gonna get my shift pay, because you have to offer them that, and then a lot of people are like, “Well, what am I gonna get out of it, because it’s Thursday, it’s gonna be dead.” Every day of the week is like that, except for Friday, ’cause it’s Friday happy hour. They relied on people like you [points at Brian Howard] coming over. City Paper, Time Cycle, the publishing house around the corner.

Parker: The Customs House brought in some money.

Havelin:: Absolutely, the one day I really had to take off because my son was sick was parade day, World Series parade day, and I was like shit, because I really wanted to go to the parade. People thought, “Oh, you’re taking off because you want to go to the parade?” But no, I’m home with my son.

Morris: I was telling Brian earlier that I was the guy who escorted that dude out of here who got his ass kicked by the police [referring to City Paper’s Feb. 4, 2010, cover story which centered on an inebriated reveler’s confrontation with a police officer]. Like me and another customer walked this one guy out — he was so out of his mind. He went outside, I sat down, picked up my beer, heard all this crashing and yelling going on outside, and that’s what was going on.

CP: OK, most notable regulars?

Morris: I give it up to my man Fred Cunningham up in heaven. He was my favorite daytime customer. And John O’Brien. Both of them, both of those guys are awesome.

Havelin:: Favorite regulars: Fred Cunningham, Al Coren, he’s a Wednesday guy, used to be a Tuesday guy, now a Wednesday guy. [Everyone laughs] He’s got this group of guys he hangs out with, Time Cycle kind of guys — they plan their week around the most economical happy hours.

Thomson: I don’t think it’s just economical, though; they also look for quality.

Havelin:: Quality with quantities, and they switched up Tuesday to Wednesday here for a different bar across town, but those guys are great. … Oh, as always, City Paper, Time Cycle, the publishing guys. Listen, you guys paid a lot of bills for me! I used to introduce my wife to people, like, “This is so and so, who paid my cable bill last month. They paid the car.” There’ve been a lot of people here who’ve been absolutely phenomenal. And a lot of my old regulars, I hang out with, they become friends.

Morris: That’s how I got divorced, actually, because you never really leave at 7 o’clock, can you?

Hartranft: Remember Dave, guy from Massachusetts? “Oh how you doin’, it’s Dave.” Really great guy, sold seaweed for a living. Really good dude, great conversationalist. So like Dave always liked to sit in the middle of the bar; he was my favorite guest because he made bartending that much easier. You could keep a running conversation with him, and then hit up and down the bar and he was kinda like your touchstone for normalcy. Which isn’t always easy to find here. Guy was like a good-looking guy, for being probably 65.

Parker: For me? They’re all the same [all laugh].

Havelin:: You are an egalitarian.

Parker: I have a feeling that when I came here as a daytime bartender I was by far the most lenient bartender that had come before me …

Thomson: Aaaaabsolutely.

Parker: … as far as letting people in. The first few days there was fuckin’ nobody here. So I thought, I’ll let ’em come in and I’ll train ’em. So this one guy was never the biggest tipper, but probably the biggest tips he’d ever throw down were when I was tending bar. He’d come in for the happy hour, have six beers, spend six bucks and give me 10 bucks, and like, that’s big for this guy — this guy Coach. He was always really well-behaved when I was there.

Thomson: That’s your best customer? He’s not allowed to come here anymore.

Havelin:: Lemme tell you this, though: Coach probably still gets mail here.

Parker: I wanna change my answer, my favorite regular was Brian Hickey.

Parker: You have got to save about 25 words for the daytime bartenders’ relationship with Jason
Giballo. You want a fucking through line between all these bartenders? Chris, he was cleaning when you were doing it?

Thomson: I don’t think I could do it without him.

Hartranft: Jason kept us honest, and Jason knows nothing about beer, but he always used our passion for beer as a starting point to twist our nuts up all the time. And like drive us into a tizzy. And it’s a pretty complex relationship.
 
CP: What’s his title?

Hartranft: His title is exactly what I just said.

Morris: He cleans 85 percent of the building.

Hartranft: That’s very generous!

Havelin:: Let’s just give him a master title: Duke of Khyber.

Thomson: I prefer Earl.

Hartranft: He has an acerbic wit.

Havelin:: He is a vicious bitch!

Hartranft: For me I always thought that Jason was the first person who taught me in a professional sense to choose your words wisely. If you’re not the wittiest person in the room, get the fuck out of that room.

Parker: Sometimes it’s better to shut your mouth.

Thomson: You come in in the morning and everything’s broken and not where it’s supposed to be, and he’s running around without his shirt off.

Morris: He’s one of the funnier people I’ve ever met in my life. What I’d look forward to when I’d open up was one good belly-bustin’ crack and then you’re ready.

Parker: [To Brendan] Jason told me that you stole all of your material from him.

Hartranft: Totally not true.

CP: There’s a cottage industry in the magazine world of trying to proclaim the best beer city. Philly often loses to places like Portland or even Asheville mostly because of our relative dearth of breweries and brew pubs.

Morris: If you’re coming somewhere to drink beer, there can’t be anywhere better than here. If you separate beer from the town, then there’s the difference. Asheville, I’m sure it’s a nice place to go visit. Let’s just say [if we’re talking] beer city — we lose with that kinda stuff. But what Philadelphia offers you in addition to the beer scene — I can’t imagine any of those places being close to it.

Havelin:: I had a guy in from [San Diego’s] Ballast Point last year in town on a layover, two hours. I took him around to three bars, maybe four. You know, all craft bars, different parts of the city, and he was blown away. He was just like, you guys are fucking spoiled.

Parker: Amsterdam just got their first American beer bar. I went to it to see if they were doing it right and it was pretty impressive — they had a fucking great list, the guy was serious about it, always trying to get new stuff. But in Brussels, I might have gone to one of the coolest bars I’d ever been to — Chez Moeder Lambic. The new one’s unbelievable — 40 drafts, eight hand pumps of lambics, but if you want a fuckin’ American-style IPA, I challenge you go find one in fucking Brussels.

Hartranft: I think the diversity is really nice but I also think it’s like, I’m not trying to motherfuck anybody, but the idea of a 40-plus-tap bar works very well in very other city but Philadelphia because Philadelphia has that apprehension of like, “So all you know is how to buy beer. Do you know how to serve it?” I could rob Tower Records, I could pull a heist, I could walk in the Khyber and I could say, “I have the best record collection of all time because I have 20,000 albums.” And someone sitting here right now would say, “I only have 10 albums and I can tell you right now, definitively, that my record collection is better than yours because of what I’ve chosen.” There’s a little bit like balls-out, it’s on the line, like, this is what I chose. I’m telling you something about myself. … And it’s just like, “Hey, you know what, I might not have the biggest cock, but I’ll slam the shit out of the sides while I’m there.” And I think that’s a really good way to approach it.

CP: So this gigantic clusterfuck known as Beer Week is looming. How’d Philly go from Lagertown to beer Valhalla so quick?

Hartranft: Philadelphia’s the biggest small town in America.

Morris: Good ideas travel fast.

Parker: It’s a really easy city to be inspired by your colleagues.

Hartranft: Y’know, Khyber’s the first bar that spawned another bar that was like, Fucking A! That’s the real deal, and that’s [former Khyber bartender Kurt Wunder’s] 700. Talk about the most underrated beer bar in the city.

Morris: When we got shut down in ’96, in a strange weird way [it was good], based on what happened in Northern Liberties, those people here went right up there. Megan went to Bridgid’s, and now she’s one of the owners of the Abbaye.

Hartranft: Every bar that’s having any kind of success [in Northern Liberties] owes it directly to 700.

Thomson: It’s not just bars, anyone who owns a house up there. It was a wasteland.

Morris: 700 was like the gun going off. For me it was when the city almost went bankrupt, was it ’92, we had junk bond status basically, I think at that time, it was decided that this city was going to be a bar and restaurant city. We had the history, the culture, we needed to build a hotel infrastructure and a bar and restaurant infrastructure, and I think those two things have been achieved to the extent that it’s kept this city outside a lot of the economic bullshit that’s going on in the world right now.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

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