Ubiquitous
2013-04-21 12:57:24 UTC
By Noah Murphy
Before I begin, please watch the following about Piratz Tavern:
Now this episode of Bar Rescue is compelling television. Its about a
sinking pirate bar called Piratz Tavern in Silver Spring, Maryland,
where the staff wants to play pirate while the workers at the several
corporate high rises next door ignore the noise. Furthermore, the owner
is $900,000 in debt and lives in her parents basement with her husband,
Piratzs incompetant chef, and her college-age daughter. In walks
nightlife expert Jon Taffer who believes the staff is delusional and
drags them kicking and screaming to a new theme, the Corporate Bar and
Grill. After the change, the place looks to have a bright future. But
the owner, still wanting to play pirate, turns it back to Piratz a few
weeks later and the ship continues to sink.
Theres only one problem: The show is made up.
Ive eaten in Silver Spring lots of times and had even tried to eat at
Piratz Taven before the filming. Honestly, it looked like an empty dump.
The show wasnt completely wrong in that respect. However, after
watching the Bar Rescue episode, I absolutely had to go in order to find
out how different the show was from with what actually happened. I went
for dinner there with some friends and spent a long time talking to the
staff.
From left to right: Rouge, Monkey, Blackjack, Archer and One-Eyed Mike.
What I found was that practically everything on the show was made up.
While the staff, along with the manager Tracy Rebelo, had a reason to
lie in order to make themselves look better, it was obvious from their
passionate and candid responses, along with a few plainly visible facts,
that they werent lying.
Heres a list, in show chronological order, of many of the differences
between the Bar Rescue episode and what I observed and was told:
-At the beginning of the show theres a statistic that says during the
day the population in Silver Spring swells to 295,000 with an average
income of $96,000. At night the population drops to 71,000 with an
average income of $36,000. While theres nothing wrong with this on the
surface, its missing something very important that Ill explain further
down.
-The show claims the staff loves to drink and play pirates rather than
serve the customers. Well, that both is and is not true. On the one
hand, the staff loves their jobs, loves pirates, and enjoy working
there. On the the other hand, the food came quickly and I didnt have
to wait to get a seat. In some ways, the jovial, friendly staff is why
anyone would come to Piratz in the first place and Taffer ignores it.
- On the show, Tracy claims thats shes over $900,000 in debt, her
credit is shot and she lives in her parents basement. Tracy told me, a
guy she never met, that she never uses credit cards with Piratz and
shes pays off the $10,000 rent every month in full and on time oh, and
there is no basement.
-Jon and his wife show up to the bar which looks dead except its dead
because the Bar Rescue producers told the tavern to tell everyone that
the tavern was closed. Anyone in the bar were people who walked by and
saw it was open.
-The show claims the patio in the back is unoccupied except they forgot
to mention that the segment was filmed at night in February 2012, with
nightly temperatures in the 30s. Jons wife is even shown walking into
the establishment in a heavy coat.
-The fish the planted couple orders is supposedly terrible. Everyone
there told me basically the same thing: the food was fine, they just
lied and said it was terrible. My food was delicious!
Update: 9/29: Went back to Piratz and ordered the fish the couple on the
show did. While I thought it wasnt as good as the turkey legs I had
last week, it wasnt nearly as bad as the show made it seem.
-Theres a reference to an appetizer thats too spicy. The Burnin
Bits has a waiver you to have sign in order to eat it. I know because I
took notes on the back of said waiver:
Too spicy on purpose.
-How many corporate high rises are really around Piratz? There are two
on the same block, plus a few within eyeshot. Jon wanted to make the
point that there are tons directly next to it, but there are only the
aforementioned two plus the Discovery Channel directly accessible via a
back alleyway. The others he points out include a two-story storefront
and this:
Behold the Silver Spring Metro Garage!
This is a case of Jon not only stretching the truth to make his point
about corporate highrises, but also ignoring a bigger problem which
should be obvious to anyone who has been to the area:
The way most people get to the area is to get off 495 and head down
Georgia Ave. Right before you get to Piratz, they come to whats known
as Downtown Silver Spring, a popular outdoor plaza with literally a
dozen restaurants and two movie theaters (The Regal and an AFI Silver)
along with several big stores including a DSW and a Whole Foods. This
attracts a lot of people with money. However, the traffic turns on
either Colesville or Wayne and heads towards the garages. Only a
fraction of the traffic heads past Wayne Avenue. Ive traveled to the
area quite a bit. Downtown Silver Spring could be packed, but walk
across across Wayne Avenue and the place is a ghost town.
Theres no way Jon missed this fact when researching - he could see it
from Piratz Tavern! While it appears he might have counted Downtown
Silver Spring as a high-rise, counting it as such is extremely
misleading because he therefore ignores all the people coming in on
weekends for entertainment. This destroys his entire theory on why a
pirate bar in Silver Spring cant survive. If Piratz had a location
within Downtown Silver Spring, it wouldve been just fine because the
people who go to the plaza are looking to have fun.
- Moving on, Archer, who quit on the show, was told to be the bad guy
and his role was to quit. The only thing is that Archer really did was
get mad at John so the reaction when he told the cameras to get out of
his face was real.
-To help in the kitchen, Jon brings in Jason, a line cook who had been
working at Piratz for 7 months prior to filming. He was working at a
Bertuccis when a few Piratz employees got him in touch with Tracy who
hired him.
-The show makes it seems like theres an all day bar training going on
for the bartenders. Well, training only lasted as long the cameras
rolled and so the staff only learned basically what is shown on TV.
-On a segment involving service staff training Mike appears to have
trouble talking like a normal person. Its implied Mike was so wrapped
up in his pirate persona, he had trouble coming out of it. Except how
Mike talks on the show is how he really talks. His accent is not an act.
-Theres an exchange where the service trainer says to Mike to act like
the people outside. He says that he hates those people. Only one issue:
that was edited together from two different exchanges, the second one
being the people who go on Yelp and give the bar bad reviews.
-The soft opening was staged, as everyone that was brought in were
actors and did not have to pay. Everything was going fine until Jon told
the actors to start acting as if the service was terrible.
-The scene where Juciano storms out and Tracy goes after him was staged.
He was told to storm off. The audio seems to cut during the segment
because theyre laughing while filming.
-The only thing the employees werent told ahead of time was what the
new theme was supposed to be, so their reactions were real. Even I
thought the idea was terrible from the first time I saw it. The
Corporate Bar and Grill made the place seem homogenized and soulless.
When corporate workers want to go to a bar, they want to escape, not go
back to work. And Jon Taffer, even on the show, came across as a guy who
hated the very idea of a pirate bar from the moment he walked in and
simply wanted it gone, regardless of the reasons for Piratzs failures.
The staff confirmed my suspicions with Tracy calling him completely
unprofessional and saying he made the worst decision possible.
- While it looked pristine in the show, the new interior was shoddily
done. For example, the new tiles on the floor were simply glued onto the
floor underneath. The glue oozed through the tiles and was tracked onto
the back patio, which had to be resurfaced.
-As part of the renovation, Jon installed self-service draft tables
where people could pour their own beer. However, they are illegal in
Montgomery County, so they were useless. Not only that, the draft
tables were really being rented, with the first 2 months paid for. After
that, the bar had pay for all 3 draft tables.
-The grand opening, like the soft opening, was staged, with actors
playing the roles of customers, who ate for free. While I wasnt told
this, based on what they told me about the soft opening, Im certain the
actors were told to act like the place was great even if it was crummy.
-During the grand opening scene, Jason can be seen making burgers. The
staff told me that the burger was made using frozen beef patties and
were expected to charge $11 for it; this is in contrast to their $12
buffalo burger which was and still is on the menu and is made fresh.
They have an $8 regular burger. They never mentioned it, but I assume
its made fresh. And even if it, too, is a frozen beef patty, its still
$3 less.
-After filming, Piratz Tavern returned within two weeks, nearly every
single one of Jons changes was reversed and a small beer bar was added
to the front to make it more lively.
I went to Piratz Tavern expecting at least some of the show to ring true
and found that apparently not one moment of the show was what it
appeared to be. Everything organic was either staged or heavily edited.
Watching the episode again after eating there I saw the fiction in the
reality clearly. Bar Rescue is a fictional show about a man who takes
bars from money pits to profitable businesses. Before Jon steps in, the
staff has to be inept, the food has to be terrible and the bar has to be
completely out of touch with the surrounding community, even if not one
of those things was true. After John relaunches, the staff has to be top
notch, the food has to be delicious and the bar has to be beautiful and
popular. It makes Jon Taffer look like Gods gift to bar management. And
if the bar reverts to its previous persona or isnt doing well, it isnt
Jons fault, its always the owner whos to blame. They didnt listen to
Jon Taffer and now theyre paying the price.
Behold the new sign installed the week before I went!
While the staff admitted the bar was having problems, any problems it
did have were solved simply by being on Bar Rescue and the huge
publicity it generated, giving people a reason to travel past Wayne
Avenue. Our waiter, Blackjack, told me that Jon Taffer should have just
come in and just helped with an ad campaign instead of the nightmare
their bar rescue turned out to be. Monkey even said it was one of the
worst experiences of his entire life, and I have to believe him.
Piratz stands as a symbol of how fake reality television truly is.
Before I ate at Piratz, I loved Bar Rescue. It was a compelling,
well-produced show. After eating at Piratz, I dont think I can watch
another episode knowing full well that what Im seeing is as fictional
as a scripted drama. One thing I do know for sure is that Im
definitely going back to Piratz Tavern.
Ill leave you with the video by the Piratz staff of the Corporate Bar
and Grill sign being shot at and burned:
Before I begin, please watch the following about Piratz Tavern:
Now this episode of Bar Rescue is compelling television. Its about a
sinking pirate bar called Piratz Tavern in Silver Spring, Maryland,
where the staff wants to play pirate while the workers at the several
corporate high rises next door ignore the noise. Furthermore, the owner
is $900,000 in debt and lives in her parents basement with her husband,
Piratzs incompetant chef, and her college-age daughter. In walks
nightlife expert Jon Taffer who believes the staff is delusional and
drags them kicking and screaming to a new theme, the Corporate Bar and
Grill. After the change, the place looks to have a bright future. But
the owner, still wanting to play pirate, turns it back to Piratz a few
weeks later and the ship continues to sink.
Theres only one problem: The show is made up.
Ive eaten in Silver Spring lots of times and had even tried to eat at
Piratz Taven before the filming. Honestly, it looked like an empty dump.
The show wasnt completely wrong in that respect. However, after
watching the Bar Rescue episode, I absolutely had to go in order to find
out how different the show was from with what actually happened. I went
for dinner there with some friends and spent a long time talking to the
staff.
From left to right: Rouge, Monkey, Blackjack, Archer and One-Eyed Mike.
What I found was that practically everything on the show was made up.
While the staff, along with the manager Tracy Rebelo, had a reason to
lie in order to make themselves look better, it was obvious from their
passionate and candid responses, along with a few plainly visible facts,
that they werent lying.
Heres a list, in show chronological order, of many of the differences
between the Bar Rescue episode and what I observed and was told:
-At the beginning of the show theres a statistic that says during the
day the population in Silver Spring swells to 295,000 with an average
income of $96,000. At night the population drops to 71,000 with an
average income of $36,000. While theres nothing wrong with this on the
surface, its missing something very important that Ill explain further
down.
-The show claims the staff loves to drink and play pirates rather than
serve the customers. Well, that both is and is not true. On the one
hand, the staff loves their jobs, loves pirates, and enjoy working
there. On the the other hand, the food came quickly and I didnt have
to wait to get a seat. In some ways, the jovial, friendly staff is why
anyone would come to Piratz in the first place and Taffer ignores it.
- On the show, Tracy claims thats shes over $900,000 in debt, her
credit is shot and she lives in her parents basement. Tracy told me, a
guy she never met, that she never uses credit cards with Piratz and
shes pays off the $10,000 rent every month in full and on time oh, and
there is no basement.
-Jon and his wife show up to the bar which looks dead except its dead
because the Bar Rescue producers told the tavern to tell everyone that
the tavern was closed. Anyone in the bar were people who walked by and
saw it was open.
-The show claims the patio in the back is unoccupied except they forgot
to mention that the segment was filmed at night in February 2012, with
nightly temperatures in the 30s. Jons wife is even shown walking into
the establishment in a heavy coat.
-The fish the planted couple orders is supposedly terrible. Everyone
there told me basically the same thing: the food was fine, they just
lied and said it was terrible. My food was delicious!
Update: 9/29: Went back to Piratz and ordered the fish the couple on the
show did. While I thought it wasnt as good as the turkey legs I had
last week, it wasnt nearly as bad as the show made it seem.
-Theres a reference to an appetizer thats too spicy. The Burnin
Bits has a waiver you to have sign in order to eat it. I know because I
took notes on the back of said waiver:
Too spicy on purpose.
-How many corporate high rises are really around Piratz? There are two
on the same block, plus a few within eyeshot. Jon wanted to make the
point that there are tons directly next to it, but there are only the
aforementioned two plus the Discovery Channel directly accessible via a
back alleyway. The others he points out include a two-story storefront
and this:
Behold the Silver Spring Metro Garage!
This is a case of Jon not only stretching the truth to make his point
about corporate highrises, but also ignoring a bigger problem which
should be obvious to anyone who has been to the area:
The way most people get to the area is to get off 495 and head down
Georgia Ave. Right before you get to Piratz, they come to whats known
as Downtown Silver Spring, a popular outdoor plaza with literally a
dozen restaurants and two movie theaters (The Regal and an AFI Silver)
along with several big stores including a DSW and a Whole Foods. This
attracts a lot of people with money. However, the traffic turns on
either Colesville or Wayne and heads towards the garages. Only a
fraction of the traffic heads past Wayne Avenue. Ive traveled to the
area quite a bit. Downtown Silver Spring could be packed, but walk
across across Wayne Avenue and the place is a ghost town.
Theres no way Jon missed this fact when researching - he could see it
from Piratz Tavern! While it appears he might have counted Downtown
Silver Spring as a high-rise, counting it as such is extremely
misleading because he therefore ignores all the people coming in on
weekends for entertainment. This destroys his entire theory on why a
pirate bar in Silver Spring cant survive. If Piratz had a location
within Downtown Silver Spring, it wouldve been just fine because the
people who go to the plaza are looking to have fun.
- Moving on, Archer, who quit on the show, was told to be the bad guy
and his role was to quit. The only thing is that Archer really did was
get mad at John so the reaction when he told the cameras to get out of
his face was real.
-To help in the kitchen, Jon brings in Jason, a line cook who had been
working at Piratz for 7 months prior to filming. He was working at a
Bertuccis when a few Piratz employees got him in touch with Tracy who
hired him.
-The show makes it seems like theres an all day bar training going on
for the bartenders. Well, training only lasted as long the cameras
rolled and so the staff only learned basically what is shown on TV.
-On a segment involving service staff training Mike appears to have
trouble talking like a normal person. Its implied Mike was so wrapped
up in his pirate persona, he had trouble coming out of it. Except how
Mike talks on the show is how he really talks. His accent is not an act.
-Theres an exchange where the service trainer says to Mike to act like
the people outside. He says that he hates those people. Only one issue:
that was edited together from two different exchanges, the second one
being the people who go on Yelp and give the bar bad reviews.
-The soft opening was staged, as everyone that was brought in were
actors and did not have to pay. Everything was going fine until Jon told
the actors to start acting as if the service was terrible.
-The scene where Juciano storms out and Tracy goes after him was staged.
He was told to storm off. The audio seems to cut during the segment
because theyre laughing while filming.
-The only thing the employees werent told ahead of time was what the
new theme was supposed to be, so their reactions were real. Even I
thought the idea was terrible from the first time I saw it. The
Corporate Bar and Grill made the place seem homogenized and soulless.
When corporate workers want to go to a bar, they want to escape, not go
back to work. And Jon Taffer, even on the show, came across as a guy who
hated the very idea of a pirate bar from the moment he walked in and
simply wanted it gone, regardless of the reasons for Piratzs failures.
The staff confirmed my suspicions with Tracy calling him completely
unprofessional and saying he made the worst decision possible.
- While it looked pristine in the show, the new interior was shoddily
done. For example, the new tiles on the floor were simply glued onto the
floor underneath. The glue oozed through the tiles and was tracked onto
the back patio, which had to be resurfaced.
-As part of the renovation, Jon installed self-service draft tables
where people could pour their own beer. However, they are illegal in
Montgomery County, so they were useless. Not only that, the draft
tables were really being rented, with the first 2 months paid for. After
that, the bar had pay for all 3 draft tables.
-The grand opening, like the soft opening, was staged, with actors
playing the roles of customers, who ate for free. While I wasnt told
this, based on what they told me about the soft opening, Im certain the
actors were told to act like the place was great even if it was crummy.
-During the grand opening scene, Jason can be seen making burgers. The
staff told me that the burger was made using frozen beef patties and
were expected to charge $11 for it; this is in contrast to their $12
buffalo burger which was and still is on the menu and is made fresh.
They have an $8 regular burger. They never mentioned it, but I assume
its made fresh. And even if it, too, is a frozen beef patty, its still
$3 less.
-After filming, Piratz Tavern returned within two weeks, nearly every
single one of Jons changes was reversed and a small beer bar was added
to the front to make it more lively.
I went to Piratz Tavern expecting at least some of the show to ring true
and found that apparently not one moment of the show was what it
appeared to be. Everything organic was either staged or heavily edited.
Watching the episode again after eating there I saw the fiction in the
reality clearly. Bar Rescue is a fictional show about a man who takes
bars from money pits to profitable businesses. Before Jon steps in, the
staff has to be inept, the food has to be terrible and the bar has to be
completely out of touch with the surrounding community, even if not one
of those things was true. After John relaunches, the staff has to be top
notch, the food has to be delicious and the bar has to be beautiful and
popular. It makes Jon Taffer look like Gods gift to bar management. And
if the bar reverts to its previous persona or isnt doing well, it isnt
Jons fault, its always the owner whos to blame. They didnt listen to
Jon Taffer and now theyre paying the price.
Behold the new sign installed the week before I went!
While the staff admitted the bar was having problems, any problems it
did have were solved simply by being on Bar Rescue and the huge
publicity it generated, giving people a reason to travel past Wayne
Avenue. Our waiter, Blackjack, told me that Jon Taffer should have just
come in and just helped with an ad campaign instead of the nightmare
their bar rescue turned out to be. Monkey even said it was one of the
worst experiences of his entire life, and I have to believe him.
Piratz stands as a symbol of how fake reality television truly is.
Before I ate at Piratz, I loved Bar Rescue. It was a compelling,
well-produced show. After eating at Piratz, I dont think I can watch
another episode knowing full well that what Im seeing is as fictional
as a scripted drama. One thing I do know for sure is that Im
definitely going back to Piratz Tavern.
Ill leave you with the video by the Piratz staff of the Corporate Bar
and Grill sign being shot at and burned:
--
"The trend is undeniable, the far left intruding on the national
discourse, perverting the educational system, and generally behaving as
badly as any movement has since the late 1960s. Fair-minded Americans
will eventually reject this explosion of zealotry as they always have."
-- Bill O'Reilly
.
"The trend is undeniable, the far left intruding on the national
discourse, perverting the educational system, and generally behaving as
badly as any movement has since the late 1960s. Fair-minded Americans
will eventually reject this explosion of zealotry as they always have."
-- Bill O'Reilly
.