Phillies’ World Series usurps spooky season for Philly bar owners: ‘I almost forgot it was Halloween’
Costumes are encouraged at bars, “as long as it’s not an Astros jersey," owners say, but the focus is on baseball right now.
Chris McNichol spent Friday afternoon decorating his Queen Village sports bar, the Woolly Mammoth, for Halloween.
Any other year, McNichol said, he’d have done this long before the holiday weekend.
This year, however, the Phillies’ World Series has overshadowed everything.
“I almost forgot that it was Halloween Monday with everything going on with the Phillies and Eagles,” who remain undefeated, said McNichol, who planned to put candy on the bar Monday night, but “won’t do the place up as much” as usual.
“We encourage people to have costumes,” he said, adding with a laugh, “as long as it’s not an Astros jersey.”
A similar sentiment was echoed by several other Philadelphia bar and restaurant owners, all of whom said the Phillies’ first World Series in more than a decade has almost fully eclipsed what is typically a festive and lucrative period for the city’s bars and restaurants.
After the Phillies won the National League Championship Series and began preparing to play Games 1 and 2 of the World Series on Friday and Saturday, some bars changed their plans. The stadium complex-adjacent Xfinity Live!, for example, canceled scheduled Halloween events over the weekend. Xfinity instead hosted Phillies watch parties, live videos from which were occasionally shown on the national television broadcast of the games.
» READ MORE: The Inquirer's complete Phillies World Series coverage
The South Street Headhouse District canceled what would have been its first annual Halloween Costume Crawl, which had been scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, said executive director Mike Harris.
“With the Phillies, that is the premier event,” he said before Monday’s game was rained out. “We didn’t want to compete with that.”
Bars in the area still put together Halloween drink specials, Harris said, and found creative ways to celebrate amid the Phillies excitement.
“We’ll do the parade next year,” he said, “unless the Phillies are in the World Series again.”
For those who wanted the Halloween experience, several bar crawls and parties went on as planned over the weekend, and bar-restaurant folks marked the holiday — though perhaps more subtly than usual.
“I’m just throwing Halloween out the window for myself,” said Chris Dickson, co-owner of Top Tomato Bar and Pizza in Center City. “I’ll be wearing a Phillies jersey dancing on my own in the corner.”
Top Tomato still held its Halloween party Saturday night, he said, but with a delayed start.
The bar played the Phillies game with sound on its 20 TVs, and the spooky festivities didn’t get into full swing until after the game.
Drinker’s Pub near Rittenhouse Square was a stop for several well-attended bar crawls over the weekend and on Monday, said managing member Joe Krouse, but those started in the afternoon. That made it manageable to juggle the Phillies games, he said.
During the playoffs, Krouse said he has found that the crowd, this weekend a costume-clad one, tends to stay put at one bar, he said, with less bar-hopping than on a typical night out.
The bar sometimes got Phillies crowds during the regular season, he said, but nothing like this. “Even people that aren’t real sports fans are getting excited.”
Patrons at O’Neals Pub in Queen Village sipped Halloween drink specials, such as a blood orange “vampire punch in a blood bag,” over the weekend and on Monday, and put out candy for adults on Monday, said managing partner Greg “Spoonie” Rand.
But “obviously, the Phillies World Series takes precedence over everything at the moment,” he said.
They hadn’t planned any Halloween parties, he said, though they did cancel the karaoke sessions usually scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights because they would conflict with the game.
Rand said he has heard no complaints.
“People that aren’t Phillies fans are now on the bandwagon, so I don’t think we’ll alienate anybody,” he said. “If there is somebody who really, really hates baseball, they don’t have to go out to a bar … [or] you go to a place that doesn’t have TVs.”
At O’Neals, the food menu has been scaled back during the World Series games. It includes 10 popular and easier-to-cook-en-masse items to take pressure off the back of the house, Rand said. It’s one of the many tricks of the trade he’s learned over his 30 years in the business.
“I’ve been down this road before,” he said, recalling how during the 2008 World Series parade he not only fully staffed the bar but also had someone posted at Broad and South Streets to alert the team when the crowds were coming.
During this Phillies run, business has been up about 20%, Rand said, a needed boost after it took a hit early in the pandemic.
“We almost don’t know which way to turn our heads,” said McNichol, of Woolly Mammoth. “There’s so much good going on in the city.”
And bar-restaurant owners are counting on the trend to continue, at least for the immediate future.
While Monday night’s game was rained out, the Phillies are scheduled to play at home Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Eagles play Thursday night, and, if needed, the Phillies could play Saturday and Sunday nights in Houston. The Union also play in the MLS Cup on Saturday.
“It’ll be a good 10 days,” said Rand, with the Phillies in particular causing an uptick in business “not comparable” to the usual Halloween bump.