Fees might range from a few hundred bucks to a few thousand dollars. In most states in America, a restaurant liquor license is nothing more than a business permit: You apply, and maybe you get one. This process has already begun to radically transform how and where we dine and drink in Philly - a shift fueled by unforgiving economics, arcane liquor laws designed to make the drinks business as inconvenient as possible, and a couple of little businesses named Wegmans and Wawa. If prices have dipped a little since, say brokers, it’s only because so many restaurants have closed. After remaining relatively stable for decades, prices shot up significantly faster than overall inflation over about 20 years - from $30,000 at the turn of the millennium to a peak of more than $200,000 just before the pandemic. In that same period, the price of a liquor license has skyrocketed to heights the city had never seen. Today, there are about 1,300 active licenses, and more than 60 of these are taken up by a new crop of supermarkets and gas stations. In 1997, more than 2,100 liquor licenses were reported in Philly. The number of Philadelphia bars and restaurants with active liquor licenses has dropped dramatically in the past quarter-century, despite our much-touted restaurant boom. There was a time, Herron says, that neighborhood bars accounted for a large share of the liquor licenses he sold in Philadelphia. And indeed, Liquor Control Board records show the license from Wanda’s was snapped up by a Chicago-owned concern called Puttshack that promises an “upscale, tech-infused mini golf experience” in Rittenhouse Square, imbued with something the company calls “trendy vibes.” Most licenses now go to well-heeled buyers in areas like Center City, Herron tells me. “It’s almost as if the neighborhood bar is quickly disappearing from Philadelphia,” says Paul Herron, one of the few liquor lawyers in the city who act as lonely boatmen, selling liquor licenses from dead businesses and ferrying them to new owners around town. But in Philly, the corner bars are mostly just going. ![]() It’s likely nothing similar will take its place soon - or open anywhere nearby. ![]() As of last year, Wanda’s Lounge is no more. He plans to name his next album Wanda’s Lounge, in tribute to the bar that helped shape him. “There were so many regulars, it made me think of the television show Cheers,” Marshall says - a comparison made by seemingly every old head who knew the spot. Half the stuff he samples, he’s pretty sure, is just a subliminal transmission from Wanda’s. The music wafted through the floorboards or poured out the doors, and he soaked it up by osmosis: Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight, the Temptations, the Whispers. But back in the ’70s, he was a kid in Southwest Philly, living upstairs from Wanda’s. He’s now a high-school teacher in North Carolina - and a Billboard-charted rapper under the name Official 3-2. It was here that Sean Marshall learned to love music, long before he could even sit at the bar. ![]() For half a century, Wanda’s was the sort of down-the-way spot one always hopes might be down the way: a mirror-walled watering hole about as wide and as long as a train car, with a soundtrack of R&B and a tight line of barstools occupied by customers who might be best known locally as “Disco Doc” or “Stonewall Jackson.” There was room for dancing, if the spirit took you, and a corner stage where a local musician could get his start. ![]() There were many bars like it, but this one was a wee corner dive on a residential block of Kingsessing, in Southwest Philly. The neighborhood bar on the corner is becoming a thing of the past.
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