Sugar Moms: One Last Drink In Your Favorite Bar
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Everyone should have "their bar", a fortress of solitude where you bring only the best of friends and drink the cheapest of beers.
Buried beneath the understated Sugar Refinery apartments on Church Street in Old City, Sugar Moms served as a safe house for many away from the vodka-cran-soaked dancing and slim-fit shot-ripping of Philadelphia's most historic section. The basement bar was kind and unassuming, but just dangerous enough to make it cool. Its tables littered with small plastic toys and lollipops, its walls covered in memories and graffiti. Sugar Moms was part carnival, part living room – having the bumper cars and couches to prove it. In short, it was perfect and was my bar.
About this time two years ago Sugar Moms would close its doors for the last time – serving its last PBR and lighting up the jukebox with The Menzingers and Otis Redding for one final evening. Quietly on a Saturday night in November of 2013, my beloved bar would shutter never to be heard from again. I've recounted that night a lot over the past two years, wondering what would have happened if I opted for drinks around Sugar Moms broken-down piano rather than karaoke off of South Street. It was a choice that would haunt me, the goodbye I never got to give.
That is until recently when I learned that the space is once again available for lease, looking for someone new to warm its walls with drinks, friends, and hopefully The Clash still blaring from the jukebox speakers. I thought that if I could shine a light on a room that gave so much to me over the years, than maybe it would atone for my poorly laid plans from that night in November. Also selfishly, I could have one last beer inside my favorite spot.
After some convincing, I was allowed back down the steps into the bar that I called home. The furniture and the pool table are gone but the names written across its bricks and the bumper car left in the corner served as a reminder of how special Sugar Moms was. These pictures and this article are here as a reminder of the memories you too might have shared at this beloved underground haven, but also as a wish that one day someone else will breathe life into it with the same spirit it served Philadelphia with for so long.
It should be noted that there is still a Tattooed Moms on South Street – which is great – but for those that found comfort in the pornographic bathrooms and the dimly-lit tranquility of Sugar Moms it will never be quite the same.
Check out the photo gallery included here, and if you would like to be a part of the next chapter of Sugar Moms you can find out more information here.
