10/12/2026
Great news!
The 🦊 will be back for normal hours starting tomorrow - Tuesday October 12th. We have missed seeing you and look forward to spending some quality time together in the coming days.
Also, in other news there has been a bunch of hullabaloo about the removal date for the PA “Skill Games” and a lot of rhetoric going around about them. When I first opened I said no to them, but then a friend decided to dip their toe into the vending business in partnership with a larger vendor in the area so I took on two machines. My relationship with the machines since then has been complicated at best. I understand some bars see them as an added source of revenue. I think for a portion of the population that’s pretty true - have a b**r or two, put in a $20 here or there - win sometimes, lose others, and then move on. However, for a larger population than most of us are willing to admit gambling has become a problem - especially when combined with drinking. I’d argue part of that reason is it’s accessibility - with every bar filled with machines and ATMs it’s really easy for a night of a few drinks to turn into a night of a few drinks and too much money lost at a machine - which is part of the reason I never had an ATM to try to curb that temptation.
The whole concept of the 🦊 grew out of my enjoyment of to***co (but disillusionment with the politics of some of the people in the cigar business - especially when my political beliefs became a litmus test for some retailers in reference to the level of business we would do during the 2020 lockdown era), belief that Dormont needed a cocktail bar geared more toward adults and not “you can barely taste the booze in this” drinks, and my enjoyment and knowledge of how to build community.
Im proud to say that from a financial standpoint 2026 has been our best year to date and “skill games” provided little to no contribution to that, they did however contribute to a few of the bigger negative events of the year. I attribute our financial success to building a welcoming environment where people feel safe and comfortable. On reflection, now that the “skill games” are gone I think they largely provided a negative impact on our environment - separating people from the social environment of main bar but not participating in some of the more group friendly activities in the back such as darts or board games.
I think community is what makes us different and what makes us successful, and I’ve taken my role of fostering that community seriously - by genuinely caring for and assisting our guests and community when able, by safeguarding folks in the establishment (including cutting people off or slowing them down faster than many places would), and ejecting folks who are disruptive to the safe and inclusive nature of our space.
This is all a long winded way of saying - now that the “skill games” are gone, they won’t be returning. You are probably seeing pages and pages full of business owners complaining about lost revenue from their removal. While I have compassion for nonprofits (like VFWs and other similar social clubs and charitable organizations and think provisions should be made for them) what all the other business owners are saying is that your basic patronage isn’t enough, but they need you to lose more of your money gambling so they can make more off of you. The Fox has never been the cheapest place in the neighborhood, but that’s because we structured the business around selling drinks and ci**rs, not luring people in with aggressive specials so they’d spend more money gambling than they did on drinks. Our prices won’t be going up when the machines are gone and, in my opinion, the overall experience - one centered primarily around good company ahead of any sales pitch - will be strengthened by them being gone.
