Tavern on Camac owner changed careers in midlife

One night in the fall of 2003, Stephen Carlino walked halfway up a narrow street and paused for a moment on the brick steps of a quaint, stalwart building to consider that he might be on the threshold of a dream.

A 47-year-old former title insurance salesman, Carlino had always wanted to own a neighborhood watering hole. "I envisioned myself as Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, wearing a white dinner jacket, standing at the end of the bar, greeting customers," he says.

Through friends, he had heard that the Tavern on Camac - one of the oldest gay bars in Philadelphia - was for sale. It was known as Maxine's in the 1920s and Raffles in the 1980s, when Carlino was young and single, but it had been years since he'd set foot in the place.

The neighborhood of early 19th-century brick rowhouses looked a lot like sections of London where Carlino and his partner had been living. That night, the bar, dark, dingy, and deserted, tested his imagination. "But I knew," he says, "it could be what it used to be."

Eight years later, on a busy Friday night in April, Carlino works his way through the crush of bodies in the renovated tavern's third-floor dance bar, greeting customers, accepting hugs and how-you-doings from regulars.

Sapphire light reflects off the mirrored walls and splashes across the crowded dance floor. The patrons are Indian, Hispanic, African American, Asian, and white, and no one appears old enough to remember Anita Bryant. Two young men moodily rock back and forth, arms draped over each other's shoulders, oblivious to the frantic techno beat. Beside them, a glazed-eyed drunk bobs around spastically in the center of a man sandwich. And on the far edge, Therese Madden, a 38-year-old audio producer for WHYY radio, dances with two of her straight female friends as though they're at a wedding.

"We can relax and dance without being bothered by guys hitting on us," Madden says. She has brought her husband along tonight, too, she says. "He would never come here alone."

Although the tavern still has a primarily gay and lesbian following, a small, steady clientele is straight. Carlino explains that because gays have become more integrated into society, bars like the tavern have faced more competition.

In the 1970s and '80s, gay bars were the only places to go to socialize. "But now, gay people can go to almost any bar in Center City and be comfortable being gay. In order for gay bars to survive, you have to cater to everyone," he says. "It's all about the party."

He offers to help a woman wobbling on stiletto heels negotiate the steep, carpeted stairs to the second floor, where the crowd is singing, "Can you feel the love tonight," with a piano player pounding out tunes at a baby grand in the corner.

The tavern, originally a rowhouse, was built in the early 1800s, and is solid enough that the noise doesn't travel. Downstairs in the restaurant, couples and friends are listening to quiet mood music.

Carlino, wearing a black shirt embroidered with the tavern's name, asks the bartender for a glass of Côte du Rhône and nurses it for the next hour while making glad-handing rounds of all three floors.

During the week, when business is slower, the bar hosts various events. Wednesdays there's "tavern feud," Tuesdays, karaoke; and Mondays are "T-girl" nights - T for transgender.

"It's part of my philosophy to be accepting," Carlino says. He recalls once watching a bartender throw a drag queen out of a bar. "I'm not good at confronting people, but I remember thinking, 'Why should she be excluded?' "

The seventh of eight children in an Irish and Italian family in Blue Bell, Carlino planned to become a Catholic priest, but his father insisted he go to college. At John Carroll University, a Jesuit school in Cleveland, Carlino changed his mind and went on to earn a master's degree in counseling at Villanova.

All through high school and college, Carlino says, he secretly maintained a relationship with another young man.

"I always knew I was gay. I didn't know the name for it, but by the time a boy learns the name for it, he also learns it's something you have to hide. Something to be ashamed of." He and his friend parted ways after college, and his friend went on to marry a woman.

Carlino dated women, as well, he says, until he came out in his late 20s. "I didn't want to live a lie and subject other people to my lies," he says.

He had always assumed that his family had no idea, and he never explicitly told his mother. "But I did tell my father. His response was, 'Tell me something I don't know!' He was very cool about it."

When he turned 30, Carlino joined the family business, Penn Title Insurance Co., and worked for his older brother. In 1996, he met his partner and future husband, Dennis Fee, at Woody's, another of the gayborhood's iconic bars. Fee, a dentist, and Carlino settled into a comfortable domestic life for a few years until Carlino realized he was bored selling insurance and needed a change.

So he quit, and the couple moved to Europe, living first in Nice, then in London. After Carlino bought the Tavern on Camac in 2004, they moved back to Philadelphia. He recently bought Uncle's, another gay bar and bed-and-breakfast, and has started to renovate it.

"I don't really see myself as a mover and shaker in the gay community," he says, but as a bar owner in the gayborhood, he is a public person and feels it's important to give back to the community.

Carlino and Fee, who were married in California in 2008, sponsor several softball teams in an LGBT sports league and contribute to various AIDS organizations, Manna, the Mazzoni LGBT health center, and the William Way Center. And in exchange for substantial donations to Elton John's AIDS foundation in 2009, they were invited to the singer's estate in England for dinner and a tennis game with Billie Jean King.

"It was more of a lesson than a game, really," Carlino says. His tennis skills? "Terrible!"

It is 11 p.m., and the bar is packed. He returns his empty wineglass to the restaurant bar when his cellphone rings. The call is from Fee, telling him he's leaving the tavern and heading home.

"I'm sorry I didn't get back up to see you," Carlino says gently. "Drive safely. Love you."