Wheelie Big Trouble

L&I shutters a bar reputed to be biker-gang hangout.

by Brendan McGarvey and Gabriele J. Valentine

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Published: Nov 15, 2006

Last Friday night, a city Department of Licenses and Inspections van and a police cruiser pulled up in front of Whiskey Dix Saloon in Northern Liberties and, after L&I inspectors interviewed the bar manager, investigators closed the bar for allegedly operating without a current liquor license and for being a public nuisance.

An L&I source says they tried to get in and out as fast as possible so they wouldn't have a run-in with members of the Pagans motorcycle gang who they expected to soon show up for their weekly meeting.

Law-enforcement sources and bar insiders claim local leaders of the Pagan Nation held meetings on Thursday or Friday evenings for more than a year and that many Pagans and associates had taken to using the North Seventh Street watering hole as their unofficial clubhouse.

Despite those claims, bar owner Bill McKeever maintains they were a problem a year and a half ago but no longer come to the bar in droves. "You might see one or two," says McKeever, adding that he's since fired a manager who allowed them to set up shop inside.

Still, according to one eyewitness, the meetings are ongoing, and seem to be organized and carried out with military precision. "First, a Pagan called Chewy would show up on his bike," the source says. "He was the scout. He'd come into Whiskey Dix and check it out. Then, three other Pagans would show up, all wearing their colors. They would be on cell phones. One would talk to the bouncer, a guy called Machine who the Pagans are trying to recruit, to see if anything unusual was going on."

Then, Chewy would make his "all clear" telephone call and within minutes, 10 to 15 Pagans would arrive. The president of the local chapter would arrive in his Cadillac Escalade with a very large bodyguard in tow, and head upstairs to the mezzanine to meet with Pagans including a club enforcer who always carried a cane with a sword concealed inside it. Pagan business allegedly included conversations about a possible war against the rival Outlaw biker gang, meth trafficking and illegal gambling operations.

Over time, some Pagans noticed suspicious vans outside and saw men taking video and photographs of patrons, particularly the bikers and their hangers-on. They quickly realized that local organized-crime investigators and the Pennsylvania State Police had the bar under occasional surveillance, but that didn't stop them from allegedly misbehaving inside. (McKeever says he never saw cops taking photos.)

Sources say one Pagan broke a bar manager's nose several years ago, and last summer two Pagans, one wielding a hammer, savagely beat a patron known as "the Ice Cream Man," because he mistakenly wore a Hells Angels T-shirt.

Just two weeks ago, on Toys For Tots Sunday — the day bikers collect toys for local children's hospitals — more than 100 bikers and bar patrons crowded the sidewalk and street outside the bar, drinking, brawling and stopping traffic to race motorcycles, sometimes pulling wheelies or burning so much rubber the block was covered in smoke. Among the celebrants: Pagans wearing their colors and members of the Northeast Riders, a reputed Pagan "feeder club." (McKeever says the fight had nothing to do with the Pagans and points out that he only gets a crowd like that once a year after the run.)

According to witnesses, Whiskey Dix served booze to the crowd the entire afternoon even though, according to State Liquor Control Board records, the bar's liquor license had expired on Halloween, five days earlier.

As of presstime, according to the Liquor Control Board's administrative law judge's office, the bar's owners still had not responded to the citation. McKeever says he's sent a renewal application and expects to reopen the bar soon.

Filipelli? Never Heard-a Him

The FBI and New Jersey state police might want to recheck their sources. Last month, they arrested Vincent "Vince" Filipelli, a hulking 260-pound bodybuilder who once served as bodyguard for onetime Philly mob boss John Stanfa [Underworld, "Back in the Slammer Again," Brendan McGarvey, Nov. 2, 2006]. The 53-year-old Cherry Hill resident, charged with allegedly running an illegal sports-betting operation, supposedly bragged to undercover detectives that he was a "made guy" in the Philadelphia Mafia.

However, local mob members and associates are maintaining that Filipelli is not a fully initiated member. "If you are talking about it and bragging to outsiders about it," says one insider, "you ain't in it."

(b_mcgarvey@citypaper.net)

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