The Tavern Guild Roundtable San Diego conducted their first meeting June 6 at The Abbey Café in Hillcrest, where approximately 35 owners and employees from GLBT bars, clubs, restaurants and coffee shops attended. Bourbon Street bartenders “Big Mike” Phillips and Leo Moore founded the organization.

“Big Mike and I decided it was time to try and attempt to start a new tavern guild, since it has been tried four times previously and has collapsed each time, but this time it will survive,” Moore said.

Phillips stressed that it is important the guild is forming again.

“My main concern about this was that there hasn’t been any voice in our community concerning restaurants and bars,” Phillips said. “So many people depend on the bars and their financial obligations to the community.”

Phillips described how bars and clubs tend to have a bad reputation with concern to contributing to the drug problem within the community, but pointed out that these establishments have raised much-needed funds for non-profit organizations and other causes over the last 30 years.

“They [bars and nightclubs] were the ones that were opening their doors for meetings and raising money for different things like AIDS and civil rights. Our history goes back with Stonewall … it started in a bar,” he said. “We want to also educate ourselves. We want to be more involved with our community and different organizations. We want to have our doors open to continuing educating and participating in our community.”

Phillips emphasized that the Tavern Guild is just not about bar and club owners. “It is about the employees all the way down to the security; everyone is welcomed.”

City Commissioner Nicole Murray-Ramirez spoke about the history of the Tavern Guild of San Francisco, which has been in existence for over 43 years.

Founded in 1962, the Tavern Guild began as a way for gay bar owners and employees to share news and socialize. It then slowly became more politically active and instituted policies within its first year, which assisted many bartenders, bar owners and patrons in handling various issues.

Through events like auctions, dances and other social gatherings, the Tavern Guild also became a charitable organization helping to raise funds for gay groups like the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis and the Society for Individual Rights, and later in the 1960s for non-gay organizations like the United Farm Workers and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The San Francisco Tavern Guild Foundation was eventually created to be the center of all donations to organizations and causes in the community. In 1982, in an effort to help local charitable organizations, they founded the non-profit Community Thrift Store, where over 200 charities now bring items to be sold, with the proceeds benefiting their organizations.

Lt. Margaret Schauselberger, of the San Diego Police Department and a special assistant to Police Chief William Lansdowne, said at the June 6 meeting that she would be working closely with the Tavern Guild in regards to community issues and vice operations. She added that once the Tavern Guild is more established, Lansdowne may attend some of the meetings.

David Contois, co-founder of the Harm Reduction Crystal Meth Campaign in San Diego, discussed the severity of the crystal meth problem in the GLBT community and announced a new campaign to combat crystal meth use, which will be launched in the coming months through a Web site called nocrystal.com.

Phillips said there is a subcommittee of people within the Tavern Guild that are working with Contois to help address the crystal meth problem.

“I know that there’s a major problem in our community, Phillips said. “This is another reason why I wanted to put this together, because a lot of people like to blame and point fingers at the bars for drug problems, but we have a drug problem in our community. It can happen in our homes. It happens in their cars before they walk into any event – being a bar, being a circuit party, being whatever. So to point the finger at one individual organization or business is not fair.”

The next Tavern Guild meeting will be at David’s Coffeehouse on Monday, July 11, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., and will feature the election of Tavern Guild officers and a more substantial conversation about their overall agenda and plans for the future.