One of the Gayborhood’s few remaining minority-owned LGBT+ venues is fighting for its life in court. A newly formed nonprofit called Save Our Neighborhood for Tomorrow, Inc. filed suit this month in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court asking a judge to shut down Bar X, the self-described “dive bar of the Gayborhood” on Camac Street, and to revoke its business license.
The suit, first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, claims the bar has “repeatedly generated excessive noise, disorderly conduct, disturbances, violence, public intoxication” and requires a constant police presence. It names owner Tony Tsang, the City of Philadelphia, and the Department of Licenses and Inspections as defendants, arguing the city failed the neighborhood by keeping the bar licensed.
Who’s actually behind the lawsuit
The nonprofit is days old, has no website, no social media, and no publicly known members beyond the two attorneys who created it: Michael van der Veen, whose law office sits directly across Camac Street from the bar, and William Brennan, who incorporated the group. If those names sound familiar, it’s because the pair served on Donald Trump’s defense team during his 2021 impeachment trial and later defended the Trump Organization in its New York tax-fraud case. The suit was filed by attorney George Bochetto – the same lawyer currently representing the residents who paused the Pine and Spruce bike lane safety upgrades.
Van der Veen, 62, told the Inquirer the conflict began with a years-long dispute over a parking spot and escalated in July, when he says he was assaulted from behind while leaving his office at night. “When I got jumped from behind and got cold-cocked, I was done,” he said. Days later, the nonprofit existed and the lawsuit followed. As of publication, no police report, arrest, or charges connected to the alleged assault have been publicly confirmed.
What Bar X says
Tsang, 59, who opened the bar in 2016 in the former home of the beloved Venture Inn, disputes the allegations of public drunkenness and sexual activity – and points out that Camac Street is home to three bars, with a fourth around the corner.
“One block, three bars, how come they’re only complaining about us? To me, it’s the color. I’m Asian. My English isn’t too good. They want to play a game with me.”
Tony Tsang, owner of Bar X, to The Philadelphia Inquirer
Bar X’s clientele is majority Black, and staff describe it as one of the last minority-owned clubs in the Gayborhood – a “very homey” spot with Taco Tuesdays, twice-weekly karaoke, and a Thursday male revue. When unverified rumors of drugged drinks circulated online earlier this year, staff say they tried to track down the accusers, couldn’t confirm any crime, and ordered drink covers for customers anyway. “We take pride in it being a safe place in the Gayborhood,” bartender Joseph Ward told the Inquirer, “so we obviously want to keep it that way.”
The numbers – and the bigger picture
To be fair to the neighbors: police data shows crime incidents on the 200 block of Camac are genuinely up – 38 reported through early August, compared with 22 in all of 2025 and roughly a dozen a year before that. The city has already responded, with street cleanings and a police “bar/nightclub” deployment clearing the block after 2 a.m. on weekends, following an April community meeting hosted by the Washington Square West Civic Association.
But it’s impossible to read this lawsuit outside the moment it arrived in. It comes two months after the June 7 Pride festival, when an aggressive police response in the Gayborhood led to 15 arrests and, earlier this month, a City Council oversight hearing where residents testified that the harshest crowd-control tactics landed on Black celebrants. “Black and brown LGBTQ+ people are watched differently. We are approached differently. We are policed differently,” Philly Black Pride’s Jacen Bowman testified. “Too often we are made to feel like visitors in a neighborhood that is promoted as the heart of Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ community.”
It also comes as the Gayborhood keeps shrinking. Cockatoo and Level Up – both minority-owned – closed in late 2024. The Venture Inn, whose walls Bar X now occupies, served this community for decades before it. Every space lost is one that doesn’t come back.
Nobody disputes that neighbors deserve safe, livable streets – and if the assault van der Veen describes happened, it deserves a real investigation. But a two-lawyer nonprofit with no community footprint asking a court to erase one of the last Black-patronized, minority-owned bars in the Gayborhood is something this community has seen versions of before. We’ll be watching the docket.
Bar X remains open at 255 S. Camac St. No hearing date has been set. We’ll update this story as the case develops.
Sources & further reading: The Philadelphia Inquirer’s original report by Abraham Gutman and Zoe Greenberg; Northeast Times; WHYY’s coverage of the Pride policing hearing; Philadelphia Police Department data via Open Data Philly.