Five Points bar criticized after black staffers let go, customer turned away

COLUMBIA, SC — A Five Points bar became the target of social media protests last month after the manager said he was fired because the owner believed the business had become “too dark.”

Josh Sutton, the former manager of Moosehead Saloon on Devine Street, said he received a text message from the owner saying that “whatever is happening to the crowd shift, I want it to stop now. It’s gone too far. I will bring in a entire need (new) staff if needed.”

In a followup coversation, the owner, Matt Shmanske, said the business was becoming “too dark,” Sutton told The State.

Shmanske, who also owns several other bars and restaurants in Columbia, did not respond to several requests for comment from The State.

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Sutton’s firing was one of several incidents reported by former employees and customers at Moosehead that drew criticisms from them and others on social media:

• Immediately after Sutton, who is white, was fired in early July, the entire staff was ordered to reapply for their jobs; although at least two African-Americans were invited back, none of them has returned;
• An African-American customer was denied entry because of a dress code ban on solid-color shirts. The dress code has since been removed;
• Shmanske complained to staffers that the bar was playing too much hip-hop music.

“Crowd shift” at Moosehead

Sutton had been the bar’s manager for almost two years. In a 2017 social media post, Shmanske called Sutton a member of his “dream team” and part of the “hardest working staff” he knew.

But one day in late June, Sutton got the text about a “crowd shift” around 1 p.m.

In the followup call, Shmanske said Moosehead was getting “too dark,” Sutton says. Sutton said the owner told him the bar was attracting more black patrons than Shmanske wanted and had too many black people working there.

“He said they (the bouncers) were all trash and didn’t work,” Sutton recalls. Depending on the time of year, the bar had between 12 and 15 bouncers, including eight to 10 African-Americans, according to Sutton. The bar had about seven bartenders, including three African-Americans.

“He was like ‘you don’t have the people in the bar that I want in the bar,’” Sutton said. “There was no need to carry on the conversation anymore. … I told him I’m not going to fire anybody because of their skin color. You’re going to have to fire me if you want that done.”

That’s what happened. On July 2 Sutton was fired, the former manager said. The rest of the staff, including the nine black bouncers and three black bartenders, were told to fill out applications for employment again, even though they worked at Moosehead already, according to six former and current employees of Moosehead.

If a person got a call back, he or she was still working at the Five Points bar. Employees who didn’t get a call back weren’t employed anymore. When the whole process was done in July, at least two were asked to return, but only one was considering returning.

The diversity of the current staff could not be determined.

Moosehead is just one of the bars Shmanske owns in Five Points. The others are Thirsty Parrot and Latitude 22. In 2015, he received an award from the Five Points Association for renovations and beautification efforts at Lattitude 22.

He also owns Vista Union in the Vista and Burger 77 Tavern on Devine Street.

In a 2016 article by The State, Shmanske said he thought Moosehead Saloon’s rock ‘n’ roll, country western theme “was a great idea” in Five Points. “I thought it was an untapped market,” he said at the time.

The “too dark” comment spread among Moosehead’s employees and the tight knit community of Five Post service industry workers. Trent Brown, a former Moosehead employee who ran the bar’s social media efforts, posted about the alleged words spoken between Shmanske and Sutton on social media. The comment also was posted on Twitter and Instagram with screenshots of Shmanske’s “crowd shift” quote and the assertion that he would bring in an entire new staff if Sutton didn’t do something about the changing patronage.

The same post got viewed by almost 400 people on Snapchat. Screenshots from that social media account began to be reposted by other Snapchat and Instagram users.

One Twitter user who posted the screenshot against Shmanske said “be careful what you support, and know who youre giving your money to. if you go out tonight and from here on out to 5 pts do NOT go to Moosehead, be the change you wanna see in the world.”

The Tweet gained more than a hundred interactions.

Brown, who also was in charge of the business’ promotions, used to help bring in DJs to the club six nights a week. He quit in protest of Sutton’s firing.

“You still got black people going to Moosehead,” Brown said. “You’re giving your money to someone who doesn’t want you there. I didn’t want that to happen.”

Call back

Dillard Trapp, a former bartender at Moosehead who’s black, got a call back and interviewed after the rehiring process. He decided he wouldn’t be working there. The place used to be a “pretty cool environment,” he said. But with all of what he’s heard and the staff being changed out, Trapp says, “I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Trapp doesn’t see any reason Sutton or any other employees should have been let go. Any issues with the bar were minor, Trapp says.

Marcus Hughes agrees.

Hughes, who is black, started working at Moosehead Saloon in October 2017. He became the head bouncer, and by February he was helping to hire much of the staff that was eventually let go. The bar had been doing well before Sutton’s firing, Hughes said. They didn’t have a bunch of fights and sales were good. Still, he didn’t get a call back to work at Moosehead.

“I don’t see any reason I would have been let go,” Hughes says. “I wasn’t late. I did my job and made sure everything was done. … There wasn’t any viable reason for Josh and everyone else to get fired.”

One other black bouncer was called back but refused to return after he heard about the allegations against Shmanskey, according to former and current employees. At least three other staff members left in solidarity with Sutton before the firing and rehiring process began.

Sutton says that during the conversation in which he was fired, Shmanske mentioned drug activity in the bar. Sutton and others said some Five Points bar patrons sometimes use drugs, but Moosehead had less of that activity than other bars. Under his management, the bar had rules and protocols to deal with with drug use, the former manager says.

From January to July, Columbia Police Department responded to six incidents at Moosehead Saloon ranging from simple assault, which could be a person saying they’ll hurt someone without doing it, to a couple of underage drinking charges against people with fake IDs.

Comparatively, the Carolina Pour House, which was shut down last year as a nuisance by the city, allegedly had served alcohol after hours 10 times, underage customers were caught six times with fake IDs and it was the site of fights more than a dozen times, according to police records from July 2016 to March 2017. None of the police incidents at Moosehead involved drugs.

Sutton said the staff at Moosehead worked hard to make the place a good bar for anyone looking for the Five Points experience.

“Everybody that came there, we built off friendships and how we treated people,” Sutton says.

Dress code

Shayna Wickens was one of those regulars at Moosehead. Wickens, 24 and black, is a graduate of Rock Hill’s Winthrop University who moved to Columbia. In November 2017 she started hanging out in Five Points. She’d be at Moosehead almost every weekend, she says.

“I liked it because it had a nice, mixed crowd,” Wickens says. “It wasn’t just a thousand white people and a few black people. I preferred Moosehead over other bars because everyone was friendly.”

But one night, she said, it was unfriendly to one of her friends.

In late April, Wickens was out in Five Points for a birthday celebration when her group decided to go to Moosehead. They got in. But when Wickens’ friend Malcolm Bevel showed up, he wasn’t let in.

A white bouncer said Bevel, who is black, couldn’t come in because he wore a solid-color t-shirt, which violated Moosehead’s dress code.

But Bevel and Wickens both say at least one white man who was wearing a solid color T-shirt was let in. The bouncer, when confronted by Bevel, said the person had a small logo on his shirt. Then Bevel saw another white man come out wearing a solid shirt, but the bouncer gave the same reasoning for why that man was let in.

Bevel said he didn’t see logos on either of the white men’s shirts.

Bevel said he was told he couldn’t enter because of “the color of my shirt but really it was the color of my skin. . . My issue is not with the code but the equity of its application.”

He said other dress restrictions seemed racially biased. They included bans on “grills,” meaning gold teeth; “baggy clothing;” and necklace “chains.” Also banned were RompHims, one piece outfits popular amongst gay black men.

The rules allowed for too much bias, said Brown, the former promoter for Moosehead.

The incident became a hot topic on social media. Moosehead’s Facebook page received more than 100 negative reviews during the weeks after the incident, 60 of them mentioning racism.

“This place has racist practices,” one person wrote on Facebook. … “(People of color) have good money too. Too bad y’all don’t want it. Shame on you.”

Another person posted, “If you love racism, this is the place for you!”

Angered people took to Yelp and Trip Advisor to leave similar comments.

How to enforce the dress code was an issue between management and the owner, Sutton believes.

Sutton instructed the bouncers to enforce the dress code if someone looked grossly intoxicated or was being reckless. Also, rather than denying entry to someone wearing a chain, the bouncers might ask him to tuck it into his shirt.

Hughes, the former head bouncer, said they were strict on some things like no camouflage.

But Sutton and Hughes said they weren’t going to deny a whole group of people entry because one person had on a solid color t-shirt.

Hughes says the bouncer who denied entry to Bevel left Moosehead after the incident. It got “too hectic” for the bouncer, Hughes says.

But the bouncer was doing just what Shmanske wanted, Hughes said. Shmanske wanted stricter enforcement of the dress code in order “to stop letting certain people in,” according to Hughes.

“He’d used subtle words like ‘crowd shift’ but you know what you’re saying,” Hughes says.

Bevel got a lawyer and met with Shmanske about the dress code incident. The owner said he hadn’t looked into the dress code in depth, Bevel says. Shmanske told Bevel he doesn’t discriminate, pointing out that his wife is African-American and that he hires black people, according to Bevel.

The dress code came down after the discussion. Still, Bevel left unsatisfied that any substantive change would happen.

“It was okay,” Bevel said of the conversation, “the same typical script and spiel I thought was going to happen.”

A promised follow-up conversation with Shmanske has yet to happen despite Bevel reaching out, he says.

Because of Bevel’s incident, Wickens says she refuses to return to Moosehead. She knows many others who chose to stay away from what was once one of their go-to spots. The experience also makes her rethink heading out to Five Points.

“People in my neighborhood are trying to find their own means of having a good time because things have shifted in Five Points,” Wickens says.

Former and current employees say that it wasn’t just the dress code that caused an internal dispute at Moosehead, but also the kind of music that was played inside the bar, specifically rap.

Hip Hop in a Country Rock ‘n’ Roll bar

The mechanical bull and other Western accoutrement inside Moosehead Saloon might not scream hip-hop, but that’s one of the genres a DJ might have played in the club-like atmosphere on a Saturday night. The juxtaposition made sense to head bouncer Hughes.

“Everyone listens to rap music now,” Hughes says.

A DJ might even play hip-hop made by local or regional rappers like Austin Shell, known as Airmaxx through his music. Shell frequented the Devine Street bar when he was in Columbia. He called the place “cool.” If a DJ at Moosehead called him and said they would be putting on some Airmaxx, Shell showed up to have a drink or two — giving back the support to Moosehead that his music was getting.

But there were some nights when he was told his music would be played but it wasn’t.

“Some nights I would come out there when they said they were going to play my music,” Shell recalls, “but the DJ would say the owner said it’s ‘too much rap music.’”

“He (Shmanske) had a problem with the DJs playing rap music,” Hughes says.

Shmanske was upset about shout-outs Moosehead got on the hip-hop and R&B station 100.1 the Beat, said Brown, the bar’s former social media and promotions person.

Before the staff changes in July, Moosehead was drawing good, loyal crowds, especially for the slow summer months in Five Points. The bar had gotten popular since the end of last year because of its freqeuncy of DJs and and the music they played, Sutton and others say.

Sutton said he also had taken one other step that he believes made Moosehead a more welcoming place.

A Confederate flag used to hang above the DJ’s stage at Moosehead as recent as September 2017. By late 2017, Sutton thought it was time for the flag to come down, but the owner of the bar resisted the idea of removing the flag, the former manager says. Sutton took the flag down, though.

Even having lost his job and with all the anger expressed online, the incidents have allowed Sutton to focus on his life and how he’s raising his children. He’s teaching them that people shouldn’t be judged by race, he says.

“I’m not going to change who I am,” Sutton says. “You can’t eliminate it if you keep practicing the same stuff your grandparents did.”