July 14, 2016
The primary function of a sidewalk sign is coaxing people in off the sidewalk, but Lucky’s Last Chance has always interpreted this loosely. The Manayunk bar, open since 2011, has a strict nonsense-only policy when it comes to the contents of its A-frame sandwich board, a branded affair bearing the logo of the New Hampshire brewery Smuttynose. Dad jokes, light vegan-bashing, sardonic commentary on Main Street rain drainage — everything is acceptable, so long as it does “anything other than promote what it is we’re doing inside,” says owner Chris Barnes.
This past Saturday, however, some Lucky’s employees went a different route. Already deep into Pokemon Go, the momentous mobile game that had taken over U.S. app stores/existence a few days prior, the staffers decided to use the sign to publicly proclaim their workplace as Pokemon-friendly.
They started showing up shortly after that.
By Barnes’ own estimate, close to 100 people, on top of the usual weekend crowd, crossed the Lucky’s threshold as a direct result of this simple advertising tactic, the lot of them leering at latent battlefields through smartphone screens. Some barely acknowledged their surroundings; others seemed pleasantly surprised to be in a bar and stuck around for beers and food. “It was ridiculous,” says Barnes. “We could’ve written that Will Smith was hanging out on the sign and no one would have walked in.”
Since launching July 5 — the game is currently available here, and in Australia, New Zealand and Germany, with other countries rolling out slowly — Pokemon Go has captured American imaginations, encouraging an outpouring of enthusiasm, derision, pleasure and deep paranoia. All the scorching-hot takes have come as a byproduct of staggering stats ( 15 million-plus downloads as of yesterday), but Niantic, Inc., the developer of the game, is far from the only business benefitting. Local bars, restaurants and cafes are scrambling to convert the craze into a legit financial windfall.
Niantic, which began as an internal Google startup before going independent in late 2015, partnered with the Pokemon Company, co-owned by Nintendo, to launch Go last week. The franchise itself, based on a world in which youthful “trainers” ensnare various species of battling “pocket monsters,” has been a hit on American soil for nearly 20 years. The Pokemon universe has established multimedia footholds — TV shows, movies, video games, trading cards, cartoons, comics, collectible toys. Go, however, represents the most immersive Pokemon experience to date: an “augmented reality” (AR) format that pastes the playing field over the brick-and-mortar grid of the real world.
In Ingress, Niantic’s AR-based predecessor to Go, players physically travel the city, claiming various “portals” — IRL businesses, landmarks, transportation hubs and the like — for their teams. A number of locations established in that game, which has a solid Philly following, were imported by Niantic into the Pokemon world, meaning many small business owners experienced a sudden, and unanticipated, uptick in trainer foot traffic.
“A customer came in and said, ‘I was just capturing some Pokemon and thought I would stop in and have brunch,’” says Betty Seymour, the office manager of the Sidecar Bar & Grille at 22nd and Christian. “Several people have done that, since we are, for some reason, a spot where these things live.” This led to Seymour whipping up a well-received Facebook post featuring a Squirtle (a turtle-like Pokemon) superimposed over a picture of their tuna croissant sandwich.
Sidecar is technically a “Poke Stop,” a place where Go players can show up to acquire gear like Pokeballs, the projectiles used to catch ‘em all. Another type of game location, called a “gym,” is where players pit their Pokemons against each other to lay a claim for their team, in a manner similar to Ingress. Rittenhouse Square is one of Center City’s most contentious gyms. (After last call, you’re likely to find the staff of the nearby Franklin Bar in the park, hunting for Zubats and Charizards.) Others appear within close physical proximity to bars and restaurants, leading them to work this fact into their real-time marketing.
Anyone sitting inside W/N W/N, for instance, can battle for the Pokemon Go gym out on Spring Garden Street, which led the co-op cafe/bar to tease as much on their exterior signage. Bartender Reddy Cypress has been noticing groups of unfamiliar faces showing up to play — some of whom become first-time customers. “These people had never stopped by, or even knew we existed, but they had some coffee, chilled and enjoyed,” says Cypress. ”It’s fun to see more people come into our neighborhood.”
“These people had never stopped by, or even knew we existed, but they had some coffee, chilled and enjoyed,” says W/N W/N bartender Reddy Cypress. ”It’s fun to see more people come into our neighborhood.”
A few blocks up Spring Garden, Llama Tooth is getting in on the Go action, too. Co-owner John Galster, a lifelong devotee of Pokemon culture — last year, his New Year’s Resolution was “to finally catch ‘em all” in the old video games, and he did just that — noticed that Union Transfer, right across the street, was becoming a highly trafficked gym. “I kept seeing people over there doing little battles on their phones, so I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to let them know that we’re in on it, too?” says Galster.
Llama Tooth’s signage (“Trainers welcome, show us your decks!”) has encouraged some players to enter for dinner or drinks, though Galster says some customers have been reticent about publicly proclaiming their PokeLove in such a setting. “People are still a little wary about announcing it, even knowing that this is a friendly space,” he adds.
Nick Huhn, manager of the 22nd Street location of Good Karma Cafe, has experienced a much more assertive Pokemon-playing crowd. Recently, the Ingress player turned Pokemon Go junkie shot off a “lure,” an in-game feature that attracts Pokemon to a specific geographic location for a temporary window of time.
What worked in-game worked in real-life Rittenhouse, too. “About six people immediately came by, and told me, ‘The only reason I came over here was I saw a Pokemon lure was on — I didn’t even know about this café,’” says Huhn. Good Karma is taking full advantage of its designation as a Poke Stop, offering various deals to Go trainers — a free shot of espresso if they post a photo of a Pokemon sighting in the shop, or a dollar off any transaction if they employ a lure of their own.
Clever signs or exclusive discounts represent one level of Go-based opportunism. Tommy Up, owner of The Yachtsman in Fishtown, has taken his bar’s Poke Stop status and blown it out, announcing a multi-venue bar crawl scheduled for later this month in partnership with the appShibby, which markets itself as a Pokemon Go comms tool. Close to 650 people have RSVP’d on Facebook so far. Jose Pistola’s has announced it will host a Go fan club meeting next week, complete with poke — the Hawaiian raw fish dish — prepared by chef Adan Trinidad.
“There was an active and packed dance floor while the people playing the game flashed their phones to friends and strangers to share whatever they had,” says DJ Musho.
For the entire month of July, Front and Girard’s Saint Lazarus Bar will host a Go-centric evening of club music on Monday nights, complete with coordinated lure deployments and Pokemon-themed giveaways. “There was an active and packed dance floor while the people playing the game flashed their phones to friends and strangers to share whatever they had,” says Truc Trinh, aka DJ Musho, of this past Monday’s installment.
A little over a week in, Pokemon Go’s momentum is palpable, but the ultimate fate of many other ultra-hyped entertainment apps should give Niantic, and Go players, pause. The creator of Draw Something, another mobile app that started strong only to fizzle, has laid out a case for and against Go’s longevity.
But The Yachtsman’s Up, who made a career out of tracking trends prior to getting into the bar business, seems confident in the game’s staying power, citing the user base’s deep nostalgia for the Pokemon universe as well as the game’s intuitive features, which will only grow as Niantic extends its reach internationally. “I gotta be honest — in my life, I’ve never seen anything blow up this quickly across all quadrants,” he says. “It’s not about Pokemon, it’s about people.”
