Interview: Vic Christopher

We cover everything from rising rents to lowering crime.

It was 5:30PM on a Tuesday when I walked down to The Lucas F. Confectionary and Wine Bar to talk to its proprietor: Vic Christopher. I’d arranged an interview with him by DMing him on Instagram and he replied within the minute —not in a minute, within the minute that I’d messaged him— to say yes.

He grabbed some coffees in big chunky yellow mugs and we sat out front on 2^nd Street. In this way I was able to interview Vic both on his turf and in his element. It is not an exaggeration to say that every single person that walked by said hi to Vic and he knew their name. Every. Single. Person. To be fair, this is a small town and I hit a respectable 0.475 batting average myself, but everyone knows Vic.

For those of you that know me or know my writing you might expect a hard-hitting interview about the intricacies of gentrification and cultural commodification. That’s not what this is. And you probably shouldn’t expect that from this interview series. I want to hear from the people doing this work, in their own words, on their own terms. And there’s a high bar for Vic Christopher interviews. I hope I cleared it. We talk about a wide range of things and in the preview you’ll read about the origins of the Wine Bar, his side of the story about getting fired from the city, and how he turned Bradley’s into The Bradley. Paid subscribers will get to learn about Vic’s take on crime (“Go where the problem is and just hang out there, and just talk to people”); his perfect Sunday afternoon (accounts payable with his dad); his opinion of Saratoga (“It’s the worst!”)  and more. Throughout, you’ll see that I’ve added some context with links and footnotes, mainly for the benefit of people who don’t live around here.

The text has been lightly edited for brevity and flow. That meant taking out all the times Vic said hi to someone, which I think was about ten times.

This is the first of what I hope to be a monthly offering for paying Other Day subscribers. These’ll be interviews with people who work in hospitality, economic development, or related city authentic fields. If you think there’s someone I should talk to, let me know!

Last thing- once we were finished Vic texted me to make sure I added one more thing. It was so wonky and he seemed so excited about the idea that I’m just going to drop it right here:

One of the main things I would do, if elected mayor, is preach convergence, with the neighboring municipalities

We have about the same size place as Indianapolis, (which acts as one government), while we instead replicate municipal services, every couple of miles within the capital District. Complete waste of resources

Not saying we would get it done, but I would initiate a series of meetings, with the other mayors and county executives, in an effort to consolidate services

Ideally, you would have one police chief and one fire chief, with the others below them acting as regional department heads

David Banks: So how's business?

Vic Christopher: The thing about businesses is that we have to get creative now, it's not automatic. It's not like, open up the doors and everybody shows up. You got to come up with a reason to get people out.

DB: What are some reasons?  

Vic: I would say that I've noticed a couple of trends lately that are super interesting in that our daytime business and our nighttime business on weekends —well, actually, all the time lately— it's around fifty-fifty and it used to be like twenty-five percent daytime and seventy-five percent nighttime.

We rock it out on brunch now. And I think I mean, maybe because Little Pecks¹ is probably the stuff that people really want. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if it's just us, but it just seems like it. It just seems to me that there are more people out during the day lately and maybe since the weather turned, that's the case. Then at night, and you know, it's less of a nightlife thing and more of a culinary thing in general. And again, it's probably unique to our company. I don't know. And a lot of people aren’t open all day like we're open. It's like a marathon for us, from 8AM on Friday all the way through Sunday brunch. We're only not open about 9 or 10 hours in general as a company. We do 70-80 percent of the business in that time period. Tuesday is a nice chill day. We do this oyster thing here [at the Wine Bar] but not much of the company is open. We have Little Pecks Wednesday, Thursday, or something like we're gearing up for the weekend, and we do most of our business on this insane push from Friday all the way through Sunday. Then I just recover from Sunday through Tuesday. So it's been different.

I feel that people were more consistent all throughout the rest of the week. Now it's more of a weekend thing, and I just see that even with the other business, it's just not busy during the week. And I tell everybody like you want to support local businesses right? They really don't need support Friday at 7 pm. Or Saturday. Come on a weekday. That would be great. Because I think everybody wants to be open the max. We want to be open 7 days a week, day and night but you really can't justify it.

DB: Is that the biggest change, post pandemic?

Vic: The biggest change post pandemic is in the expense column it’s just unpredictable. So the cost of things going up in certain areas and then going down again. whereas in the past it just felt very automatic, and I felt like we were on autopilot. And even the cost of labor— everybody wanted $15 an hour. They all got it, but in doing so, you know, we lost that whole tip credit thing. There was like a bartender rate and a server rate. But I'm glad all that went away, anyway. That was actually the biggest adjustment we made was that, like our company, which is like 6 different businesses. We had a bunch of different teams within that. Now it's just one thing, and now everybody does everything. Everybody's crossed trained and everything. Everybody makes $15 an hour plus tips. So like even the dishwasher, is a very good job making $23 an hour now. So I'm happy that we can do it. It's yeah. It's been nice. It's been fun.

In the past we had a weird disparity in that we would have chefs at Peck’s Arcade, the high end thing, and then you'd have certain hourly people, but they couldn't be part of the tip pool.It was an odd collection of things. Now it's just like everybody's on the same page. It's great, it's much more of a unified front that we have within here. And everybody works together. And when it's busy. It's nice to watch.

DB: So, I don't know if you heard anything about my book—

Vic: I listened to the entire podcast,

DB: oh, okay. Which one?

Vic: The one where you tag me on twitter with the mockup of the artwork. What was the name of those guys?

DB: TrueAnon, is that it?

Vic: Yeah, yeah, it's great, it's great. I wanna hear more of his stuff actually.

DB: Yeah it’s a great show!

Vic: The whole thing about your story and coming to Troy, I felt like, really, you know, humbled to kind of play a part in that in some way with you. You know what I mean? I really was! And you know I wasn't intending on thinking, even in the onset, that this was a way to create this thing that was going to be a like a hot thing. It never entered my mind.

DB: You didn't think that this would be the beginning of a tipping point…

Vic: No! Who thinks like that?! No here’s the thing is that I fell out of favor  --at least in my mind-- getting fired from two jobs that were high profile within about a year and a half, and I just wanted to do something that I felt was to the highest and best of my ability to create something. But beyond that it really wasn't like, “we're going to create this thing. It's going to be this hot thing.” I really didn't play it through beyond the opener.

At that point, coming up with the marketing and the name and all that it wasn't like, “Oh, let's come up with something clever.” It was almost like, we were trying to come up with the clever name, and we hadn't. You know, we had some generic names like The Downtown Social. We came up with all these names, we went back and forth forever. And then, right around that time somebody from the Rensselaer County Historical Society mentioned. “Oh, that was the Lucas Confectionary.” I'm like, “what the hell is that?” In the beginning, the first time I heard that name was like this sounds like a real magical name. And we went back and forth about it because Heather, my partner at the time co-founder of this thing, was like, “that's a misleading name,” but we were like, it's the right thing to do. So it was more like paying tribute. It wasn't like trying to repackage history and re-market it. We weren't thinking of anything like that at all. It was just. you know, it was just done with the purest of intention. It was just like, “Oh, let's let's tap into the spirit of what was here.” And I never built anything before. The first time I really work with my hands, and it was just like it felt like we were conjuring up the past, literally like by demolishing this stuff and uncovering the walls and the ceilings, and what was underneath, and the brick. It was just like it was a very cathartic, spiritual process.

Especially for me I went through a very introverted period, where I checked out because I felt like people were trying to run me out of here. Well, they were, you know, they certainly were. So this is just my response to people that had negative things to say. That's all this was. But it wasn't like, “we're going to build this hot thing.” That just happened, surprisingly. And I mean surprisingly to the point where, like even months later, when we looked at the bank account, we didn't owe any money out and Heather was like, “I don't believe it,” and I'm like, “no believe it, we're buying the building next door.”

We had to pay eighty grand cash for the building the wine bar is in, but I wanted to control the backyard so we had to secure that property worked very hard to build the bank account. She didn’t even believe we were successful, but you know, in in a short time we were more successful than either one of us could even have gotten our heads around at that point. It was a total accident. The whole thing was an accident. There was no money behind it. People were like, “Oh, you’ve got investors.” But you know we didn't. This company and everything that came after that was a product of its own momentum and completely accidental and not intentional.

DB: Can I ask about The Bradley?

Vic: Yeah! At this point, now, this is back in 2016. We're really rocking right now. We're hitting on all cylinders. Top 100 restaurant with Peck’s Arcade² and the Tavern bar was doing really well. Everything here was doing really well. And we hired these people from Boston. It was a couple —a boyfriend and girlfriend— we hired them to run the cocktail program. We met them at a place called Drink in Boston. It's a great cocktail bar. And so they were like startenders. And so, they were like, “here's what we need” and they give us a list of modifications that they wanted. And they were like, “we need classic restaurant booths, old style stuff.” So I just put out an APB: if anybody knows where we can find classic booths. That's what we're looking for.

And Tiffany was working. I was walking through the restaurant and she said, “Oh, hey! You got a call from Gary Bradley, he wants to sell you booths.” So I went over to Bradley's Tavern at the time it was called. It was 11AM, and I walk in, and the place is dark. Now the place used to open up 8:30 - 9AM everyday. It was a daytime bar. It was open from like 8 to maybe like 9,10 o'clock at night.

I said, “Gary how come you’re not open?” He said,

“Well, my liquor license expired yesterday, and I'm done. I'm retired, and nobody wants to run this place. So I'm going to sell everything.” And I said.

“You can't sell this stuff. What are you talking about, It’s been here for 200 years!” I didn't even think about it. I was just like, “Well, fuck it, I'll do it. I'll run the thing.” I shook his hand and we didn't have a price or anything. It was just like, I'm gonna run the thing because this should never be dismantled. This has been the longest continuously operated bar in the city of Troy.

DB: Was it?

Vic: It had to be! There's pictures of the of the thing pre-prohibition. Nothing else is around that long³. So, we shook on it. And then I told Heather, “Hey, I just shook on this deal,” and she's like “you're out of your mind.” That was about the beginning of when our visions became different. Again, this was not a plan to do anything other than like it was just the right thing to. And then, once we got in there. Gary was like you got to keep Shannon. That's my only request. So, Shannon had been working there 15 years at that point, and then we ended up becoming like family.

And then our crowd started to integrate into that thing which was exclusively a Black bar, maybe a handful of white people. And then for the first 6 months it was like the front of the bar was white and the back of the ball was Black. It was the craziest. It was like segregation looking at the thing. I'm like “what the fuck?” And then, as the days went on, we would see more people getting to know each other. Pretty soon people were dating, and it became this unbelievable social experiment, and me and Shannon were just amazed by it. And it worked, it was one of the most fun, proudest things was like actually doing the diverse thing without a calling it out or a plan. It just organically happened. And then this place [The Wine Bar] became more Black. And more and more both places became more diverse.

I remember we opened for Victorian scroll in 2017, and it was going to be the last time as Bradley's Tavern. It was going to be a pop up. And within one day I doubled my social circle in the city of Troy, because I didn't know Black Troy at the time. And everybody came up to me and said the same thing: Don't change a thing. That's what they all said. So I didn't. I improved the infrastructure. The lawyer, Peter Jones, said, “You got to change the name a little bit.” He’s very conservative. I should not have listened to him, I should just kept it, but we changed it a little bit, and we didn't raise prices. We never wanted to raise prices on anything. But then we have to raise prices a little bit now, because they got the $15, too. And it's just like, you know, you can't lose money in business, you just can't. Period.

DB: I want to stick on the name for a second. In my book, I write that there's a slight difference between Bradley's and —you know, everything that bar had been was either labeled for the people that went there like College Inn for college students or the person that owned it— And now it's The Bradley,

Vic: I don’t know why we did that…

DB: But what do you think about that connection between now it’s The something instead of the guy that owned it. Now it is the kind of bar that one guy would own? Does that ring true to you?

Vic: Well, again, this was a matter of semantics and not… we're trying to conjure up any sort of marketing or emotion. It was just a matter of like. “All right, let's lay out what we already have. And -- I'll find the email-- I sent an email. I'm like here’s what the email said.⁴ “As you know, we're continuing operations over at Bradley's tavern, and our lawyer has asked us to modify the name slightly because we could be liable for bills dating back to 1999 if somebody had something to say about it, you know. Maybe there was an old utility bill that has accrued the past 20 years. That's why we had to modify the name, and so I just sent a poll out to the staff. And 20 people responded to it, and there were different iterations of it. Bradley's Pub. Bradley's Lounge. That's what we should done. That would have been the best one. Lounge is really what it should have been. And then it was The Bradley, and I don't know why we settled on that. I think it was just a majority of the staff like that better. And I was like, “Okay, if you guys like it, that's cool.” I don't care either way. I really didn't care.

DB: I know the same year that you bought Bradley's there was something in one of those restaurant trade magazines that said the dive bar, is the new ascendant style of bar.⁵

Vic: Yes! Yes.

DB: I want to ask you. I'm not saying that the Bradley is this, or maybe it is. But what's the difference between a dive bar and a dive bar themed bar?

Vic: A dive bar themed bar is Do or Dive in Bensonhurst, which was Do or Dine. It was a fancy restaurant on Bedford Avenue right around the time where cool stuff was happening in that neighborhood. I remember that. And these guys came in. I ate there once, maybe and I remember thinking, this place is amazing. Then I heard they went out of business and these other guys just change the N to a V on the sign in spray paint. And these guys were big fans of bar memorabilia. And so they just got a ton of neon signs from all the beer distributors and classic stuff. They got a bunch of stuff probably on ebay, and so they they made a dive bar themed bar that is beloved by people in that neighborhood. And it's one of my favorite bars around. That's a dive bar themed bar.

Other than me understanding and getting into the history, the nuance [of any particular bar] it would be kind of imperceptible to determine whether that was an actual dive bar or not based on the lineage. But then there's like George and Jack’s, Williamsburg, it's a dive bar, and it's been there since the early 1900s.⁶ Probably the name's been the same. It's changed very little. So that's an authentic dive bar. I'm just a fan of dive bars and the aesthetic in general. I love neon lights. I love that whole look I like the vibe of the of the Bradley very much. It's my happy place at the end of the night. It's where I can't wait some nights to get out of here and go order Chinese food and I'm just comfortable there. I watch movies with the TV on subtitles and I can finally relax.

And you know, I was thinking about this today. Chris Churchill put an article out about me running for mayor and then last night I was going to do some advocacy for this YWCA Affordable housing.

DB: I was gonna ask you about that.

Vic: Yeah, which is a great project, and it's just amazing to me that people can be outwardly against something like that, you know? Yet I get my head taken off for things that have nothing to do with me. So, I'm supporting that project I want to promote, the planning meeting tomorrow. Support this project if you have nothing to do tomorrow night. So I go on, Reddit, and then it's like that article came out 3 months ago and the stuff people were saying about me was so terrible.

DB: What were they saying?

Vic: Things that aren't even true or major embellishments. It's just like “I stole from the city,” which is like, I was the first reclamation builder in the city. Using junk to build. It was worthless. I didn’t steal anything of value. And, by the way, if I did steal anything, why wasn't I arrested? Because, believe me, the people that were out to get me would have happily arrested me. If they had anything to get me on. They would have loved to arrest me. They had nothing to arrest me on. The police chief was like, “no, you're not under investigation.”

DB: Who? Who are the people that want to get you?

Vic: They're gone now. And yeah, it was like, you know, back then it the old school Troy Dems, which they don't even exist anymore.

DB: Like LoPorto? I don't want to put names in your mouth.

Vic: No I was always cool with LoPorto, I always got along with LoPorto, he was one of those guys where… It was almost like they tried to get him to turn on me, and you know, and he was almost like, you know… but it's… Listen. They were a bunch of thugs, but they're all gone, and it's different. It's just not like that anymore. That whole time is different. All of that has changed. If those people could have arrested me, they would have loved to. I resigned because I wasn't going to work for people that were out to hurt me, and get me, and hate me. Why would I want to work in a situation like that? So that's why I resigned to start my own business. And [prominent Troy lawyer] E. Stewart Jones calls me up because I had this meeting with City Hall, and you know they’re all nice to me, one on one and then in this meeting they’re trying to destroy me.

They were hell bent on getting me out. But nobody could say to me directly, “We want the job like you should probably resign.” And I asked everybody, you know, but they had to like blow me out in a public. It was really childish, actually. And so E. Stewart Jones calls me and he's like “what's going on over there.” I'm like, look I have no idea, I told them what happened.

These guys just want me out of there. So he says, “You don't want to work where you're not going to be respected. What do you want from them?”

And at that point I had already started this project [The Wine Bar] because nothing was happening down here and Heather didn't like what she was doing. I was going to build her a cafe, I figured. Hey, I'm the economic development coordinator. Let me build my wife a cafe to run. That was it. So again, like, even in the onset, it wasn't like this diabolical plan to create this machine. There's none of that. And so, E. Stewart Jones is all like, “Well, they want the job. They want the resignation. So what do you want from them?”

I said, “Well, I just want to be left alone.” So he's like,

“Okay, what does that mean to you?” I'm like,

“I just want to be able to start a business here in the city. And not have to worry about them messing with me. So he’s like,

“okay, what does that actually mean? Like, what do you need? A certain document?” I said,

“actually, yeah, certificate of occupancy.” But we had just like broken ground the project. So he said,

“Okay, fine.” Calls me back. He says, “All right. You'll get the C of O if you give him the resignation.” I'm like,

“well, can I have that in writing?” He's like,

“no, it doesn't work that way. But you're gonna get it. If you just trust that you're gonna get it because I'm gonna make sure they're gonna get it.” So I resigned. And then a week later, I had a certificate of occupancy on a building that was like a complete wreck, you know? So that's and sometimes that's how it works in politics, you know. So that's what happened.

DB: Okay, so that reminds me…

Vic: But anyway, the Reddit think I came across this morning was so hurtful to me. It was just like demonizing me. It's like I didn't do anything other than try and make people happy. I'm scratching my brain like, what did I do that was so terrible? And you know but they're like, “Oh, you don't know. He's a bad guy.” What the fuck did I do to anybody? I'm here. I work every day. What did I ever do to hurt anybody. I can't figure it out. But it's crazy like I don't know what it is about a city, a place like this, and you know, I hear it happens in Albany too. My friend Matt Baumgartner, the stuff they say about him. This is just a hard working nice guy that wants to create things here. What is it about trying to create things that there's this weird blow back? And it's like, you know, this must be some Darth Vader-type of person like, what is that? It's weird. It's just strange to me. I just don't understand it. I only ever did things that I thought would make people happy. I didn't do things for any other reason.

DB: What makes you support the YWCA project?

Vic: When I was the economic development coordinator I got a tour of things that the previous mayor, two mayors ago, Harry Tutunjian, my boss, and he said, “I'm gonna show you all the stuff that I'm like, really, really proud of what's going on, stuff you may not know about. And that was one of the things he was just like. They do incredible work over here.

There's a lot of organizations that exist to support their own salaries and they do things half-heartedly, but this group does amazing work, and I got a chance to see what they did. And then, years later, when we open all this stuff up, especially the coffee shop, a barista sees everything happening on the streets. And sometimes people are in need. So it's like we have this network with them and people are struggling, and I'm on the phone with Jamie Crouse and Starletta Smith of the YWCA. And when people are in need, we try to find them help.

I like being on the street. I like the street people and sometimes people are struggling, and the YWCA is always there to help out. Even if it's not them that can do the help they can always help us. Help point us in the right direction, so we can help point people in the street who are struggling in the right direction, which is a big part of the job to the point where this company now has a Community Relations Department where we meet every couple of months and talk about street business.

We have a very good relationship with the panhandlers over here. I read an article last week in Albany where business owners are really having a tough time keeping that under control and there's some violent panhandlers there. We don't have that problem in Troy. Luckily, knock on wood. But like we have a great relationship with the people on the street. And we even had a great relationship with Trish, who was one person sucked up a lot of resources for a lot of people and a lot of bandwidth and I can imagine, if they were like 3 people like Trish at her worst, it can make for a very difficult way to conduct business in a downtown. And you know you want to be in business in a downtown. We all do— for the reasons that make it eclectic and diverse and interesting, but, like you also want to make it safe for your staff. And I think that was, you know, a big part of why we started having a community relations meeting. A couple of baristas were like, “Vic you have people coming in. They're looking for you. We're just trying to do our job over here that you have these relationships and arrangements with people.” And so then I would have to break down. “Okay, this is Marvin he has an allowance. It's $5 every Saturday. And so the way you handle Marvin is, if it's not Saturday, you tell me. He's got to come back and see me on Saturday.” And I would have a standing meeting with Marvin, but I meet with him for 20 min on Saturday, and tells me what's going on in the streets, and you know, and that that's part of the routine here. So you have to develop unique ways of handling people and their quirkiness and their individuality. When you have something like a coffee shop in a place like Troy where… there’s this really diverse clientele.

DB: Well uh…

Vic: I don't even remember the question!

DB: I was asking for the YWCA.

Vic: Oh yeah! They’re great. They’re great.

DB: So you're paying everyone 15 bucks an hour plus tips, which is great but as you know in the service industry when rents go up it’s hard to find people who can work that can afford to live nearby. Do you see any connection between like rising residential rents and the success of your business?

Vic: It's funny you mentioned that the past couple of weeks, maybe, when friends of mine was saying they're having tough time getting an apartment my friend Cam across the street said that she can't find anything for less than $1,400 for a one bedroom and I spoke to Jeff Mirel yesterday because I'm speaking on behalf of the Rosenblum project as well at tomorrow's planning meeting.  And Jeff Mirel was saying that their objective, with their new development on Fifth Avenue, is to have more affordable apartments and they are smaller. So they’re micro apartments. I don't know if you know about this project, the micro apartments, 70 units.

DB: Where is this is?

Vic: It's on the Federal, between Fulton and Broadway in that big middle part of the block on the east side of the street.⁷ And so their philosophy was like, let's have a building with great amenities. They have, like, a dog wash thing. The gym thing. Every unit has laundry but they’re small units, they’re like 400 square feet. They’re going to be targeted towards seniors and younger people because they're gonna be 30 -- they don't know what the cost is going to be just yet-- but they're aiming for 30% of whatever the median rate for comparable apartments is which puts them under $1000 monthly rent. That's their objective with this. Will they achieve that after construction? Yeah, who knows? But at least at least people are thinking about that. And there's always a market, too, for inexpensive things, affordable things. Like when the Bradley is cranking we make money with $3 beers and $5 cocktails. You can still money at a lower price point. Jeff is hoping you can make money with lower rent if you have the right business model. So hopefully, that happens.

But yeah, I'm noticing that rents are going up.

It is at this point that we’re interrupted by the only customers in the Wine Bar on a Tuesday early evening who are leaving and Vic wants to thank them for coming in. And, to his earlier point about clientele after opening the Bradley, most of them were Black.

Collectiveffort – the media and marketing firm I talk about in my book with co-owner Pat Harris -- moved across the street from the Wine Bar last year. They also started renting from Vic Christopher in a new building he bought one door down from the Wine Bar. While we were talking almost every principal co-owner had walked across the street to say hi as they left for the day. The last person we saw, Dan Lyles, walked over and Vic asked, “Could you take a photo of us? We'll do a promo. Oh, yeah, let's do the Internet!” He hands Dan his iPhone before turning to me and saying, “We'll just act natural like, we're doing it. Like we’re talking.” Dan gets the picture, we say our goodbyes, and continue.

And that’s the end of the free preview! This is about half of the entire interview so if you want to read more throw me $5 for a paid subscription. Next month I’ll be speaking to someone that used to put together city scavenger hunts for corporate retreats.