TAMPA, Fla. — It takes Tom DeGeorge about a minute and a half after unlocking the door to shuttered Ybor City live music venue Crowbar to get heated. 

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the area’s music scene—or rather current lack of it—knows the co-owner and general manager of the bar is passionate. He’s been making the rounds on social media and doing interviews, calling out restaurants who don’t seem too interested in enforcing COVID restrictions, even as his place has been closed for 20 consecutive weeks, since March 15.

“When I see these restaurant owners get up there and say ‘oh man, we just lost control of it,’ you wouldn’t catch me ever saying that in an interview,” he says. "As a business owner, it’s your job to keep control of it. And frankly, you’re supposed to be operating as a restaurant, and nobody makes the decision for these people to book a DJ or a band while they’re supposed to be operating as restaurants.”

As most bars opened up, albeit briefly, during Florida’s Phase 2 back in early June, DeGeorge never got the chance. Plans for a series of “Road to Reopening” concerts were scrapped when he discovered that one or more of his employees had been exposed to someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, and just as the bar had worked out makeup dates for the shows in July, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered all bars to stop serving alcohol on-premises.

As the numbers continued to spike, DeGeorge decided to err on the side of caution and stay more-or-less completely shut down. He’s survived so far on PPP money, grants and small gigs like renting his room out for musicians and other artists to stream or record performances. But he was incensed to see how some other folks in the service industry were handling the pandemic, being less than careful and even bringing in venue-style entertainment to keep people in their restaurants.

“Sending code enforcement out at seven o’clock when they don’t open until eight defeats the purpose of enforcement,” he says. “It also defeats the purpose if you’re trying to say we don’t believe bars are safe but we’re gonna let restaurants open because we think people are just sitting down and having a meal—then why are we leaving these places open until three o’clock in the morning? What do you think’s gonna happen in Ybor or South Howard or anywhere after one a.m.? If you want a meal at one o’clock in the morning you can go to Waffle House.”

DeGeorge stresses that he’s not “at war” with area restaurants; he just wishes some would act more responsibly.

“Our numbers are through the roof, I think we’re about to be number one in the country for confirmed cases, and everybody’s just sitting here like it’s business as usual,” he says. “Everybody’s priority should be to get the numbers down.” 

DeGeorge, a spokesperson for local business entity Ybor Merchants Association, says he probably wouldn’t open right now even if he were allowed to. The numbers are just too high, and show few signs of a plateau. But he’s faced with a double-edged sword of a business problem—not only is he a bar owner, he’s also relied on live music to drive much of Crowbar’s business. The venue is extremely popular with music fans of all stripes, but with no acts touring in the midst of the pandemic, and not many tours planned at all through the end of the year at least, he’d be opening to host local bands and art shows. It’s not exactly a sustainable new model.

“Our industry, the concert industry, live theater, comedy, is so much worse off,” he says. “It’s not even comparable to any other industry. When people in the restaurant industry bring up their struggles, it’s like an insult to me. They have a fighting chance right now, and if you can’t make ends meet with that fighting chance, that’s not my problem. We are dying here. Dying.”

As precinct captain for Florida, he’s working closely with the National Independent Venue Association to support other venues around the country and lobby for relief. He’s not sure Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s proposed Save Our Stages Bill will pass in its current form, but is glad to see that someone is taking the subject of American local arts in peril seriously. it’s been suggested that some 90 percent of independent venues across the country could be forced to close in the next few months if doors aren’t allowed to reopen—a potentially dangerous proposition in and of itself.

“Besides how badly [Florida’s coronavirus response] was botched, it’s one of the things that frustrates me the most, when people compare what I’m going through to the poor restaurant owners,” he says. “It’s not even close. It shouldn’t even be in the same conversation. I wish them all the best of luck—I don’t think the restaurants got the kind of support they needed either, but it’s a totally different situation.”