A man, whom Vargas describes as a heavy-set male “about 6 feet was holding a knife and was pointing it towards me and demanded I hand over my wallet and everything in my pocket.” Thirty seconds later, he says, they called out, and he turned to find them standing in front of him. A big reality of the gayborhood is everyone knows each other, especially people in hospitality, so socializing late night is part of the life.”Īfterward, he walked down Spruce toward Broad to catch a cab and noticed two people walk past him. “Previous to the incident I felt very safe in the area day or late night,” he says, adding he and other bartenders would go to after-hours bars like Pen and Pencil or Voyeur “and thought nothing of walking around at 3, 4, 5am. Vargas, a tall, Hispanic Native New Yorker and first-generation American, spends a great deal of time in this part of town, as he bartends 4-5 days a week. (In full transparency: this author has a working relationship with TABU).

On the night of Monday July 5, Diego Vargas finished his shift at TABU, a popular gayborhood bar, and headed to have a post-work drink at Bar X, a nearby spot.