Penn Social — Restaurant in Washington

An ice hockey player and fan for the last 18 years of life, I celebrated the fact that I found a place to watch the NHL Finals that has a large projector screen and a fun, free roam atmosphere. I approach the doors cordially and have a friendly exchange with the door staff while showing my ID.

I spent most of my time downstairs watching the game quietly from the best seat in the house that would not disturb the other patrons playing corn hole in the middle of the room. I made several new friends during my time here. At the start of the second period I left my position to purchase another drink, but when I returned my old spot was unavailable. The crowd had grown significantly since my 8pm arrival time, so that was completely understandable. However, I am just getting over a serious case of patellar tendonitis and needed a place to sit to watch the game. I approach three Security staff members with black shirts at the top of the stage stair well to ask if I could sit on the stage/speaker area to finish watching the game. Each of them told me that that was perfectly fine, and even told me to enjoy the game. However, half way through the third period, another black shirt security member rudely tells me to remove myself from the stage. I made sure to tell him that three of his black shirt peers recently told me that I could finish the game from that spot. When he digested my response, he told me that he had the power to kick me out of the establishment. Realizing that this man was the aggressive power hungry type, I decide to follow orders and take my place in the standing crowd.

Very soon after this occurred, I realize that my spot at the stage/speaker was now occupied by a discarded drink bucket and corn hole players drinks; also on the stage was a patron standing, charging her phone in the center of the projection. So I Kindly ask two more black shirts if I could reclaim the spot in which I found comfort and had kindly requested earlier. The gentleman who told me to move before witnessed me asking the question and charges towards me asking, "is it really that serious to you?" I replied, "yes." After a more threats from him, he tells me I need to leave and decided to dig his chest into mine. I told him that I just purchased a drink and have spent over $50 and have no intentions of leaving. Once that was said, he decided to push me with all his might. Realizing that this guy is wild, I park myself on the other side of the bar while he gathers a black shirt mob of four or five people to drag me out of the building from behind (passion of christ style) up two flights of stairs. When we arrived at the entrance, I was literally thrown past/at a couple coming into the establishment.

I requested to see a manager a dozen times and the door staff refused. I ask to speak to my assaulter and I was refused. I stood my ground until a gentleman claiming to be the shift manager approaches me smirking, asking what my side of the story was. I told him my story, and also made sure to tell him that my assaulter threatened to show the video footage of me "squaring up' with him. The 'manager' goes back inside to get the other half of the story and brings me Sara Norman's (GM) card with a few names scribbled on the back (( James Rob: chave')). It is important to mention that the assaulter came to speak to me outside, but he preferred that we did it well beyond the perimeter of the establishment.

After spending almost $50 downstairs at this establishment, I was assaulted by your staff for asking a question. What happened was as painful as it was illegal, and frankly I would like to know what Penn Social leadership plans to do about it. I would also encourage you to review the video footage. (06/04/2016) 8:00pm - 12am. My assault and embarrassment is not a laughing matter, Penn Social.

Also, I agree with many of the negative posts that I have seen. DO NOT USE YOUR BANK CARD HERE. They will charge you for things you have not...

We have been in contact with Penn Social for almost 2 years inquiring about hosting an event we do across the country. First, we were told that we would have to wait until the new policy was created for promoters. Since THEY considered us promoters, we couldnt just outright pay a venue rental fee. None of the 13 venues we worked with had an issue, even the Live Nation venues we inquried about. Needless to say, they sent us their new structure. Not only did we give them information about our event, we hit the requirements they needed for us to host the event. We had a couple questions we needed answered to get the dates locked in, but our phone calls started to get ignored. Followed up a year later, we were told that the person we orginally spoke with is no longer there and that we would have to speak with the GM, Robert Hess, and was provided the number and email. We spoke with Rob and as a follow up, so he can have all the information, we sent an email. 2 weeks later, we called Rob again. We advised him who we were and asked was he able to look at the email. He did not. He asked if we are promoters and had a hard time figuring our company and name. We replied that we are, but again, that was the only option we could choose due to their structure. He states that they do not work with promoters. We advised that I was REFERRED to him! We were sent a document that has their pricing structure and he replies, " I dont know what you were sent". I forwarded him a document titled, "Penn Social Promoter Pricing Sheet" that THEIR FORMER EVENT & SALES MANAGER, Jacalyn, sent me, further confirming he didnt read the email. He advised, him being the GM, that he would talk to some people to see what he could do. At this point, we understood what we were trying to work with.

We sent an email voicing our fustration of the lack of communication and customer service given by Penn Social and staff and advised that we would be reaching out to the owner of the establisment. We recieved a response from Rob saying "Hi, No further contact is needed."

For a business, that promotes they are available to book events, to position a GM who does not do simple due diligence, such as reading an email, needs a immediate restructuring of their sales process. This was the most unprofessional experience we have came across in the DC area. We will make sure we get local press to shine light on this issue unless we recieve an apology and made right with a person who cares about their business and reputation, until then we would not recommend this place to host your event.

Edit:

Our reponse and our communication was never aggressive. Even if we wanted to be passive agressive, this venue is 30 minutes away. We made sure not to visit this venue to assure we were not being aggressive.

We have been polite and very patient for over 2 years and we NEVER recieved a NO to host our event, we were told to wait. All corespondence will show that.

The GM did not check any references and nor did he read our emails after given ample time to do so. We are more than happy to attach every correspondence between our 2 companies.

We pride ourselves in providing great experiences to our community and maintain our high standards of professionlism. You did not do your job, and we simply called you out for it. We advised that we would be taking this situation up to the owner, and you didnt like that. You THEN decided to deny our event. You could have denied our event sooner and this experience wouldnt even have happened, but your team told us to wait...twice.

But again, we are more than happy to share any correspondence with any individual who would like additional information. This place is behind us, but to say we were aggressive is something we will not...

I'm not really much of a beer drinker but I can get behind cornhole, skeeball, board games, and dancing! A friend from out of town was visiting and wanted to go to a bar. Upstairs had a few folks drinking and playing board games. Downstairs was packed. High tables and chairs along the perimeter, in the center of the room folks were playing cornhole (later transformed into a dance floor), and the bar was also in the center. I saw ping pong, shuffleboard, bubble hockey, foosball, and skeeball being played. They also had pop-a-shots and Big Buck Hunter, even a photobooth!

We played shuffleboard ($8/hr Sunday-Wednesday; $12 Thursday-Saturday). It's free Saturday and Sunday before 4pm.

Foosball: $1 for 9 balls Pop-A-Shots: $1 Skeeball: 50 cents for 9 balls Board games: Monopoly, Cards Against Humanity, Boggle, Scrabble, giant Jenga, Connect Four (including a giant one), Apples to Apples, etc.

Later, they removed cornhole and the center of the room became a dance floor. The DJ played 90s tunes at first and then gradually worked his way to more current songs. Happy to say that I started dancing when there were only about 3-4 people on the floor and kept at it for maybe 2 hours. When I left, the dance floor was jam packed. Haven't gone dancing in a really long time so that was a lot of fun. Only wish that people would stop spilling their drinks and getting the floor all sticky, but overall it was a lot cleaner than other bars I've been at.

If you're in the mood for draft beers, board games, or dancing, this is definitely the place to be! When we left, the line to get in was wrapped around...