Gipsy SBLV Bar Rescue: Is Gipsy Still Open? What Happened To SBLV Gay Bar?

This week’s episode of Bar Rescue was an oddity. Much like the Amy’s Baking Company episode of Kitchen Nightmares, it imploded spectacularly in the final minutes of the episode. As in, if you changed the channel before the credits rolled, you missed another twist ending.

The episode begins as many do, Bar Rescue’s Jon Taffer tries to help a failing bar with a depressed, self-medicating alcoholic owner, Paul, who has poor management and no business sense. Gipsy had been a famous and incredibly lucrative gay bar established decades ago; so long ago, in fact, it was literally the first gay bar in its native Las Vegas. Jon gets to the root of the problem, the owner’s denial and being stuck in the past, and sets about fixing it by putting the staff on an accelerated training program and doing a refurb on the building. They also renamed Gipsy “SBLV” and told fans to await more news on their Facebook page.

March 7, the owners posted this: “Due to the competitive nature of the industry and the nightclub copy cats , we are unable to share any of the exciting details of Vegas’ newest hotspot, however we can guarantee that your new nightspot will not disappoint. The new venue will be unlike anything the Las Vegas gay community has ever seen!”

March 24, they posted the above photo of the refurb with the caption: “Just so you can get a tease of what is going on inside SBLV .. BIG THINGS!!!”

March 25, they posted this video with the caption: “Just found a behind the scenes video of the filming of our Bar Rescue episode for Gipsy Nightclub AND THE NEW SBLV”

April 6, they shared the above photo with the caption “We were able to sneak a couple renderings of the NEW SBLV..”

April 11, they shared the above photo of the refurb with the caption “Now that we have a clean canvas to work with…. What do you want to see in THE NEW Gipsy Nightclub presents SBLV … Leave your comments so we can send your requests to the owner.”

Then there was a blog post on their otherwise empty official website, saying “As many of you know in February of 2013, the staff and management of the iconic Gipsy filmed an episode of Spike TV’s Bar Rescue. After the renovation from the show, we felt that it still needed more. We are so excited to share the all new Gipsy coming soon! Stay tuned as we will be posting the progress of the project on our website.” Nothing else was posted before nor since.

After that… nothing… nothing except Facebook comments from bemused fans and people who watched the episode. The bar closed sometime between April and May of this year.

According to captions at the end of the Bar Rescue episode, “Paul surfaced two days after the relaunch and closed SBLV’s doors… two months later, SBLV is still closed… Neither Paul, nor his $2 million debt, has changed.”

Paul, the owner, literally took one look at the relaunch night, said he hated it, left, and closed the doors for good 48 hours later for no real reason anyone can get out of him. One infers from the episode, he had such a hard time with change, he’d rather remain in seven figure debt than have a bar that’s not to his personal taste.

Below are some pictures of  the building work, taken from the official website.

Below are some pictures of the finished redesign from the official website.