Remembering Paul Staico, founder of improbable ‘Arrowhead East’ in South Philly
Between all the hype over two recent Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowls and NFL Films publicity over the years, chances are you’ve heard of Big Charlie’s Saloon in South Philly.
If so, it may seem a bizarre and inexplicable place to establish a mecca for Chiefs fans. And in an era when it’s become increasingly common for fan bases of any major sports team to find a haven away from home, maybe the notion doesn’t seem all that unique anymore.
But the beauty and authenticity of Big Charlie’s is in the roots that transcend all that and morphed into something with indelible appeal and charm, including but not limited to the most curious intersection of the purest of Philly accents with the most ardent of Chiefs fans.
It wasn’t opened by a Kansas City transplant, for instance, and it isn’t part of a highly commercialized mega-chain. Certainly, it wasn’t a bandwagon gimmick taking advantage of the Chiefs’ recent success that appears to have suffered at least a hiccup this season.
Instead, Big Charlie’s flourished into what it is organically.
Through a dynamic built on the charisma of the owner, his family and friends and a wonderland of memorabilia befitting the nickname “Arrowhead East.”
And out of a circumstance at once innocent and worldly.
As Paul Staico was approaching his fourth birthday in 1970, his father — Big Charlie himself — made a bet on Super Bowl IV between the Vikings and Chiefs.
When I visited there in 2013, Staico said that his father told him if the “red team won” he’d get a new bike.
The red team indeed beat Minnesota 23-7. He got his bike. And became forever enamored of the Chiefs — loyalty that might well have been snuffed out in the ensuing half-century of playoff futility.
Instead, in the decades between when he took over the bar at age 16 after his father died and up until his own recent death, Staico (with his sister Linda and others) gradually built up the Chiefs themes, engaged countless new fans and compelled numerous members of the organization to make the pilgrimage.
And heck, even converted some Eagles faithful who frequented the bar at 11th and McKean — about 2 miles from Lincoln Financial Field.
While I was there on the eve of Andy Reid’s first game back in Philly in 2013, for instance, among those I spoke with was Nancy Morley.
She was a retired Philadelphia police detective who had long rooted for the Eagles. But after she started visiting the neighborhood bar to decompress after work shifts, she was turned toward the Chiefs.
“They embraced me here,” she said then. “It was like a Venus flytrap.”
Staico, and the bar environs, had that kind of impact on people.
That was evident in the several exchanges I had with him over the years. But you can read it for yourself in both his obituary and the hundreds of accompanying comments — many from Kansas City-area residents.
“Beyond the headlines and cameras, Paul will be remembered for his easy smile, his love of a good laugh and his gift for bringing people together — South Philadelphians and transplanted Kansas Citians, old friends and first-time visitors — until they all felt like one big family under the Big Charlie’s sign,” the obit reads. “His legacy lives on in every story told at the bar, every jersey on the wall, and every Sunday gathering of fans who found a home because of him.”
A Philadelphia Inquirer tribute to Staico, who was 59 when he died suddenly on Nov. 30, suggested some of the apparent local Chiefs converts didn’t so much care about the team as they did Staico.
But it had the same overall effect on the man with an Arrowhead tattooed on one arm.
So much so that when they won their first Super Bowl in 50 years, hundreds celebrated inside and outside the bar.
(Staico didn’t want to push that goodwill when the Chiefs and Eagles played in two Super Bowls, opting to close the bar to the public).
“I didn’t want to cry, but people were coming to me crying,” he told me in a 2023 phone interview. “They knew how much it meant to this corner.”
So, too, have a good number of Chiefs coaches, players and administrators.
Over the years, the locally based families of former Chiefs Joe Valerio and Rich Gannon watched many games there.
Before a Chiefs game at Veterans Stadium in 1998, future Pro Football Hall of Famer Derrick Thomas — whom Staico had met at a Chiefs practice — signed autographs there for hours.
In 2003, as part of an NFL Films piece about Big Charlie’s, then-Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil called from a cell phone purportedly to thank Staico for the Philly cheesesteaks they’d sent and promising to stop in one day.
In fact, the former Eagles coach and assistants were outside the bar and soon entered to present a signed Chiefs helmet.
“It only took a few seconds to realize how much those people care about the Chiefs,” Vermeil once told The Star’s Randy Covitz. “It was an experience you’ll never forget, because the people are so sincere and so real.”
Among others, current Chiefs president Mark Donovan and former president Carl Peterson have been to Big Charlie’s.
Former general manager Scott Pioli, one of the patrons told me in 2013, came to know the family so well that he visited Staico’s mother in the hospital and sent flowers when she died.
A back room at Big Charlie’s houses such a trove of Chiefs paraphernalia that it’s essentially a museum. One burnished by the addition of at least one replica Lombardi Trophy (from Super Bowl LIV) presented by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
Spagnuolo’s wife, Maria, a Philadelphia native, has worked behind the bar at Big Charlie’s to raise funds for charity, and during the Chiefs’ bye week in 2022 Spagnuolo popped in to show off his Super Bowl ring.
“They’ve become terrific friends,” Spagnuolo said during a 2022 news conference, later adding: “Listen, they’re good people. It’s a unique group, right smack in the middle of South Philly.”
And a unique story about a one-of-a-kind man and place.