In the course of just a few days in the middle of September, rumors of the demise of East Nashville watering hole and venue FooBar closing came to fruition. The fairly popular Gallatin Avenue bar and music venue, known to book DJ nights alongside metal and hip-hop shows, had closed seemingly overnight, deleting its Facebook page and telling its regular acts not to plan anything in their future at FooBar.
The end of the of dive bar, though, has played out over the past few years. In 2012, after FooBar had been open for about six years, two family members and co-owners took over the business. A woman named Consuelo Solis and her nephew Joshua Goble bought the business from the former owner, Ernest Chaires, who also owned Rosepepper Cantina.
The contract — a term used loosely here — is just a sheet of paper with three sentences saying Solis gave Chaires, who passed away in 2014, two checks for $40,000 each in order to take ownership of the business. (The contract is dated Oct. 17, 2013, which is more than a year after the business actually changed hands.)
For about a year, everything between Goble and Solis seemed to go pretty well. Goble now alleges that Solis was an absentee owner who got paid for doing work she didn’t perform — he says about $600 a week — though he acknowledges Solis put a lot of money into buying the business.
“In a nutshell, she abandoned the business about a year after we opened, and then she was basically causing problems with the business as far as violation of fiduciary duties, and that’s how all of this started,” Goble says. “She came into the business only three times in that amount of time.”
Solis lobs her own accusations at Goble: She says he didn’t share in the profits, that he locked her out of the brick-and-mortar business and the business accounts, and that she paid his house note only to find out the house had already been foreclosed on.
He says she wrote profit-sharing checks before the business had made any money (just a few weeks after the business opened) and that after he found evidence of that, she stopped showing up in the business. Former employees tend to side to with Goble, saying they saw him in the establishment much more often than Solis. Some agree with one accusation from Goble: that when she did show up, problems ensued. Solis argues that the bar was stocked with Goble’s friends and acquaintances.
It’s the type of back-and-forth that’s exhausting, a literal he-said-she-said between family members who have all but decided not to speak to each other anymore.
Goble tried to buy Solis out several times: She was never satisfied with what he offered — which was half of what they bought the place for — and he wasn’t willing to give her any more for sole ownership of the business.
“I never knew how much money we made or didn’t make there,” Solis tells the Scene. “I hate to say this about my nephew, but he is the shadiest person I have ever met in my life.”
Solis says she mostly just wants to know exactly how much money the business brought in each year since they bought it. Goble did not share the numbers with the Scene, but says sales dropped almost 40 percent over the past year.
But before this past year, FooBar was a successful venture in its own right: Dive bars aren’t huge money makers, but the bar didn’t seem to be hurting for business, as evidenced by the packed shows people might remember attending there.
“It was a bad year,” Goble says. “It’s hard to say exactly why — 20 new bars have opened in the area, but I also got sick, and I didn’t have a co-owner that was willing to jump in and help when when I was out. That’s definitely a factor, too. The business kind of just went on autopilot for a whole month while I was in the hospital with ulcerative colitis.”
Goble also says Solis received a salary for more than two years while never setting foot in the business. She says issues started when Goble tried to buy her out several times throughout 2013 and 2014.
“I’ve been in this business 44 years,” Solis says. “He was never doing more of a portion of the work than anyone else.”
Both agree that all of the business licenses went out this year. Solis says she won’t pay out of pocket for the licenses, and Goble says she refused to sign any of the paperwork.
“My stance is that I’ve pretty much walked away from this whole mess that she’s caused,” Goble says. “Her actions caused us to violate the terms of our lease. The owners of the building elected to lease the building to another group. I just had to walk away at some point.”
The former business partners are slated for a mediation date on Sept. 29 — though Goble says there’s nothing to mediate over but a few bar stools. They’ll go to court again in late December, if nothing comes of mediation.
But regardless of the outcome of the battle between estranged aunt and nephew, FooBar will remain a piece of East Nashville history. Neither co-owner has a stake in the new business. A fresh crop of owners, who could not be reached for comment, will reopen in the aging building on Gallatin Avenue as Cobra.
