“I am a domestic at heart and baking keeps me in touch with my domestic side. That is where I am at my best.”
When most of the city is still sleeping, Johnny Columbo is starting his morning. From then on, there are no breaks — but lots of sweet rewards. Columbo, 45, has a strict schedule to follow. He wakes at 4:30 a.m., feeds his white French bull dog, Simone, heads to the gym and is showered and out of the door of his Center City home by 7 a.m., just as the rest of Philadelphia is starting to stir. Columbo and longtime partner Michael Lewis are the founders of Philly Cupcake, the pink-and-blue palace nestled between 12th and Chestnut streets. The pair opened their doors in December 2009 and, within one hour, were completely sold out of products — setting the score for the coming years. Philly Cupcake has grown in many ways over the last five years, including in the size of its staff, which expanded quickly and now includes a chocolatier. The venue has also extended itself to trends, taking on a vegan cupcake menu, which is now sold at HipCityVeg. Columbo, a vegan himself, said it has been a blast to work with the plant-based restaurant. From 7-11 a.m., Columbo is at the store, looking over orders and inventory, talking with employees and putting in orders. From there, it is only a hop, skip and a jump from Philly Cupcake at 1132 Chestnut St. to his other business venture, Philly Vintage, at 111 S. 12th St. It is at Philly Vintage where Columbo’s passion really shines through. Opened two years after Philly Cupcake in December 2011, the vintage shop is like walking into a time machine. Columbo previously operated Forbidden Planet, opened in 1998 in Old City, but renamed it Philly Vintage when it moved to the Gayborhood. When you enter the shop, you’re greeted by clothing of all different materials and from various designers lining the racks and walls, while dazzling necklaces finished with decadent jewels glare through a glass display. “I just love it,” Columbo said. “These clothes all come with a story. It is like sitting in a library of fabric that has been turned into something that is really magical. One-hundred percent of these pieces made someone smile and pause at the same time. I am what you see here. I collect really fine things.” Columbo garners most of the pieces from loyal customers and from estate sales in places such as Beverly Hills. Columbo sits behind a desk and thumbs through several notebooks with customer information on them. He playfully and respectfully chats up customers as they enter the shop. “You will never get any bullshit here. I won’t just sell something to sell something,” he tells one person perusing the wares. Originally, Columbo had a different life plan. He majored in clinical psychology — becoming an entrepreneur was never the intention. But, Columbo said he is able to use his former studies as a way to engage with his customers. “I think what psych gives you is a perspective on how to deal with everyone who approaches your product and try to reach them with an explanation of who you are,” he said. “People are so varied and their needs are so varied. My background has allowed me to work with a very diversified group of people because those who come through the store want instant gratification. They want to feel good and this is a feel-good place. It is like candy to them.” Columbo has created a name for himself with his two bustling Gayborhood businesses, the buildings for both of which are rented from Goldman Properties. But, the 12th Street corridor wasn’t always rife for business. “When we got here it was just terrible. There were hustlers on every corner, people doing drugs, people shooting up right across the street. The businesses along here were boring. There was nothing here that brought theater to the street.” Philly Cupcake has served as a trendsetter in the area. “We brought $30,000 cases to sell our cupcakes in. It was unheard of,” he said. “It was unheard of selling $3-$4 cupcakes. All the bakeries were laughing at us but, within a month, they had our pricing.” The business’ growth was a joint effort between Columbo and Lewis, who have been together for six years. Columbo said Lewis has been a “gift from God.” “Sometimes we keep them separate and sometimes we bleed them together,” he said about their business and personal lives. “Is it difficult? Anything is difficult. What relationship isn’t difficult? We work at it every single day. We try not to take things personal. At the end of the day, we are never angry with each other. We have a lot of fun at home. But during the day we are nice to each other, mean to each other, we hug each other, sometimes we don’t hug each other. But that is the life cycle.” Columbo came out when he was 24. Having grown up in Hummelstown, being gay wasn’t very welcomed. “They didn’t like gays, black people, people who were overweight, people who were different. That didn’t go over well in my town.” Columbo, whose father passed away years ago and whose mother is still alive, grew up with two sisters and said his mother’s early comments fueled his fear of coming out. “We were watching a movie called ‘Making Love.’ When the male character, who was gay, was on screen, she said, ‘I could never have a gay child. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. They would end up being disowned.’ My mother didn’t know she kept me in the closet but she would say things like that.” At 23, Columbo confided in a friend, a woman of color, who gave him some interesting insight. “She said, ‘What if you were black and gay?’ and I think the interesting thing is she gave me a perspective that, before you think your situation is worse, there are a lot of other people out there who can say that it is even worse,” he said. “We all just wanted to figure out who we were and we all wanted to be accepted. What she allowed me to do is she gave me the ability to see that there is hope and it is not all bad.” Once he came out to his mother, her perspective began to change, Columbo said. “My mom is really loving. She really wanted to understand what I was going through but at the same time she was so full of fear. She would be at work and it was all hate talk about gays, and she would say it was hard for her to hear that until one day she spoke up because she started looking at all my qualities, and who I slept with was never going to be any of her business.” Columbo said he fully embraced his own sexuality after college and would escape to Philadelphia from his hometown to experience the LGBT culture and nightlife. “People just didn’t care in Philadelphia,” he said about his sexuality. “I started coming down here in 1995 and the gay life was a lot of fun. I was leaving my hometown, where I was hiding, and then I would get here and it was a big city. It was magical because I was, for the first time, in a world were there were people like me.” Almost 20 years after discovering the city and opening up his two businesses, Columbo’s ready to keep moving forward — and outward. Philly Cupcake will be opening a new location in the Philadelphia Airport and Philly Vintage is opening a second store in April in West Hollywood. Philly Vintage will also start selling handmade, cold-processed and organic soaps from Philadelphia Soap Kitchen. Splitting his time between the two businesses has become good practice for the entrepreneur, who will now be splitting his time in an even bigger way. “I will be becoming a bicoastal person after all these years.”