LiqitrainingWhile Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast is typically taped in their hometowns of Philadelphia and Kansas City, the most recent edition traveled across the Atlantic. The brothers were in London to support Travis’ girlfriend Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour, but they still made it feel like home. With Jason’s ties to the Philadelphia Eagles (he announced his retirement after 13 seasons in March), Passyunk Avenue appears to be the most appropriate location in the English capital to record.
On June 22, the Philly-inspired dive pub in the heart of central London welcomed the brothers, the day after Jason and his wife Kylie Kelce saw their first Eras Tour event at Wembley Stadium. Travis, 34, ordered a drink and a cheesesteak “as soon as he arrived,” manager Jessi Riley tells PEOPLE.
“We were having a ‘Swiftie Party’ later that day and it was extra funny because I was setting up the cardboard cut out of Taylor Swift as Travis walked in,” according to Riley. “I sort of said, ‘Sorry about the girlfriend, we’re having a Taylor Swift afterparty tonight,’ and he said, ‘As am I.’ He arrived a little early, so I didn’t expect him for another 45 minutes, but there I was standing with his girlfriend!”
Riley’s first encounter with Jason, 36, was less tumultuous but just as lovely. “[He] felt like a face I already knew,” Riley adds. “He came in and gave me a big bear hug around the shoulders and it just felt normal.” Riley ended up appearing on the pair’s podcast episode, where he offered traditional British meals such as a full English breakfast and afternoon tea. Kylie, 32, joined Jason and Travis at the bar and decided to leave her own keepsake there.
“Our bar has a bit of a tradition,” JP Teti, a Philadelphia native and Passyunk Avenue founder, tells PEOPLE. “Everything you see on the walls has been donated by people over time, so it’s like a collection of other people’s junk that proudly hangs in our bar.”
“One thing that has happened over time is people will take American dollar bills and write messages in Sharpies and stick them all over the venue,” adds Teti, who created Passyunk in 2018 after noticing a lack of dive bars in London. “As Jason and Kylie were getting ready to leave, she was like, ‘Jason give me a bill, I want to write a message and leave it behind,’ and Jason said, ‘All I’ve got is a 100,’ so Jason takes out a 100 and she says, ‘Okay fine I’m writing on a 100 then, that’s what we’re doing.’ The message was, ‘F— Dallas, Go Birds and Go Cabrini,’ where she went to college.”
“She insisted on standing on a chair and pinning it at the highest part of the venue herself and I just kept thinking, ‘Please don’t fall,” according to Riley. “She said, ‘If you’re worried about liability just look away!'” “She’s so cool, very down to earth,” Riley says.
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