Open bar

On Jan. 1, 2017, a Facebook post from Corrigan’s Bit O’ Ireland announced that after 30 years on South Wells Avenue, the bar had lost its lease and would close, effective immediately.

The post was shared 43 times and commented on by dozens of people, who recounted their memories of the bar, asked to retrieve mementos and knickknacks, expressed condolences, and bemoaned the loss of their favorite place to get Underburg and Guinness.

On July 6, 2017, another post was made on Corrigan’s Facebook page. This one said to “keep faith” because a rebirth was in the near future. Now, seven months on, that rebirth is close at hand.

Friends Richard Jackson and Rebel Hooper are reopening Corrigan’s Bit O’ Ireland. It holds a significant place in the pair’s shared history. Jackson tended bar at Corrigan’s starting in 1993.

“I met Rebel in passing at other places, but it was here that we really started hanging out together,” Jackson said. “I can’t tell you how many hours we logged in this bar, and, so, we just wanted to perpetuate the bar—because so many of us have made so many friends here. Of my current friends, I’d bet half of them I met here.”

On a Monday afternoon in late February, Jackson and Hooper were at the bar meeting with vendors and contractors. A fresh coat of paint on the front door was still wet. Inside, sawhorses and building materials vied for space on the floor alongside new refrigeration units, and the long bar was covered in a plastic sheeting. But underneath the tarps and dust, renovations were nearing completion.

“This mirror was original from when I started coming in here, but it was covered up over the years with shelving,” Jackson said, leaning against the bar.

There is new, simple wooden shelving surrounding the old mirror now. The floors are also new, as is the lighting, and the bathrooms have been completely redone. But, to anyone who’d ever spent time there in the past, the bar wouldn’t feel all that different.

“Our aim is not to be some kind of upscale mixologist bar,” Jackson said. “We want to keep the spirit of the old bar and just clean it up. I think we’re going to definitely succeed in that and probably grow a few new customers and a lot of old customers who are anxious for us to get open.”

But old customers won’t be the only ones returning when the bar reopens. According to Hooper, he was ecstatic to the point of stopped-in-his-tracks when bartender Donal Caldwell said he wanted to return to Corrigan’s. But, according to Caldwell—who’s been tending bar at 40 Mile Saloon since helping to open it five-and-half years ago—the decision was an obvious one. He too has a history with the bar.

Caldwell’s family moved to the U.S. from Ireland when he was 5 years old. They lived in New York and Arizona before settling in Reno, where his father, John, took a job at a chain restaurant. When the restaurant wanted to relocate the family to Houston, John met with Ray Corrigan, owner of the newly opened Corrigan’s Bit O’ Ireland, and ended up taking a job as the day shift bartender. Noel Foley, who opened Foley’s Irish Pub, was the swing shift bartender.

“They used to have a little marquee sign between the bathrooms, ’Welcome to Corrigan’s, the only place with authentic Irish bartenders,’” said Caldwell. He was just a kid when his dad took the job at Corrigan’s, but it wasn’t long before he was also involved with the bar.

“My very first job—I was 12 years old—I would come down here every Saturday morning and swamp out the bathrooms,” he said.

Afterward, he and Corrigan would take trash to the dump and cans to the recyclers.

“And then he’d take me out to lunch,” Caldwell recalled. “And, God, the best memories of my childhood were actually in this bar. So, for me, this is really coming home.”

It won’t be long now until he can. Hooper and Jackson are hoping to have the bar open within weeks—at the latest, in time for Saint Patrick’s Day. When Corrigan’s reopens, customers will be invited into a space that’s both new and familiar. The bar, which became non-smoking during its final year of operation, will be non-smoking still. There will be 10 beer taps, featuring Guinness, of course, but also a few local brews and rotating options. Some may be saddened to know that the old jukebox has been replaced by a newer model. Overall, though, Corrigan’s seems much the same as it was—a neighborhood bar with history.

“What Corrigan’s is, is what every bar should aspire to be—a neighborhood place where you’ve got a ditch worker next to a lawyer, and they can still sit there and have a good conversation,” said Caldwell. “Well, it’s like the pub life in Ireland. You socialize in the pub. This is where you come. And this is what Corrigan’s is.”