When Paul Crilly became a first-time bar owner, some questioned whether his Morrissey's Irish Pub in south Minneapolis would last six months, especially given the history of short-lived bars and restaurants in its W. Lake Street space.
Two years and 70- to 100-hour workweeks later, Crilly and his three partners will celebrate the Lyn-Lake neighborhood tavern's second anniversary on Saturday, days before St. Patrick's Day. In May, they are expanding into a neighboring spot with a tea and coffee room.
"We get a lot of neighborhood folk, from 21 to 71 [years old] and everything in between," Crilly said of his pub, which is known for taking care of service industry compatriots.
The location, 913 W. Lake St., has been the home of a series of short-lived places including Favor Cafe, Restaurant Miami and Restaurant Viva Brazil.
The struggles of opening and running a bar in any location pale in comparison to what the affable Irishman grew up with. Along with his six siblings, Crilly, 52, was raised in Derry, Northern Ireland, where British soldiers shot and killed 14 protesters on Bloody Sunday in 1972 when he was a child. As a teenager, he better remembers the hunger strike led by Irish republican prisoner Bobby Sands, whose death sparked riots and heightened tensions between Irish nationalists and British forces.
"You didn't really know any better at the time," he recalled. "When you grow up with it, it's normal."
"The Troubles," as the decades of fighting from the late 1960s to late '90s were known, were an ugly part of modern history that contrasts with Morrissey's convivial atmosphere. But it's one Crilly's bar doesn't shy away from. Not only do photos of riot scenes adorn the walls but the bar takes its name from Johnny Morrissey, the alias used in the early 1920s by Crilly's Irish Republican Army grandfather.
"I used to always ask him did he ever shoot anybody," Crilly said, "and he'd never tell me."
