What is it about McGillin's?

Is it something you guys put in the drinks?

Like I don't understand what the... Oh it is a secret but I tell you then I gotta kill you.

It's always the sense of excitement, a sense of dread, you know, like what's happening today, what's going to happen next.

We'd love to say that McGillin's is popular because we work so darn hard and it's true.

But there's that tradition and the oral history and family stories that keep people coming back year after year after year.

You know it's part of my DNA, it's part of our customers DNA, it's part of our staff DNA.

Not any place can talk about stories from 100 years ago.

We can.

[Music] Philadelphia is a funny town, right?

I mean, I'm super proud of it.

I love it.

But we've always been in the shadows of New York, Washington, Boston.

We were a capital city once, and I think the moment we lost that kind of title, we always had that chip on our shoulder, you know?

There's a very ingrained sense of pride here.

Go Birds!

Go Birds!

Go Birds!

Go Birds!

You like what you like, and you're very verbose about it.

You know, whether it's a sports team, whether it's the cheesesteak, whether it's the pork sandwich, or where your stuff's coming from.

There's a wide variety of people here, and there is a diverse population.

The blue-collar workers who are working really hard for their living day to day, and there's definitely an art scene.

It is a really unique place, not just in its passion for sports and all the unique arts and culture here, but I think just the people day to day that you see at your local Wawa.

You'll see people from all walks of life, but you know, you just say a simple "Go Birds" and you know that you have community.

Whether it's with our sports teams, our museums, our universities, our eating and drinking establishments, there's a loyalty here that I just don't think I've seen anywhere else I've lived.

Every one of us came from somewhere.

Everybody.

If we start with the beginning Philadelphia has always been a city of immigrants.

William Penn himself was an immigrant and a lot of the so-called first purchasers that were the first people to buy property in what became Philadelphia.

Taverns and Philadelphia go way back.

Even by the time Benjamin Franklin was walking the streets in the 1730s and 1740s, Philadelphia had more taverns than any place in North America and was even rivaling the number of taverns in European cities.

Once we get into the 1830s and 1840s, as more immigrants arrive, more taverns start to appear.

What immigrants need when they arrive in any new place are places, institutions, and spaces for belonging and camaraderie.

Also keep in mind that immigrants bring with them traditions from their homelands.

And not to say that the Irish drink more than other groups, but it does seem that a lot of early tavern keepers, particularly in the 1840s and 1850s, were of Irish backgrounds.

McGillin's is here because William McGillin had to leave Ireland, right, because of just poverty and what was natural to him was to open a bar.

For the Irish immigrants arriving in the 1840s, it is largely opportunity here and oppression at home.

You have to keep in mind that there is still a lot of sectarian violence within the British Isles.

I think a lot of hostility geared towards the Irish people and obviously the potato famine of the 1840s drove greater numbers of them here.

And so when they are fleeing oppression and outright starvation in some cases the opportunity that beckons here looks attractive.

So in 1860 William McGillen opened McGillen's here on Drury Street.

It didn't look anything like it does today.

It was almost like a Trinity little tiny row house and he brought his family here raised his family here and as the business grew and his family grew the buildings grew.

So he ended up buying the buildings on both sides of the original bar.

He named it the Bell and Hand.

From 1860 till early 1900s it was pretty run down.

I mean it really did not look anything like this today.

People used to beg him to fix the place up, clean the place up, make it look more like a proper English or Irish pub.

It wasn't until after he died in 1901 his wife took over and she did exactly what he didn't want to do and tore the whole place down and built McGillins as it looks today.

My name is Meg Witte and I am a great-granddaughter of Mercedes McGillins Irish pub, or Alehouse.

[music] My grandfather, William Hooper, was also known as Hoop or Doc.

He and my grandmother had gotten divorced, but before they had gotten divorced, she would send only a couple of the kids down here.

She kept her favorite child at home.

But my mother and one of my uncles would come here and they would play, particularly on the third floor, always claiming that it was haunted, you know, as little kids being terrified and running around.

We were talking before you had come out and I was saying like, you know more about my family than I do kind of thing.

But like what's one of the funniest things that you know about that I learned about them?

Well, it's just that Doc.

He's a little wild, right?

He's definitely a little wild.

Figure him out.

Like what was his value and how long was he here for?

I don't even know how long he was here for.

He got fired.

Listen, he, that man got fired all the time.

He was stealing.

Nice.

Stealing.

There was thievery, there was some like tawdry things, you know.

Doesn't a lot of these places have great stories?

I'm sure if the walls could talk, that's what you would want to be, that's what you want to hear, you know.

My grandfather just liked to get behind the bar and tell stories.

He would say, you know, yeah, there were some late night parties, there were some, you know, nightly ladies and there were, you know, so I think that not like a tawdry house, but I definitely think there were some experienced Philadelphian women that were, you know, hanging out after hours in the pub.

Oh, so this is a whiskey.

Yeah, whiskey billet.

Look at that.

What do they call it?

Whiskey, brandies and gins.

Look, a cask of gin.

Gin only $50.

So I guess they were making it in the bathtub.

Yeah, for I mean, 20 gallons for $50.

Yeah.

My mother used to tell me about how everyone would come in for the baked potato because it was a baked potato and a beer for five cents.

And so that there was always, you know, always someone in here.

Whether we're discussing just a tavern, a saloon or an actual eating establishment, it seems that places for those activities were not as glamorous, well-designed.

It was a very different ethos in those days.

You weren't necessarily trying to sell your customers a sensory experience the way restaurateurs and I think lounge operators do today.

This was for sustenance.

This was for gathering.

There was also a political side to the story because that is what ultimately led to prohibition in this country.

We had something called the saloon vote whereby on election day would-be voters were essentially hurried into a nearby saloon and were told how to vote for a certain candidate and then for their vote they would receive a shot of rum maybe a pint of beer so obviously there was this unholy marriage between saloons and politics and that is something that prohibition sought to do away with and yet once prohibition began in 1920 Philadelphia seemed to test the limits of just how wet the city could be in a dry era and it's often said that New York was the wettest city during prohibition but Philadelphia was fast on its heels.

There were at least 8,000 speakeasies operating in Philadelphia, illegal groggeries, illegal breweries, and this obviously tested the mettle of the Philadelphia police who then had to get federal help to try to enforce the law.

So there's a lot of theories about what happened during prohibition.

Some of the facts that we know after Ma locked the door, she said I'm going to lock this door until the end of the show.

She was in a prohibition but she had a side entrance so they continued to use that for a little bit of time.

There's a lot of theories that we probably did operate through prohibition.

Being so close to city hall, it's quite possible that some of the people were sneaking in here for some of that beer that was left out in the cellar.

There's some credence I think to it because nobody really survived prohibition.

So many places just folded after 13 years, but we didn't.

So something was going on that brought in enough income to keep McGillin's alive.

There are photographs that you can easily find of Philadelphians hoisting their first legal drink in 13 years in 1933.

Philadelphia was the tipping state to repeal prohibition.

And it seemed that there was now, during the early years of the Depression, a real need to not only drink again, but also to kind of celebrate in the freedoms that prohibition was essentially thwarting.

My grandfather, he was a physician, so he couldn't work at the bar.

And his oldest son was in med school.

And so the family just decided at that point it was time to, you know, get rid of the bar.

When the McGillins family sold McGillin's to my grandfather and my uncle in 1958, it was right on the cusp of their 99th anniversary of owning the bar.

You know, and I always think like, you know, didn't they want to just hang on for, you know, get through that next year to say you owned it for 100 years.

But it's constant.

You can't ever hide behind your desk.

There's actually two different names.

There's Spaniak and Cheponyak, which is the original Polish spelling with a lot of Z's and Z's.

And they owned it for 35 years.

They bought it from the McGillins family in 1958.

Henry and Jerry Spaniak were just like very generous people.

Like as long as you did your job.

That's the biggest thing.

My name is John Doyle.

I'm the best damn bartender McGillem's ever had.

I'm only kidding.

I'm only wanting the best.

When I first started working here, no sneakers, no jeans, no tank tops, no shorts.

As a matter of fact, I think prior to me getting here, you had to wear a shirt and tie.

Running a bar, especially probably in the 50s, 60s and 70s is a lot different than it was, or is today.

You know, you'd hear some of the stories, but some of the not so glamorous ones, no, not really, you know.

One of their big challenges was in the 80s, some new bars started to happen.

And they were always very popular from the time they bought it right up until the 80s.

And I think that their big challenge was that a lot of the business, you know, was taken away from them.

Not taken away, but some of it was taken away.

One of the restrictions put into place in Philadelphia following Prohibition was the banning of Sunday sales.

You could not buy alcohol in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, on Sundays.

Restaurants and hotels were not allowed to serve it.

What this created was a literal thirst for getting something on Sunday, but it started to propel Philadelphians to cross the river into New Jersey, or to drive south to Delaware to buy their alcohol.

And restaurants were complaining that they couldn't do any business on Sunday, and Sunday brunch was incomplete without champagne.

And so finally, after a lot of lobbying in 1971, Governor Milton Schaap permitted Sunday sales.

And that truly led to Philadelphia's first restaurant renaissance, which really kicked up in the mid-1970s.

Now, sadly, most of those restaurants that were very pathbreaking in the '70s have since closed.

Many of the chefs have since passed away.

But without that permission for Sunday sales, the question is, would Philadelphia have ever experienced its first restaurant renaissance?

People look at us and say, oh, my God, you know, running a bar.

It's so much fun.

It's so easy until you do it.

I mean, there's plumbing problems, electrical problems.

There's, you know, staff problems, you know, things like that.

So you just never know what you're when you walk in with what you're going to encounter.

My name is Chris Mullins.

I'm the owner of McGillen's Old Al-Ass, along with my son and my wife.

I worked here as a bartender and I loved working here and went out and started two other bars before I bought this place.

So it was kind of a homecoming to me.

I consider myself the trustee of this tradition as much as anything.

Not an owner of a business, but a trustee of what Philadelphia, great Philadelphia tradition.

Henry was my father.

Le Joe was the uncle, Muriel's uncle.

He recognized our ability to make a place successful there.

You know, to have lines every Friday and Saturday night for dinner.

You know, fear is the greatest motivator there is.

So we were very afraid coming in here.

The business was really not doing well at all.

One of our first means of generating more traffic in business was through the food product.

When Chris and Mary Ella came, it changed a whole lot.

The business there has grown, because I used to be in the kitchen by myself from 9, 10 o'clock in the morning to 11 at night because that's how less business that it was.

It wasn't that busy.

And so many people work.

I said, "We didn't have this many people, employees in there.

We got so many of them.

We didn't have that back then.

I mean, they was in the 80s, early 90s.

I didn't even want to compete, because I was just looking for a job.

But I came here and I never left.

They just expanded everything.

I mean, like all of a sudden, McGillin's first weekend.

And I was really surprised, because a lot of people left because the bar wasn't doing that well, they weren't making any money, you know.

But all of a sudden, it turned around.

Not quickly, but you had to see the trend of how they turned it around.

Well, a big part of it was when we took over, was making sure, trying to get the staff to stay.

You know, whenever there's a change in ownership, you have to reassure them, "Hey, listen, you know, we want you to work here, blah, blah, blah, blah."

That's part of the legacy of a place.

You know, continuity of staff is very important.

People say, "When's your happy hour start, Jon?"

I say, "When I wake up in the morning.

That's when my happy hour starts."

And when I come into McGillen's, I loved it.

As we set it up, I'm ready to go.

The staff at McGillen's, because it's a family and they care so much about it, they make sure that all of their patrons have that experience.

And I feel like, you know, bars come with issues, right?

A lot of people are drinking, things can be crazy in there, but it seems like they always are attentive to everybody, even when it's packed.

There's at least somebody in some place in McGillans making sure that everybody's okay and that nobody's misbehaving.

And I mean, like I said, things happen, but I feel like I've never felt unsafe there.

I've always felt very well taken care of.

And it doesn't matter what it like, where it is, whether you're outside in line, or you're upstairs at the bar or downstairs at the bar.

It's just their staff has always been accommodating and I feel like they really look out for their patrons.

When we took over better beer was like Fosters or Carlsberg or Heineken.

Those are better beers and we came in we said we're doing local craft beers.

So as much as changing the food culture at McGillin's, a bigger thing was changing the beer culture at McGillin's.

It took a while for people to understand what I was doing.

You know, what's real beer, what's craft beer?

No one knew anything because the way beer was sold, sold predominantly by men who would only sell it on, this is what the beer costs, or this is the promotion.

It was marketing, it had nothing to do about what was in that bottle.

Our previous place, we were experimenting a little bit with the craft beer scene in the 80s.

So I had a little background in that, but I read about Carol Stout and I invited her to come down here and talk to us.

I first met the McGillin's when I was out peddling beer myself.

My husband always loved beer.

I never really cared for beer.

We honeymooned in Germany and in Germany the brewery starts, then the beer garden, and then a little restaurant and a guest house.

Well, the laws in that then in Pennsylvania were my husband had the restaurant with a liquor license and brew pubs were illegal and he could not be a manufacturer.

So I said, well, what should I do that?

I mean, I was a teacher, but I was staying home at the time to raise my children.

And I said, let me do it.

Carol Stout is an amazing person.

So much life and so much passion for the beer industry.

Her husband recently just passed away, and I had the pleasure of going to his memorial because he was a man who knew how to celebrate life.

And it was a true celebration of life.

So the two of them just created such a culture here in Pennsylvania and led the way for so many brewers to start tiny and grow big.

And some of the best brewers in America still count Carol and Ed as their inspiration.

It took me 10 years to get my first draft account in the city of Lancaster.

And on the menu it says Stout's Golden Lager made by Eddie Stout in Adamstown, Pennsylvania.

A lot of the local people thought that my husband had me out peddling his beer.

And I just chuckled.

It didn't matter as long as they sold the beer.

It didn't matter to me.

There was no craft beer scene until the mid '90s.

And I imagine my dad got into it a little bit.

But he saw that opportunity to really embrace local beer here at McGillin's.

McGillin's Old Ale House should have excellent beer.

It's in our name.

Because of the Philadelphia market, I did my Amber Ale, which later became Scarlet Lady Ale.

Because you have to have a name with a beer.

You can't just call it an Amber Ale.

Scarlet Lady actually for many years was the number one beer sold at McGillin's.

We had Schmitz.

We had Budweiser.

Now all these sour beers, we don't sell a lot of fruity beers, but like IPAs, lagers, sours, stouts.

You could have, I think we had 31, 32 taps.

You could have 300 taps.

There's that many brewers who want people to sell your brew.

It's changed a lot.

There's beers out there I probably will never ever ever drink.

And it's it's the trend today.

That's the way it is.

Well I think right now it's a little bit of craziness.

It's like some people want to put 10 12 ingredients in a beer.

And you know I always wanted to make a beautiful bright crisp clean beer.

Well now it's thick.

It's like milkshake.

It's like, well, I guess I'm showing my age.

It's kind of out of what I think it should be, what real beer should be.

But it catches the attention of the younger drinker.

So I guess, hopefully it's a stepping stone here.

But in America, you can do anything, right?

It feels like home in there.

That's what McGillin's feels like.

and it's you know what you're getting.

Every single time you go there year after year after year you're getting an authentic bar experience in Philadelphia.

It's the oldest bar.

It's so it's it just feels it's just always a good time.

Really and you can eat all the great food and drink the different colored beer.

Chris I do not like green beer or red beer or whatever color I want to see what color this beer is.

But guess what they wouldn't do that to me.

I'm not going to do it to my beer.

They would do it to maybe but a Budweiser or a Miller or Coors.

The one time I went for St.

Patrick's Day to drink the green beer got a seat at the bar.

And then I got a call from my roommate.

I was living in Fishtown at the time and she said our fire alarms are going off at home.

And I thought to myself I just got to this bar and I just got this seat and I had to leave.

I had one green beer that I had to leave and then by the time I got back I couldn't get back in.

That was heartbreaking.

But then when the Phillies were in the World Series I got a seat at the bar to drink the red beer and everything was smooth that day.

So I got to enjoy the red beer that day.

But it's it's they just make it so much fun.

They just make it so much fun.

I've been in Philadelphia doing radio since 2008.

I started as a receptionist in a sports talk WIP and kind of built my career from there.

So, God, I guess over like 15 years now, which is crazy.

Here's a call, Dvorak, pulling down LeClaire.

Here's Glendross, and what they score!

My fandom started before I can even remember.

There's videos of my dad holding me on his lap, I can't even hold my head up.

And we're watching the Flyers on TV and he's pointing out their names.

I remember being a very little girl standing on the seats and screaming my head off for the teams and I didn't know any different, right?

I was born into this kind of rabid fandom and I often think if I wasn't from Philadelphia, I feel like I'd be a totally different person.

I don't know if I would care about sports as much, but it's just ingrained in who I am because it's ingrained of who my family is.

We're all diehard fans.

I mean going back.

I think McGillin's is synonymous with the Philadelphia sports scene even though it's not necessarily near any of the stadiums.

Just from the decor in there to the ways that they celebrate each team.

I think it's just a meeting spot for Philly sports fans and then the way that they celebrate each team I think just makes people even more excited.

It kind of just shows you the vibe of Philly sports right now because you can go there and everyone will just be really excited about whatever the teams are doing or if we lose, you know, everyone's together there in defeat and just kind of ordering another pitcher of beer to cope with the loss.

Sports is very integral and that was one of Chris's big contributions when he came in here.

He came from the Union League and he had a real good job as a food and beverage manager over there.

So my big problem was how we go to Ford and his response was well it's open on Sundays and now Sundays are our second or third busiest day and that's because of football.

Most cities that have sports teams do have followings but Philadelphia sports teams are some of the oldest.

That may account for the loyalty that you see.

"Eddie Waitkus follows up with a hit that hops over Coleman's head into right field.

Goliath goes to third and the Phillies get their big chance."

But Philadelphia is a tough city and it has endured a lot of tough times and sports seems to be a soothing agent for when the city experiences tough times.

A perfect example would be the back-to-back Stanley Cups that the Flyers won in the 1970s.

Two million people showed up for those parades.

We didn't have two million people living in the city in those years.

And that demonstrated that even a city facing deindustrialization, capital flight, a host of other problems in the 70s, sports was one thing that Philadelphians could rally behind.

Philadelphians, we love to have a good time.

Look at New Year's Day, right?

There's not another city in the United States that's like, we're going to throw this big party on Broad Street and then we're going to continue it all day in South Philadelphia into the night.

We're always looking for a reason to have a good time I think because we work so hard.

That's why we love our parades.

We'll throw a parade for anything.

We're like, oh, fourth place for Little League?

We're throwing a parade.

I often tell people that the most famous athlete that Philadelphia has ever produced is a fictional one, and that's Rocky Balboa.

Hi, my name is Rocky Balboa.

[trumpet music] Now obviously we have had Joe Frazier, we have had Mike Schmidt, we could go down the list of the greats that have graced our stadiums and our fields, but there's something absolutely attractive about the Rocky Balboa phenomenon.

And we're not talking necessarily about the film itself or the sequels, but the film debuted at a time when we were really down on our luck.

And this city and this country needed a relatable hero, and Rocky Balboa came onto the screen, and the Bill Conti "Gonna Fly Now" theme song ought to be Philadelphia's theme song.

Everyone loves an underdog.

Philadelphia is an underdog city.

There's something for everyone in every part of the city.

You can go to a bar, find your people, and make it your own and become a regular.

That's what I think.

And like McGillin's, they have regulars for years.

You know, people go back there forever and ever and ever.

McGillins is a place where you can let your hair down.

You can wear what you want to wear.

You can say what you want to say.

You can drink what you want to drink.

You can dance to the song that you want to dance to.

You can just be yourself, right?

There's a lot of people.

We're busy more often than we're not.

So there's always that opportunity for that chemistry, right?

The whole online dating thing goes kind of right out the window here because there's just, there's so many people that you can meet that you don't need any of those kind of apps.

People meet here, if not every week, every month, you know, and there's that certain spark here that is truly unique to McGillin's.

Not everybody's going to meet their mate here, but it happens a lot.

I think it's just the atmosphere of McGillin's, the camaraderie, the customer service.

I see guys sit in front of me, girls sitting down there.

I go, "Hey, spend six bucks and buy her a drink."

And what's she do?

Say, "No, I don't want it."

Last year, a couple was at the bar, right?

Guy just met this young girl.

He says, "Can we get some pickleback shots?

You know what pickleback is?"

"Okay."

So I said, "You just meet this young lady."

"Yep."

I said, "You'll kiss her goodnight?"

And they're both looking at me like, I said, "Okay, here's what I do.

You don't want pickle on your breath.

How about some fireball?"

"Oh, yeah, fireball."

Maybe that got them to do whatever, I don't know.

It's easier to meet somebody at McGillin's, I think, because of the vibes.

They're always good in there.

Like I said, I feel like you go in there, as soon as you walk in the door, it's just cheerful, I guess.

So maybe everybody is just more open to meeting people.

But two of my best friends met at Mcgillin's, and they're married now.

They just had their first child.

I met some dates there.

I'm not gonna lie.

Some guy sent me mashed potatoes rather than a beer.

And I appreciated that.

You know, I was like, that's a that's an interesting way to hit on somebody.

He said, I figured I'd be different and send mashed potatoes.

So that was a McGillian experience.

My cousin was living in Philly and she was there and she met a very tall gentleman and he happened to be from France living in Philly for a couple months.

Sparks flew and they are now married with the kids.

So I think you never know if you're going to meet your best friend or like a lifelong partner in Mcgillin's.

I've definitely heard it happen before.

Can't really tell you what it is but I know it has happened.

A lot of people came here, met, fell in love, got married here.

Me myself had met somebody here, used to work here 30 years ago, met with the two bosses Henry and Joe Spangler and I met a young fella that we got inclined with each other.

Went together for about a couple years.

He left here and I stayed here.

So we got separated.

We haven't seen each other for years and during a pandemic he got in touch with me.

And he said I'm just calling to see you know it's been such a long time.

So we had so many of us are gone now.

You know even the people like people that work in Mcgillin's where he was here is gone.

He said I want to see what you still have.

And I am still here.

I'm still alive.

He's like I'm not trying to call you to go to bed with you or nothing like that.

I'm like I hope not.

So you like can you take my number.

I lost his number.

I kept saying I hope he called me back.

And he said he called me back.

We talked a couple times.

He came down here to see me.

And we went out for dinner and seeing each other all over again.

He gained a little bit of weight.

He used to be a little thin man.

But I still love him.

I still fell back in love.

Took me some time but I fell back in love with him all over again.

And he told me to work one day and dropped me off.

And the next morning I went downstairs in the kitchen and they're like Ivy can you come upstairs.

Like for what.

And I see everybody standing around doing Christmas decorations and everybody's standing around.

I'm like why y'all standing around.

And that's when he came in the door he said Ivy I love you.

Will you marry me.

I'm like yes I will.

And everybody started laughing and laughing.

So we engaged to be married.

Everyone's story is unique.

Everyone has their own story of how they've met.

The sailor that was here he was off duty taking a break working down at the Navy Yard.

And he came in one night the same night that there was this group of girls came in and one of the women was in a convent to be a nun.

And she met this guy and of course brushed him off.

But then they met up again here a couple weeks later and she left the convent.

They had their 50th wedding anniversary here.

More couples have met at McGillin's than anywhere else in Philadelphia.

So come to McGillin's and meet your mate.

It's funny to think about.

Yes, we have a long line of divorced guys.

When you say it out loud, it's like what a failure.

But you know, it's interesting.

So mom McGillin, there's a divorce.

Her son, Doc, he also was divorced.

Their oldest daughter, Diane, my mom, is divorced.

And then both my sister and myself are divorced.

And it's just so funny to think, you know, this being a bar that is cited for people meeting and falling in love kind of a thing.

I don't think there's a perfect formula for the staying power of a restaurant bar or really any business.

It really kind of has to be a perfect convergence of factors that would begin with ownership.

That would then extend to product.

That would extend to patrons.

That would extend to atmosphere.

I don't even think there's a playbook, if you will, for how an establishment such as McGillin's persists so long.

Maybe they should write the book.

I think the real legitimate reason why Mcgillin's is still physically here is because our location historically has been terrible.

Right?

Like it's in the middle of a little alley right off of Sansom Street which is a little, the smallest street probably and smallest big street in Philadelphia.

So it's kind of hidden back here.

No department store ever wanted to buy it.

Right?

No apartment building ever wanted to be here.

No hotel wanted to be on this strip.

Just a very undesirable piece of real estate in terms of real estate.

So that's what's protected us.

But also what's kept us thriving is that all around us was the major shopping areas.

You know any business has, I wouldn't even describe them as hardships, but just challenges.

You know there's always a challenge.

Every business lives somewhat on the cusp of, you hate to say failure, but you know, I mean something could come along and it may not be here tomorrow.

It was sad to see what happened to Philly during COVID.

I mean, 2019 I think was one of the best years Philadelphia had and like I said, living here my entire life, seeing the growth and expansion in certain areas of the city, it was such a joy.

And knowing that during the pandemic, a lot of places didn't survive, a lot of people moved out of the city.

And I think that was just, you know, the whole world changed.

But I had a feeling I said, you know, we've been down this road before.

And we'll come back.

We always make a comeback.

That's just that's just what we do here in Philadelphia.

There was no question to me whether or not McGillin's was going to survive, right?

Because that's one of the establishments.

And like I said, we take care of each other here.

And we're going to make sure that we keep on keeping on whether or not whatever is going on in the world around us, like Philadelphia has always done.

I think we're really special in that way where, because we take care of our own.

So we're going to make sure that we're going to be fine.

The first thing Chris said to me, he's very involved in the management of the finance.

But he said, Dad, how long can we last?

I said, oh, if we're closed, if this is like a long time, I said, I don't know, at least a year, two years without having to worry.

Because again, as I mentioned previously, I'm a very conservative manager as a C, financially.

And we had a nice balance sheet.

And we took that as an opportunity.

We did a lot of work in the place.

You know, a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of improvements that we could never have done if we were open.

So mom said that that was the first war.

In that side, there used to be a side little room down there.

I always wondered where this was.

I assumed it was like in a country club.

It's just so nice in the back.

Barely, it's here.

I know, it's wild.

It's in your own place.

Yeah.

This building was actually three floors with an attic, but there was a fire here in 1971.

And after that, they did not replace the third floor.

Right now we're sitting on the second floor.

And at that time, the kitchen was here in the second floor.

And Joe and Henry had just put in a fryer up here, but apparently they didn't vent it very well.

And there was a fire that started here on the second floor.

And the first floor did have live music and it was there playing Come On Baby Like My Fire.

I don't think Jimmy Morrison quite had that in mind, a real fire.

But that's what happened.

In fact, people said, "Oh, they're just kidding.

It's not really a fire."

Somebody, let's say in their 70s, come in for lunch and we'll be talking and she's been coming in here for 50 years.

But you know the funniest thing?

My grandson came home and said that they discovered this cool bar in Center City and she's like, you discovered that?

I've been coming here since 1957, you know?

They know Philadelphia, they know their people and they know what their people want.

A lot of his staff have been there for many, many, many years and I think that's really important.

A challenge I think with a lot of businesses is if you have a revolving door of employees you're not going to have that consistent service and you're not going to have a good package for your customers.

And he knows what he wants and he sticks to it.

Very intelligent, excellent, excellent businessman.

I'm humbled by it and you know I'm modest because I just carry on a tradition.

I don't I may have restarted it in some regards but I can't say I'm totally responsible for for that feeling that people have here and I'm a trustee it's my job to to manage this place so it can continue.

Chris my son is you know he's a part owner right now and he's been in the process of buying us out over the last eight seven eight years and he's a partner full partner.

Chris's passion for McGillin's and just the history of it all really comes through even when I'm talking with him about something that doesn't have to do with the history of McGillin's or anything like that he'll always remind you of exactly how many years McGillin's has been in business and he is the latest in a long line of McGillin's owners who have made the bar such an important part of the fabric of Philly I would say so I think from my own experience with him he is one of the things that makes McGillin's great and a unique place to be in such a special city.

The best part about my parents is, and I think this is good advice for anybody with children of the restaurant businesses, don't encourage them to get into it.

Encourage them to be doctors and lawyers, you know, pursue avenues that may give you a month of vacation a year, you know, enjoy time with your family.

So they've never encouraged us to do this.

But when it's in your DNA, it's hard to get out.

You know, so I've always enjoyed it being a kid, but I tried hard not to do it.

You follow some of the trends, right?

But you have to stay true to who you are.

We joke because we're McGillin's old ale house, but now you can get seltzer on draft, and a hard tea on draft, and hard lemonade, and kombucha on draft.

You know, so you can't just stick to beer.

Irish Mist.

We'd have a drink at the work, and there was a guy who worked with Bob, right, and him and I were closing up one night.

He said, What are you gonna have?

I said, I don't know.

I said, "Gimme a Budweiser."

He goes, Huh.

Let's do soup and sandwich.

I said, soup and sandwich?

He goes, Yeah.

He got a bottle of harp.

He got this and he poured a shot.

And he goes, Soup, sandwich.

And that's when I started.

McGillin's created a place where you can come from all walks of life and feel warm and welcomed.

You cannot put a title or a description on who is a McGillin's customer, right?

Because there's just so many different people that come through here.

Read the sign and that's what it's all about.

It's McGillin's Old Ale House.

So it's McGillin's.

It's always been family owned.

It's old.

It has been old.

It's an ale house.

We're beer centric.

And we're a house.

It's a family.

It's a family affair.

So right there on the sign is basically who we are as a business.

You don't even have to drink.

But you should just stop in and see it and smell it and hear it.

And in many respects, it has not changed in several decades.

That is something else Philadelphians are scared of change.

We don't really like it.

And the city has changed remarkably in the years that I've been here.

But to have a constant like McGillin's is a great comfort.

It's a Philadelphia tradition.

It's been here since 1860, survived two pandemics, a depression, a great recession, two world wars, and it's something that just just keep on going.

[music]