Hooliganism
By
Mike Houlihan
“It’s déjà vu all over again.
The O’Brien family is resurrecting Reilly’s Daughter Irish Pub in Oak Lawn at 111th and Pulaski, where they operated for 27 very successful years.Boz O’Brien tells me, “The day we signed the agreement was the day Yogi Berra died.”
Déjà vu indeed.
Long considered the most popular watering hole in Chicagoland for anybody coming of age in the final three decades of the last century, Reilly’s Daughter spawned a satellite pub in Midway airport in 2002. The family will continue to run that location as well as engaging the next generation of revelers with food and booze, as well as a celebration of their fabled traditions, charity events, live entertainment, and neighborhood advocacy for families all over the south side and Chicagoland.
Boz was 24 when he got his first liquor license. He has sold a lot of beer since then, rivers of it. Reilly’s once did 500 cases of Miller Lite a week. Terry Hayes, of Hayes Beer Distributors, tells me, “They were a great bar for us, always created a lot of excitement. They were our largest account by volume, our largest on-premise retailer in the 80’s and 90’s.”
Tip O’Neill stopped into Reilly’s on his travels through Chicago back in the day. Mayor Rich Daley was practically a regular and so was almost the entire ’85 Bears Super Bowl team. Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz did his TV show live from Reilly’s. Many of Chicago’s biggest labor leaders were once bouncers and bartenders at Reilly’s. A young Hawaiian fella named Barack Obama took a leak in the men’s room.
There are a zillion stories of raucous nights in this saloon that sits on the border of Chicago along Pulaski. Boz boasts, “We’ve got 400 parking spots and there’s a cemetery across the street and they never complained about the noise once.”
Boz’s son Brendan was born into this maelstrom. Brendan’s baptismal party was at Reilly’s and he’s been hanging around ever since.
One St. Patrick’s Day when Brendan was three, he somehow got lost in the crowd. The place was bumper to bumper and somebody lifts Brendan up over the mosh pit in the beer garden and shouts out “Pass him to Boz!”
Boz tells me, “He crowd surfed all the way to the bar and he had this big smile on his face as if it was the time of his life. So he’s always had a natural affinity for the business.”
Does he ever.
Boz says, “We had Christmas with Santa every year and Brendan would always force me to go up in the helicopter with him and Santa, but I was scared stiff of flying. You do stuff for your kid you wouldn’t do for yourself. So he was always here.”
When Brendan was 16 and finally got his driver’s license, he’d be working clean-up and was often pressed into service to drive guys home from the bar. “I loved it until I kept hearing the same story over and over again.”
Boz sez, “I always thought he was the only ten year old with 40 year old friends.”
“When I first came back last week and it was the first day we had the keys and … I just kept shaking my head, just can’t believe this, I was walking behind the bar like I did so many times and we were talking sports and politics and I felt like I was 30 years old again. And then I turned and glanced in the mirror… and I knew I wasn’t 30 years old anymore, not with that guy staring back at me.”
Maybe not, but the Irish Diaspora’s culture is preserved through tradition.
Brendan says, “So that’s it Houls, carrying the torch, father to son, growing up here my whole life, learning the business and being around him all the time working side by side.”
Talk with this father and son and you find yourself sharing their mutual pride of each other. The good vibe is contagious. These are professional publicans, good company, both of them.
Brendan is now 32 and has been running Midway’s Reilly’s Daughter. They’ve experienced a 47% growth spurt in revenue over the last five years according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Brendan is more experienced than Boz was when he started back in ’76.
They promise to bring back all the old traditions like the live turkey on Thanksgiving, the Irish Coffee and Soda Bread contests and hope to have Johnny Lattner’s Heisman Trophy on display for the Grand Opening.
Hundreds of folks have stopped by to reminisce while work goes on getting the joint ready for opening. So many, in fact, that they’ve had to lock the door. Boz laughs, “Everybody has been so gracious and excited to have us back. One guy called us,
‘Is this gonna be the original Reilly’s?’
Yes it is.
‘Who is this?’
Well I’m Boz O’Brien.
‘Wow, I thought you were dead!”
He is far from it and Brendan has learned from the master. “There’s a reason we were filled for 27 years, what he did and the things I’ve learned from him, keeping that going takes work. It’s the family atmosphere, it’s generational. The people he had as regulars, I want their kids, the descendants of the people who hung out here.”
Boz philosophizes with the words of Coach Lou Holtz advising a dying young man years ago, “The only time I’m afraid is when I’m unprepared. If you’re squared away with God and squared away with your family, you have nothing to be afraid of.”
The wisdom of Boz, “He couldn’t have said it any better if he were Thomas Aquinas.”
These wise men are aiming for the middle of November to open and Reilly’s will definitely be rockin’ by Thanksgiving.
Thomas Wolfe, you’re wrong. You can go home again.
