The bar and restaurant’s owner says celebrating the holiday “means we’ve made it through” the worst of the pandemic and “better days ahead.”
Struck with the fear and doubt experienced by every restaurant or bar owner in the Bay Area when the pandemic response shut down all indoor and outdoor public dining and drinking, Mike Williams remembers thinking, “This is gonna get bad.”
A clock at Crogan’s Montclair in the Oakland hills counts down to the second when St. Patrick’s Day begins this year. “The camaraderie we’ve all missed is so important. Come in, have fun, smile. It makes it worthwhile to be alive. Celebration to me means we’ve made it through the worst of this and there are better days ahead.”
Williams recalls the 1999 kitchen fire that swept through Crogan’s and the damage from smoke that closed the restaurant for nine months. Meeting provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act before reopening meant relocating the front door, and then-owner Bob Gattis used the setback as an opportunity to completely renovate the establishment.
“It was usually over masks, whether or not you were vaccinated. I keep thinking, ‘If we can drop the anger as we get over this, stop the divisiveness and know we’ve all been through a horrible crazy two years, we can get back to letting it go and just enjoy ourselves for a moment.’ ”