with signed banknotes on the walls and ceilings,
but none with as much in hard cash as McGuire’s
Irish Pub in Pensacola,
Florida, photograph Panoramio, the story of McGuire’s Irish Pub’s unique decoration can be traced back to
1977, when Martin McGuire and his wife, Molly opened the opened the business.
He tended the bar while Molly waited tables, and when she made her first $1
tip, she celebrated by writing the date on it and tacking it to the back bar
for good luck, the idea snowballed from there, “It’s
15,000 square feet and there’s dollar bills on every bit of that ceiling and
quite a bit of the walls,” owner William “McGuire” Martin told the Chicago
Tribune back in 1999, “We count it every year and we pay taxes on the growth in
it. We treat it as an asset, and we borrow against it and so forth.” at the
time of the interview, McGuire estimated his unique décor to consist of around
$175,000, but according to more recent counts, the pub now has nearly two
million dollars in autographed bills hanging from its ceiling. That’s a fortune
literally at arms length from strangers, most of whom resist the temptation of
taking some of that cash for themselves,
thefts from time to time do occur,
an employee was once fined and put on probation after allegedly pulling down an
estimated $5,000 of green “wallpaper”, and many others have tried using the
marked bills to pay for various things around Pensacola, but because every
banknote that goes up on McGuire’s ceiling is autographed with a black marker
and features staple holes, it’s hard to spend them anywhere in town without
anyone noticing them. The Irish pub is a local landmark and the money tradition
is very well-known, so whenever someone presents a marked bill virtually
anywhere in Pensacola, alarm bells go off, “The teller instantly realized that
was probably money from McGuire’s and notified a manager and during that time,
the suspect became a little worried and left the building,” one police offer
told WEAR-TV about a thief’s attempt to exchange stolen
banknotes at a local bank, there is actually a second McGuire’s Irish Pub in Destin,
Florida, which, according to a 2017 report had an estimated $1.7 million in cash
hanging from its ceiling, you can view both bars web sites here, what a
thought, to be able to see a minimum of $1.7 million dollars on walls and
ceilings, I would drink to that 'Cheers!'.
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