Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Corrugated steel and recycled pallet wood give the bar at the Pub Station a striking look.
One day later than planned, the Pub Station opened for business Wednesday night.
Owners Sean Lynch and Ann Kosempa had been shooting for a Tuesday night opening and had booked two bands, Har Mar Superstar and the Pizza Underground. But they came up just shy of getting the final OK from city building inspectors, and the first show was moved two blocks away to the Railyard Ale House.
The city signed off on the building Wednesday morning, so Lynch and Kosempa posted an announcement on the Pub Station Facebook page that the new entertainment venue would open at 6 p.m.
Lynch, standing by the front door of what used to be the Greyhound bus depot at 2502 First Ave. N., greeting customers amid handshakes and high-fives, looked a little stunned.
“It’s kind of weird, honestly,” he said. “It’s been a construction zone for so long.”
His bartenders, raring to go, wanted the Pub Station to be open on Thanksgiving, so it will be. But Lynch and Kosempa, who are married, planned to spend Thanksgiving with their family.
“Tomorrow will be my first day off in 70,” Lynch said Wednesday night.
Through their business, 11:11 Presents, Lynch and Kosempa have been producing live concerts in Billings since 2001, booking shows at the Railyard, Manny’s, the Shrine Auditorium and many other venues.
“After 13 years, Sean Lynch has a home,” Turcotte said. “It’s about goddamn time.”
Greg Cecil, who has worked security at the Railyard and would be doing so at the Pub Station, said he hadn’t even seen the Facebook post but was driving down First Avenue and saw lights on in the building.
“It’s a phenomenal job,” he said, sitting with a pint at the main bar. “It’s got a great atmosphere.”
People familiar with the old bus depot might have some trouble remembering how the interior used to look. Several walls were knocked out to open the place up, and where the ticket counter and baggage claim used to be, on your left as you entered the depot, is the main bar.
That bar sits at an angle just off the main space in front of the 20-by-18-foot stage, and there’s another, smaller bar on the other side of the stage. The official capacity is 400 right now, but the building inspector told Lynch that could be bumped up.
Sean Lynch, standing just inside the entrance to the Pub Station, welcomed visitors on opening night
“I found out I could get it to 499 with another hand sink and another heater,” he said.
The interior was designed by architect Don Olsen of O2 Architects and features a lot of corrugated steel and recycled pallet wood. Lynch said his old friend, Tim Hawk, originally of Billings and now working for Mountain High Woodworks in Bozeman, gave him advice on stripping and finishing the pallet wood. He and A.J. Ostlund then helped Lynch install it.
Most of the demolition and construction work was done by a crew Lynch and Kosempa put together. Demolition began in July, so they had to work hard to make the end-of-November deadline, Lynch said.
There were 28 beers and two hard ciders on tap Wednesday night, and within a week there should be two wines on tap, Lynch said, a house red and a house white that will change every quarter, compliments of the Merry Cellars Winery in Pullman, Wash.
The first show at the Pub Station is set for Dec. 9, featuring Exodus, a thrash metal band that has been around since 1980. The Lil’ Smokies, a Missoula newgrass band, will perform on Dec. 12, in a free show.
Lynch said he hopes to have regular free shows by local and Montana bands, something he can do now that he has his own venue and he, not a bar owner, is pouring the beer.
“With the alcohol, we have the luxury of not charging for every show,” he said.
Reid Perry, a musician who also helped with the Pub Station construction, said Wednesday night that the new venue was going to be a destination, for bands and for fans. Bands will love being able to pull up in an indoor bus lane and load gear through a door right behind the stage.
And the sound should be great, he said.
“It’s going to be a state-of-the-art sound system,” Perry said. “It’s going to be fun to run and fun to play.”
Bonus material: Billings resident Michelle Dyk went to the Har Mar Superstar/Pizza Underground show at the Railyard Tuesday, the show that was supposed to be at the Pub Station.
She shot a video of Macaulay Culkin, the former child actor who fronts the Pizza Underground (a “pizza-themed tribute to the Velvet Underground”!), vamping with, and then kissing, Har Mar Superstar frontman Sean Matthew Tillman. Dyk posted the video on YouTube and it was quickly picked up by TMZ, that swamp of celebrity gossip, from which it spread to other Internet sites.
Maybe it’s a good thing that the Pub Station wasn’t tagged with such an odd bit of notoriety on what would have been its opening night.
