The Million Dollar McGuire's Irish Pub

McGuire's Irish Pub and Brewery is a popular restaurant and local landmark in Pensacola, Florida. The pub is located in a 1927 building which was originally the Pensacola Fire Department's firehouse. It later became a drive-in style restaurant called the Old Firehouse Drive-In. When the restaurant closed, the building became the home of McGuire's Irish Pub in 1982. The 20,000 square foot building has 400 seats in various themed rooms such as the Pipers Den, Notre Dame Room, The Irish Links Room and the Ruprecht O'Tolf Wine Cellar. On the inside, every square inch of wall space is covered with framed, and often signed, pictures of politicians, sports figures and entertainers, clever sayings, wood carvings, Irish knickknacks, a dozen moose heads. From the celling hangs thousands of autographed dollar bills whose collective value has been estimated to over one million dollars.

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McGuire's Irish Pub first opened in 1977 as a small neighborhood pub in a shopping center, the Town and Country Plaza, on Fairfield Drive. McGuire cooked and tended the bar while Molly waited tables. When Molly made her first tip – one dollar – she tacked it to the back bar for good luck. The next day friends of the pub offered to add to the collection, and a tradition was born. Today there is well over a million signed dollar bills adorning the ceiling and rafters. The pub treats the dollar bills as an asset and even pays taxes on the increased number of bills with the difference from the prior year counted and calculated by an accounting firm.

The temptation of so much money within such easy reach has been too much for some people. There have been a few incidence of theft, but thanks to the signatures on the bills, stolen bills are often located and returned to the pub. People have been caught trying to buy pizza, paying at a nightclub and converting to quarters at car washes with bills taken from the pub. Once, even one of their own employee was charged with pulling down $5,000 worth of bills.

A pub similar to McGuire's Irish Pub is the Salty Dawg Saloon located in Homer Spit, Alaska.

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