When the Spirit moves you

by Neil W. McCabe

This St. Patrick’s Day, the bagpiper playing at the Spirit Bar there will not only mark the Feast Day of Ireland’s patron saint, but will mark the beginning the pub’s high-traffic season.

“We are busiest from St. Patrick’s Day all the way through to November, or until the Red Sox stop playing,” said Christy Fitzsimons, who owns Spirit Bar at 2046 Massachusetts Ave., with his wife Donna.

Fitzsimons said in addition to the bagpiper, his St. Patrick’s Day fare will include a special menu of Irish favorites, such as the Irish breakfast, usually served only on weekends and the coin cannon, which is a dish made with mashed potatoes, onions and kale.

The beer will be flowing, too, he said. “We will go through five to six kegs of Guinness. Each keg is 16 gallons, so we will pour 500 to 600 pints of Guinness that day.”

One regular, Alan A. Brennan, of Porter Square, said every New Year’s he looks two dates to see what day they land on: his birthday and St. Patrick’s Day.

Brennan said an example of how he feels about the bar is that he came to Spirit to watch Games 4 and 5 between the Red Sox and Yankees in 2004, after he suffered through the 19 to 8 debacle of Game 3 in the stands of Fenway.

“This is the first place I have worked where the girls got along,” said Tara L. Cocchiarella, a Spirit waitress and chemical engineering major at Tufts University.

“Here all of the waitresses help each other out,” she said. “I think it is because most of the people here are students or this is their second of third job.”

“I think the reason every here, customers and employees, is because of the man Christy is,” said Justin L. Jewett, who tends bar one or two days per week.

“He is a fairly successful guy, yet he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty,” he said. “There is a sink behind the bar where we dump ice and straws and garnishes and he will be reaching in there cleaning it before I can get to it myself.”

“Besides, he is a thoroughly entertaining guy,” he said.

Somehow everyone picks up on Fitzsimon’s vibe, he said.

Jewett, who said he knows 52 customers by their first name, and another 20 to 30 by their sports team, pointed out a customer sitting at the middle of the counter to prove his case. “See that guy there? He has been coming in for a week or two, and he is already chatting with a waitress and making friends.”

The Spirit Bar first opened its doors Feb. 13, 2004, he said. The pub replaced the old Porterhouse Café, which had been owned and operated by a Cambridge family since the late 1940s.

Fitzsimons said he looked at seven or eight different bars for sale in Somerville and Cambridge, but he chose the Mass. Ave. site because it offered him the chance to buy the building, not just a business and taking over a lease. He paid $1.2 million for the building.

The original plan was to gut the entire building and expand out the footprint of the Porterhouse Café to create a dining area. But, after neighbors expressed their concerns, Fitzsimons said he agreed to settle for a three-foot expansion for the installation of booths and he leased the rest of the building to a framing store.

Since coming to the United States in 1994, Fitzsimons has worked in construction, first in Randolph, then Dorchester, he said. Four years ago, he started his own construction company, where he works on projects on the North Shore, where he lives with his family.

By doing the renovations with his own team, Fitzsimons said he saved more than $100,000 on the gutted and re-construction of the building. “The building was built in the late 1800s, so we had to tear out the whole front, just to see what we had to work with.”

The total cost of the re-construction was more than $400,000, he said.

Before he opened the doors to the pub, Fitzsimons had never owned or worked in a bar, he said. “It’s not rocket science; you sort of pick it up.”

When he does not know how to make a drink, he just asks the customer to tell him how to do it, he said. “They don’t really have a choice if they want it.”

The only drinks that he said frustrate him are the ones with new names or are fancy ones of saying simple drinks. One example was when someone asked him to make a Cuba libre. The title is just another way of saying rum and coke.

The inspiration to become a publican came from seeing his many friends who owned their own restaurants, including one friend who grew up with him in the town of Swords in County Dublin, Ireland.

His friend owns Mercury Bar in New York City and stayed with Fitzsimons for the first week Spirit was open, he said.

Another big help in the beginning was that the liquor companies outfitted him with free glasses and gave him 30 days of credit, he said.

When he started, the big sellers were Heineken and Harp, now he said they have both cooled off and the consistent big seller is Guinness.

In general, the customers order lighter beers in the summer and darker beers in the winter.

The menu is a new blend of bar foods, Irish staples and seafood. Fitzsimons said that is another change from the original planning.

The family that ran the Porterhouse Cafe allowed a man to run the kitchen as a concession, specializing in Tex-Mex and Memphis-style barbeque, he said.

The man was hired as Sprit’s first chef and he put out a menu that based on what he had been doing for the Porterhouse, he said. Unfortunately, it did not work out and the chef left to work at another restaurant on Mass. Ave.

“We had to respond to what the customers were asking for,” Fitzsimons said.

One thing, he said, the customers come back for is the sports on the flat screen TV. Every season, Spirit buys the full satellite package for whatever sport is playing.

“The Web site for Georgia Tech has a link to us as a place where alums in the Boston-area can come here and watch the games,” he said.

“We also get big crowds for Michigan State and New York Giants and Jets,” he said.

Jewett said there is a reasonable group of West Virginia fans that comes in, too.

A native of Steubenville, Ohio, Jewett said, “I am trying to build up a following for the Cleveland Browns.”

This spring, he will not even try to pump up the Cleveland Indians, he said. “Here, you cannot get passed the Red Sox.”

Although Spirit has soccer games, they are not authorized to show the Gaelic football games, Fitzsimons said. Those rights are controlled by a California company that restricts the number of sites in each city.

Two years into the business, Fitzsimons said he still regrets not being able to expand the dining area.

But, beyond that he is grateful for the way the neighbors have accepted both him and the pub. A solid amount of his customers walk over, he said.

His surprise in the two years was 60 to 100 hours per week he has to devote to running the business, he said.

“Doing the books, and stuff like that hardly take any time at all, but just being here making sure the food goes out the way I want it to and the customers are treated the way I want them treated—that takes time,” he said.

In a business of long days into night, another long day is going to be March 17, the red letter day of the emerald calendar. This year it falls on a Friday.