Flanagan’s Irish Pub—an old Athen’s fire station—doesn’t look like it sounds. Outside, green wood paneling and old clay brick drape the front, the name of the pub running along the top in carved gold letters. The inside resembles a church more closely than an Irish pub, square and long, the altar of the bar running along the length of the east side of the room, opposite draped windows facing Jackson Street. There are hardwood floors, hardwood walls and polished Mahoganey tables that sit placidly around the room and on the balcony in the back. In one corner, towards the front of the bar, a video blackjack game sits and blinks yellow and orange.

Travis met the owner of Flannagan’s once—a man named Kelly Flynn— curious to find out why a man of at least sixty years was hanging out at a well-established frat crashpad. To his surprise, Flanagan’s Irish Pub was actually an Irish pub, in so much as it was owned by an Irishman. Kelly was from east Ireland, near a town called Cork. Why he’d built a bar in Athens, Georgia, Travis never managed to get out of Kelly. The old man just talked about how he loved to see the young people come out and have fun—that it was never like that in his day, that he wished it had been.

Read the whole thread: Carousel Cowboy