The 31^st Street Pub   www.31stpub.com

The Motorpsychos at 31st Street Pub.
Image courtesy Robin G. Field.

While other Pittsburgh venues have come and gone, The 31st Street Pub has had surprising staying power.

Opened in 1962 by Harry Greenfield, father of current owner Joel Greenfield, The Pub brought in a constant clientele of mill workers and truckers. Harry decorated The 31st Street Pub (then known as "Greenfield’s Pub") with gasoline pumps installed to "pump" draft beer as well as actual streetlights and old parking meters. At the time, the 31st Street Pub had a pretty good lunch business, with offerings like "Foot Long Dogs" and the "Mile High Ham Hoagie."

When the mills closed in the 1980s, Harry Greenfield turned The Pub into a biker bar, and the venue gradually evolved into a live music mainstay in the early 1990s. Candles and skulls over the bar still remind concertgoers of The Pub’s biker roots as they cram into the black-walled performance space.

According to Robin G. Field, Joel Greenfield’s sister, one of the Pub’s most famous "employees" was a mannequin outside the door; many passersby thought she was real and would yell out to her and wave.

To this day The Pub seems to have an uncanny knack for bringing in "artists on the verge" -- though mostly dedicated to underground local hard rock acts, The 31st Street Pub hosted intimate shows from the White Stripes, the Black Keys and Mary Ramone and the Intruders as their careers were on the rise. When a particular band breaks through to national success, it’s not uncommon for some 31st Street patrons to shrug their shoulders and proclaim that they saw them first at The Pub.

In 2004, a production crew for the movie "10th & Wolf" chose The Pub as a shooting location. The film starred Dennis Hopper. Tommy Lee, James Marsden and Brad Renfro, and featured The Pub prominently as "The Congress Club," a Philadelphia strip joint.