Bearly’s to reopen on Grafton Street with familiar look

The stuffed bear is back. So are the graffiti-covered wooden tables and beer-stained pool table.

Bearly’s House of Blues and Ribs has moved to a new home on Grafton Street in downtown Halifax, bringing along much of the old interior, including furniture, decor and even the wooden bar itself.

“What it comes down to is I want my regulars to feel comfortable,” said owner Mimi Iatrou. “When you’re sitting at the bar, if you’re a regular, you’re going to look around down there and think, ‘I’m still at Bearly’s.’ ”

The bar and music venue was a well-known landmark on Barrington Street for nearly 40 years. To prepare for the move, the bar closed on Sept. 1 after a final Sunday night blues jam.

Morrow Scot-Brown has been the resident bass player at the weekly blues jam for almost 30 years. He said the interior was one of the things that originally drew him to the bar.

“I just immediately loved the room. It had that look of a beautiful old dive, and I just felt right at home,” he said, adding he hopes the new location has the old ambience. “I’m praying that by bringing much of the old stuff over to the new place some of that will carry over.”

The old stuff includes everything from the wainscoting, paintings, and the neon signs that hung above the stage, to all the graffiti-covered tables and chairs, the beer-stained pool table, the pink and blue tile from the bathroom and yes, the stuffed black bear that loomed over the door. The original bar is being refurbished and installed in the new location, although Iatrou promises the scars on it will remain.

Iatrou opened Bearly’s in 1987 after taking over the Barrington Street location from his father, who had previously run a family restaurant in the space. Iatrou sold the building seven years ago. Although long foreshadowed, the uprooting has caused a stir among the bar’s patrons.

“The community’s a huge thing. That place is like a family,” said Catherine Robertson, Bearly’s’ manager of almost 20 years. “When we were talking to customers about this move, everybody would say things like, ‘Well, you’re taking the bar, right? Well, you’re taking the tables, right? Well, you’re taking the chalkboard, right?’ And they basically wanted us to take everything and reinstall it in the new place.”

Johnny Smith has been a regular at Bearly’s since he moved to Halifax nearly five and a half years ago. A music lover, he quickly found the bar and knew it was going to be his regular spot. He barely missed a Tuesday night since 2019, when he started coming to Halifax blues fixture Garrett Mason’s weekly show.

“There was a community that was pretty tight,” Smith said. “They knew each other, they were friendly, welcoming. It was irrelevant of disabilities, gender, anything.”

Although he’s saddened by the loss of the old location, Smith is excited to see how the bar evolves. “You can take some of it, but [the old location’s] gone, that’s dead, we’ve all gone through our withdrawal … and now it’s moving on, something new.”

The new space has two floors, a change from the sprawling interior of the Barrington Street location. It’s bigger as well, boosting the bar’s capacity by 50 people. Iatrou says music fans can expect many Bearly’s staples, like blues musicians Morgan Davis and Mason. He plans to bring in some punk bands too to draw in a younger crowd.

Iatrou hoped the bar would re-open in late October, but that didn’t happen.

“Listen, in these situations it’s obvious that it hardly ever works out on the day that you say we’re opening.”

Several planned shows have been cancelled or rescheduled but according to the bar’s Facebook site, they’ll be open “very soon.”