Pig’s Eye Pub

Location: 122 Wabasha Street South

Anyone who knows the history of Saint Paul knows the name of the Pig’s Eye, the first tavern, the first anything, really, in Saint Paul. The original Pig’s Eye was founded in 1832 and existed in what is now known as Fountain Cave down by Mendota until 1844. The Village of Pig’s Eye became the City of Saint Paul as settlers and missionaries started to fill in the gaps around it, cleaning the place up and founding the elder twin of the Cities.

Obviously, this is not the same place. The Pig’s Eye Pub and Grill opened on the two-hundredth anniversary of the closing of the original. It does not sit precisely at the spot of the first Pig’s Eye, as Fountain Cave is a protected historical site, but on a bit of nearby riverside deceptively called Harriet Island.

*The ‘genius’ in charge of this was Lazlo Baljic, second-generation Bosnian immigrant and compulsive founder of businesses. When he founded the Pig’s Eye, he had already had a string of automated laundromats, an online weapon redecorating business, a neo-Ukrainian fast food business, and had sold everything from cars to knives to ‘magnetic healing machines’, all of which had failed, spectacularly. The only reason he was able to afford to open was he’d gotten some of the rebuilding funds 4M  donated to the city after the Mana-Cyclones that devastated the riverside properties.*
-Just Asking

True, it’s construction was hurried to make the anniversary and, sure it seemed a bit tacky and tryhard to begin with, but with time it showed it’s true quality and started to really go downhill.

*The running joke about the Pig’s Eye is that it was built on land made dirt cheap by the mana cyclones and immediately drove down the property values.*
-NoComment

Of course if you’re reading the /sr/ shadow-boards you already know that the Pig’s Eye is “A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy” (to steal a line from every third or fourth Star Wars sim). It’s so downmarket that it’s almost Below the Market. The current owners keep it open by cutting corners and turning a blind eye to anything going on. Known primarily as one of the few places in the Cities where there is exactly zero surveillance, which has made it a center for precisely the kinds of business that benefit from zero surveillance. You can buy anything you want at the Pig’s Eye, as long as you don’t care too much about where it comes from.

*…anything you want, except a decent drink.*
-HammerTime

*A piece of advice if you go: Bring some actual, physical change for the pay toilets, even if you’re just going to do lag luam. Especially if you’re just going to do lag luam. A lot of merchandise, from drugs to weapons to BTL’s to info gets passed in those restrooms and the management installed coin-slots during the 50’s when they kept finding corpses face down in the john and SPPD was in there every other week.*
-Tsov Tom

*I think they keep them horrible on purpose to keep people from looking too hard into other people’s business. Even have the same graffiti that they used to. Some of it’s damn near to being declared a historical monument. The third stall in the gents’ has been marked ‘Whiskey Jack ’ ever since I can remember.*
-Fight Owl

*You know, I remember that stall, I think I geeked someone in there once.*
-187

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