FALMOUTH – Some people enjoy having a drink. As Jerry Rubino, who owned the Towne Tavern, which closed in April, said, “My God, this country was founded in taverns.”
Jerry Rubino, who ran the Towne Tavern for 38 years.
In a Cape Cod libational market that is becoming increasingly upscale, food-focused and yuppified, the Towne Tavern of Falmouth had been one of a handful Cape Cod blue-collar holdouts.
Managed by Rubino for 38 years and owned by him for the last 28 of those years, the Tavern, as locals called it, closed permanently on April 7, after a small electrical fire. At the time, no one knew it had closed permanently. “The electrical inspector told us what we had to do and we did it,” said Rubino. “But the building inspector discovered structural damage in the floor. So he closed us down until repairs were made. The landlord and I couldn’t agree on terms.”
A town missing a tavern.
Rubino said he is keeping his options open about relocating. He has taken home his signs and the two blue marlins that hung on the wall of the bar for decades. But he has sold off most of the other Tavern belongings, including glassware, liquor memorabilia signage, blenders, chairs and tables, and more in a “yard sale” going on in the basement of the old bar until the end of June.
“I’ll miss it,” he said. “I’m sure the other people will too.”
Significant improvements were needed at the current location to bring it up to code as a drinking and eating establishment, said Rubino. The location will most likely reopen as a retail business, said Rubino, who will not be involved in any new business there.
The inside has been gutted, the floor is gone, and the 48-foot long bar, milled three decades ago from a cedar telephone pole in New Hampshire (and then affixed with a brass rail), has been cut into pieces and lays in the alley outside the back door. “That was a bad day when they cut that up,” said Rubino.
Where Everybody Knew Your Name
“It was strictly a workingman’s bar,” said Rubino, 63, recalling what the Tavern was like from when he first became manager 38 years ago. “Shot and a beer 90 cents. The pickled eggs. The pickled pigs feet. The beef jerky.”
For all of these years it remained an unpretentious hangout, where carpenters and nurses, secretaries and landscapers, small business owners and service industry professionals could come and relax and have a pop. They came to drink. It was, after all, a bar. But they came to the Towne Tavern, most likely sitting on one of the 22 bar stools, for more than that.
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