How St. Paul’s Historic Dive Bar Skinner’s Pub Is Surviving the Pandemic | Eater Twin Cities

"On a neighborhood stretch of Saint Paul’s West 7th, this bar has long been the working-class hub I know as Skinner’s Pub at 919 Randolph Avenue, where kids yank towering barstools over to play Buck Hunter while grownups bend an elbow after work, after church, or before family get-togethers. Pete and Molly Skinner bought the place 20 years ago, but the location has been a dive under various names since just after Prohibition; their ten-year party once emptied the parking lot for an amateur wrestling ring and they had planned to bring it back for the twentieth until the COVID-19 pandemic shut traditional service down on St. Patrick’s Day. Even when the room went quiet and the gold-thread mirrors looked ghostly, the kitchen kept humming: Pete and longtime chef Seth Buckwald turned out Skinner’s square-cut thin-crust pizzas, fried chicken wings, club sandwiches, burgers and even totchos, leaning on a neighborhood habit of free delivery and servers who recognized regulars by voice and order. They rotated staff to answer phones and run food, relied on a growing catering business when liquor sales vanished, and have seen revenue fall though “almost everyone” is back employed; temporary to-go beer rules offered little relief. The city helped clear red tape for sidewalk seating, and through ties to local government—Pete’s childhood friend Patrick Harris—Skinner’s joined other businesses to found Serving Our Troops, hosting shared steak dinners via satellite. As restrictions eased, masked regulars returned to patio tables and added high-tops indoors, but long winters and colder weather mean the bar must keep adapting (Pete hopes a heater will keep people out there through October). There’s a tangible hole where gatherings once were—marked once by a regular’s upturned shot glass and a pack of smokes left on his seat—but the place’s resilience shows: when plants closed or ownership changed, people kept coming back, bartenders still setting a favorite beer in front of a regular’s stool, and the painted mural of Mad Dog Vachon howling at the moon on the bar clock standing as the lone wrestler left behind." - Cinnamon Janzer