Cheers to 20 years

Connolly Station celebrates a milestone anniversary

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It was a week before Connolly Station’s 20th anniversary in Malverne, and owner Jerry Hughes was recounting his favorite bar stories with a visitor. “We did a hairy leg contest on television where we wore kilts with construction boots,” Hughes said of the WPIX-TV contest. “The people in the studio were judging our legs, and I should’ve won,” he added, displaying his very hairy gams as proof. “I think it was a fix.”

Long past its days as the Ickle Bickle — once a popular Malverne steakhouse — Connolly Station is celebrating two decades in the village, and enjoys a reputation as a pub embraced by the community while making impressions beyond the village’s borders. “I go to I Montauk Point and people tell me they know the place,” said Hughes. “I think that comes with time.”

Many patrons, he said, return time and time again for the atmosphere and the staff in his pub — to which he attributes the bar’s success. He also credits village residents, who he says have supported his bar since its beginning.

Hughes came to the U.S. from Dublin in 1969, with little knowledge of the bar business aside from his time as a lounge boy — someone who brings drinks to the tables — in a hometown pub. “I came over here not knowing anybody,” he said.

Shortly after arriving, he wound up in Rockaway Beach, Queens, working in a bar called Gallagher’s, and then partnered on one of his own called the Rockaway Beach Inn, which he has owned for 27 years.

It was his friend Jimmy Reilly who brought him to Malverne. “I found a place in Malverne,” Reilly said, and then I said, ‘Isn’t that exit 72 off the LIE or something?’ and he said, ‘No that’s Melville!’” The two opened Connolly Station together, and after a few years, Hughes bought Reilly out.

Hughes named the pub after the well-known Dublin train station, which was named after James Connolly — a revolutionary socialist and a trade union leader who sought an independent Ireland. “My mother’s maiden name was also Connolly,” Hughes said.

People delight in the pub’s atmosphere, he said, because it reminds them of pubs in Ireland. “The low ceilings, the wooden booths — they love it,” he said, adding that the bar’s décor has a unique attribute. “The wood on the wall? The owner of the Ickle Bickle got that wood from the Long Beach boardwalk,” he said. “When they replaced the wood on the boardwalk, he brought some of that wood here. When we renovated, we didn’t touch that wood at all.”

Business has been consistently good, Hughes said, despite new restaurants in the village. “Uva Rossa opened up — he’s doing very well, but it’s a different restaurant, which is good,” he said. “They’re the higher-end wine, the tapas, while I’m the beer and the hamburger. I’m the pub. He’s doing well and I’m doing well.”

In addition to managing two bars, Hughes is also a member of the Jerry Hughes band, a group that plays Irish music in pubs from Kennedy’s, in Breezy Point, Queens, to other establishments across Long Island.

At 65, he shows no signs of slowing down. Asked about retirement, he responded, “I’ll do another 20 years, but 20 years and that’s it!”

He added, “You know, I think I’d miss coming here. But I love ‘Judge Judy,’ and if I was at home, I’d be watching ‘Judge Judy’ 24/7.”