Home » Business » DRIFT INN: A Saloon success story

DRIFT INN: A Saloon success story

By: Bill Norman

When Washington, D.C., residents Lisa Brazil and Eileen Townsend decided they were going to move out west and buy a business, one thing they agreed on was that they would never, ever consider owning a bar.

Today they’ve been proud co-owners of the Drift Inn Saloon in Globe for 11 years.

“We had traveled out to look at different options several times,” Townsend says. “We were leaning toward buying an antique store. We visited Tucson, Bisbee, other towns, and finally Globe. But when I saw this place was for sale, my heart started pounding.”

The two sat down and had a beer in the bar that many locals today affectionately call “the Drift.” The woman who owned the bar with her husband heard Brazil and Townsend making inquiries, took one look at them and said to the bartender, “Hell. Those girls don’t have any money.”

Brazil said they walked around town for a while, visited a few other bars and stores and chatted up some of the people they met. Then they went back to the Drift for another beer, another look around and a long look at the bar’s asking price of $143,000.

Then they flew back to D.C. and thought about it. Brazil, now 47, who has a master’s  degree in psychology, was working in corrections as a counselor; Townsend, 46, has a bachelor’s degree in interior design. She was employed by the political action group of a large telecommunications company.

Drift Inn  044
Writer, Bill Norman interviewing Eileen and Lisa at the bar they own in Globe

 

They make the big move

 

They pooled their savings, maxed out their credit cards, Brazil borrowed money against her retirement savings plan, and they bought the Drift Inn, long distance.

It would be easy to say that the rest was history, but in fact a lot of hard work lay ahead.

The building which the Drift Inn occupies was built in 1902 (the largest adobe building in Arizona at the time) by Pasquale Nebro. He ordered the building’s distinctive cornice from St. Louis.  When Pasquale died 10 years later, Rabogliatti brothers Alfred and Dominic bought it. The second floor of the 6,000-square-foot building was a whorehouse with 25 rooms, each 10 feet by 12. The southern third of the first floor was a café; the middle a saloon; and the northern third a business named Western Cash.

Over the years, the north and south thirds have been an assortment of enterprises, but the central area has remained a saloon. Initially it was the International Saloon, later the Broad Street Social Club, later Blackie’s and, since 1980, the Drift Inn.

“When we bought the place, nothing of any significance had been done to it structurally for at least 50 years,” Brazil says. She and Townsend undertook improvements almost immediately upon arriving here in September 1997 “with our three cats and our cat-killing Akita dog.”

Brazil says they sold beer in the southern third of the building that, most recently, had been a barber shop. “We made maybe 50 bucks a day there while we were renovating the bar,” she says. “That money helped keep the lights on.”

The 2nd floor is said to be haunted
The 2nd floor is said to be haunted

 

The work team materializes, miraculously

 

Brazil and Townsend, who are gay, didn’t know for sure what type of reception they’d get in a town like Globe, but they went ahead and asked for help with renovations from any locals who might want to volunteer. They expected eight, maybe 10, people to show up, but more than 40 were there with their tools shortly after sun-up. They unbolted, unscrewed, disassembled and moved everything in the bar, including the wooden bar itself, outside onto the curb and street, and went to work.  The projects seemed endless, and sometimes bizarre:

 

•            They jack-hammered out the old concrete floor in order to pour a new one, but first had to remove multiple layers of rotting wood, tile, carpet and linoleum. Stale beer had seeped down through cracks in the concrete for nearly nine decades, and the stench of decay was overpowering.  With the flooring gone, they found a staircase leading down to a forgotten basement.

•            When the old concrete was out, they discovered a maze of criss-crossing, rusting and leaking natural gas lines.  The gas company said it would bring the lines up to municipal building codes, but all other utilities in the building would have to be brought current, too.

•            The bar’s original ceiling was classic hammered tin, very common in buildings from the early 1900s, but subsequent owners had put in a drywall ceiling several feet lower.  Townsend and Brazil ripped that out so the original tin is now revealed. When ripping, they found that flue gases from a first-floor water heater were being vented into the space above the drywall.

•            When they tore shabby wood paneling from the north wall, they discovered a mural underneath, redolent of Monument Valley.  It’s now fully displayed. But there’s another mural underneath.  Townsend says they’re not sure what it is, except that, “you can see horses’ hooves poking out at the bottom.”

•            The wooden bar itself had to be replaced. Today’s bar consists partly of the bar that once stood in the former Red Roan Saloon (in the teepee-shaped building at the south end of Broad Street) and partly from usable lumber salvaged when tearing out the Drift’s old flooring.

•            The rear (west) adobe wall of the bar was almost completely eroded.  They could have replaced it with frame or cinder block, but opted to go with new adobe bricks to retain the historical design.

 

Owners Eileen Townsend and Lisa Brazil
Owners Eileen and Lisa

Bricks, mortar and druggies

 

History may indeed have been made when, only 21 days after they began, the Drift Inn work team was largely ready to say most of the renovation was complete. There were, however, social as well as structural issues to contend with.

Brazil said for years the Drift Inn had been associated with drug users.  When the work crew was rebuilding the men’s restroom, they found dozens of syringes and other drug paraphernalia trashed behind the walls.

“It took us probably three years to get beyond the ‘druggie hangout’ image the bar had. By happenstance, one night when we had to 86 [eject from the bar] some troublemakers, we discovered we had also rid ourselves of most of the drug problem.”

Globe has known more than its share of bars that tried to make a go of it, and failed. What’s the difference with the Drift? Brazil has some rationale:

“We took an old building that was falling apart, and brought it back to what it was. We didn’t try to gentrify it. We asked local residents what they wanted. We heard that, in another bar, people were making bets that we wouldn’t last six months, but we didn’t care. Our goal was to bring it back to life…recognizing that our only experience with bars up to that point was sitting on their stools. We had no real idea of what we’d need to do, but we never looked back, and we have no regrets. We’ve loved every minute of it.”

Have they made bad decisions? Sure. “In our early days, we wanted to have live music every weekend. That didn’t pan out. Now we back up after a few months and look at our business plan…evaluate how things are going. Someone told us we should have karaoke. We said no way; never happen…but then we tried it, and now we’ve had karaoke every Wednesday night for years. It’s been great.

 

Changing old perceptions

 

“You have to be willing to embrace change. When we told our bartenders we were going to start accepting debit cards, most of them rebelled. ‘What’s wrong with cash?’ Significantly, Shirley, our senior bartender, mentor and mother figure, accepted the idea without batting an eye. Cash works; debit works. Now it’s a non-issue.”

Shirley was tending bar the day that Lisa and Eileen first stopped in.  She helped them learn the ropes, introduced them to their regular suppliers of food and drink. All she asks is that, if anyone inquires about her age, “it’s somewhere above 60 and less than 100.”

The Drift Inn’s owners acknowledge a lot of support from the community. “The City [of Globe] bent over backwards to help us when we were applying for all the permits we needed. Globe isn’t the redneck town that some people would like to label it. This town is more diverse, eclectic and forgiving than most people realize,” Brazil says. “That’s one reason we don’t have a unique demographic [of clientele]. We might have a group in the 21-35 range at sundown, but people in their 60s and 70s two hours later. The next day it might be bikers when we first open the doors. Our philosophy is simple: Come in; have a good time; get home safely; come back again.”

 

Hell cools down a bit

 

When Townsend and Brazil were first gearing up, they consulted a Gila County engineer about how much they might need to plow into the place to get it up to snuff. He told them he figured $11,000 should about do the trick. Ha!

They then applied to the State Historical Preservation Office (SHPO) for an Emergency Stabilization Grant of $12,000. A SHPO bureaucrat told them it would be a cold day in hell in when their ratty old bar got any help from the state.

But after a SHPO decision-making committee met, after only 45 minutes, the hopeful gals from Globe learned they had been awarded the full 12 thou.

It was incredible! Hell had cooled down quite a bit.

As it happened, 12 Big Ones was only the tip of the Drift Inn renovation iceberg.

But its two determined owners weren’t about to quit.

Their sentiments: “We’re not rolling in money, but every year for 11 years we’ve had a good year. Business has been good to us…the whole town has been very good to us.”

They prefer not to talk about it, but the Drift’s owners have also been very good about giving back, in charitable ways, to Globe and environs.

###

Review Overview

User Rating: 5 ( 1 votes)

About Guest Contributor

Guest Contributors include press releases, guest authors, and columnists who contribute less than 4 times a year.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *