#5006 - Lena's Lounge, East Liverpool, OH - 2/13/2023

Lena's Lounge, East Liverpool, OH

I like 86 Lists in bars. The list in Lena's Place in East Liverpool, is the first one I've seen that is next to a display of items -- mostly beer bottles -- memorializing deceased customers. It's a fairly lengthy list, with an unusual amount of full proper names, although it does also include Doug Tooth Man, Cheets/Chicago, Quiet, Peanut, and Irish. 

 East Liverpool is a small town (about 10,000 residents) just across the Ohio River from West Virginia, a couple miles east of Pennsylvania. The town's population peaked in 1970, on the strength of its pottery industry: 

 'The potteries of East Liverpool became the national center of ceramic toilet and table wares, with 85 firms operating at one time or another making two-thirds of the national output from 1880 to 1950. East Liverpool became known as "The Crockery City. Potters from Staffordshire, England, began pouring into East Liverpool, attracted by higher wages and the prospect of land ownership. By 1879, there were 24 potteries in East Liverpool, nearly all operated by English immigrants. As late as 1900, East Liverpool remained "essentially a transplanted potting town of Englishmen".' (wikipedia)

Lena's Lounge, East Liverpool, PA

The fairly large space that is now Lena's was "Scotty's Place" for several decades. A few years ago it was purchased by Bob Berdine for his daughter Lena. Bob and his wife Joyce ran "Berdines Corner Tavern" in town for many years. Bob and Joyce were married in 1962 and Joyce just passed away Feb 5th. Bob has some health challenges of his own, and is looking to sell Lena's. 

 The bar looks much as it did as Scotty's, with a long, narrow bar area alongside a large open room that once regularly hosted live bands. It is a rare bar in town that still has last call at 1:45am, so it gets a lot of its customers late in the evening, from the other bars that close at 10 or 11. I wish I could you how old the place is. 

The back bar runs almost the entire length of the long barroom, and appears to have an early 20th century art deco type of design. As with many of the bars I visit in mid-day, it made me wonder what it was like on busy Friday or Saturday night.

639 St Clair Ave, East Liverpool, OH 43920
Previous bars in this location: Scotty's Place
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