After 31 years, this will be the last basketball season for this Rupp Arena bar
A downtown bar known to many Wildcat basketball fans is closing after the end of this home season, the owner says.
Yesterday’s Billiards on the lower level of the Lexington Convention Center will close on March 29 after 31 years, according to Paige McCool.
“We’re going to get through the last game, the Sweet Sixteens and Comicon,” she said.
The moment is a sad one for McCool; the bar was opened by her mother, Karen, in 1989 with seven pool tables. It grew to be one of the largest pool halls in Lexington, with 20 today, along with shuffleboard and food.
She’s been there for all of it. Almost all of it.
“I’ve worked 31 years of ballgames and missed one,” she said, “On the night I got married. I had to schedule the venue before the basketball schedule came out.”
McCool said the bar was closing as part of the $275 million renovation of Lexington’s convention center and adjacent Rupp Arena.
“All of the businesses down here will have to go,” she said. “It’s hard, it’s emotional. I started working here when I was 20.”
She said she’s been telling her regulars, those who come in before or after every home game that this is the last season. “We’ve built a relationship over 31 years,” she said.
Over the years, Yesterday’s has hosted events ranging from Christmas parties to baby showers and everything in between, including at least once, a wake.
“It gave them something to do,” McCool said.
In anticipation of the closing, McCool has opened a second location, Yesterday’s Lounge, at 828 Lane Allen in Gardenside. But it is about half the size of the 7,800-square-foot Yesterday’s on Vine Street, so all of the equipment, from signs to pool tables, will be auctioned online from March 3-15.
“The other one is decorated, open and running and doing well,” McCool said. “It’s just a little bit different. And in a good way.”
She said she’s heard from many of the bar’s regulars, “the basketball crowd and downtown people,” who aren’t happy about it closing. Neither is she; this is now a three-generation enterprise, with daughter Izzy McCool working at the bar too.
Given the opportunity, “of course I would stay,” Paige McCool said, “but we just have to move forward.”
