Experts call it “sympathetic restoration.” Loosely defined, it’s about restoring something’s working parts—like, say, those of a venerable local bar—while preserving the wear and tear that gives it character. The new owners of Downtown’s 60-plus-year-old Hard Hat Lounge, Robby Cunningham and Frank Sidoris, have done just that with Industrial Road’s beloved blue-collar local.
“We saw the potential of this place,” Sidoris says. “When you consider how many people have come in here … We’re like, ‘Man, my dad used to come here.’ I was here, in the ’90s.”
Guerrilla Pizza pies
There are lots of good reasons to visit the Hard Hat, from the modestly priced drinks to the classic Frank Bowers mural behind the bar. (The new owners have replaced the lighting above the mural; it looks better than it ever has, with brightened colors and sharpened details.) But the most compelling recent reason to visit—and the one that got Sidoris to put his money down—is that Hard Hat is home to Guerrilla Pizza Co., where Cunningham has been making his rib-sticking Detroit-style deep dish pizzas, to ever-increasing popularity and acclaim, since October 2020.
In fact, it’s because of that pizza kitchen that Cunningham now owns half the bar. Guerrilla Pizza, a lessee of the Hard Hat’s tiny kitchen space, needed to replace the bar’s walk-in cooler—a purchase he says the bar’s then-owner was uninterested in making. Plus, “after seeing Guerrilla bring a lot of business to the bar,” Cunningham says, “I was like, ‘I want a cut of that alcohol money.’”
After a bit of asking around, Cunningham learned that the Hard Hat was for sale, and immediately called his friend Sidoris, a rhythm guitarist with Slash’s band (yes, Guns N’ Roses Slash), to ask him if he was interested in co-owning a bar. He readily agreed, and now the two are fine-tuning the Hard Hat—a process that mostly involves “removing extra cables that didn’t need to be in here,” Sidoris says, and repainting the building in a striking brick red.
The de-cabled, de-grimed, decluttered bar still feels like the Hard Hat in all the best ways. Cunningham and Sidoris have added new, long tables that take better advantage of the available space, and have made improvements to the wiring that will allow the bar to better host events and live music (“though if we want to do big-boy shows, we’ll put a stage outside,” Sidoris says).
The Hard Hat will celebrate its relaunch with a free October 15 block party from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., featuring DJs, wrestling and a raffle for a signed Golden Knights jersey. In the future, the new owners hope to attract more industry folk and sports fans, who will no doubt fall in love with the Hard Hat’s already-accomplished pizza kitchen in huge numbers. Cunningham says he has no plans to change what works, except to make it work even better.
“I want to get stronger and more consistent” in making Guerilla’s pizzas, Cunningham says. “We only have one little oven; we can’t move in a second. So,” he adds hopefully, “we’re kind of stuck being a spot where we have a line out the door sometimes.”
HARD HAT LOUNGE Monday, 8 p.m.-2 a.m.; Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. 1675 S. Industrial Road, 702-384-8987.
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