Calling aging hipsters! Handlebar old-timers reunion will celebrate 40-year legacy.

Things change, but not that much.

A couple decades ago, I described Pensacola rock band Cockfight as "scuzz rock." It was meant as a loving endorsement.

Here it is January 2024 and I'm watching Cockfight on stage at the revered-and-persevering Handlebar, just across from the railroad tracks on Tarragona Street.

Band leader Ethan Manns is a bit grayer now and is old enough to have his son, Dominick, 28, play bass in the band. Still fierce, still charging, the band isn't quite as scuzzy as before. No, they're just tighter, louder and more rocking. Actually, the same can be said for the recently reborn Handlebar itself.

The room is packed, bodies nearly pressing in some spots. Some fans, including me, move up front so as to have our eardrums bludgeoned for full rock effect. A few young fans, early 20s, do a wacky dance to the aural carnage. A few old-timers like me just bang our heads a bit.

It's a scene that could be from almost any era of the Handlebar, which Pensacola dudes Jim Ward, Tom Pilcher and Lee Mabes opened in 1983. Since then, it has earned a reputation as a beloved home for live, original music, drawing some of the biggest names in left-of-the-dial acts in music through its 40-year span −Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, the Replacements, Run-DMC, Green Day, Dead Milkmen, D.R.I, and so many more making stops, often between New Orleans and Tallahassee gigs.

(Personal faves for me, including the previously mentioned Black Flag and Replacements, are Charlie Pickett, Tex and the Horseheads, Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes and dozens more I can't even remember. Favorite local bands for me? Bunkhouse Jones, Earl's Killer Squirrel, and the first performance I ever saw at the Handlebar, the always-fun and rocking Beach Monkees. I had just gotten out of the Army in 1984 and found the place a short time later. After spending a year near Baltimore rocking out at the East Coast-legendary Marble Bar, I was thrilled to find a club with a similar vibe back in Pensacola.)

Now, 40 years on, Ward is thrilled to see the old club reborn under the ownership of husband-and-wife team Chris McKean and Kathy Sandstrom, who reopened the club in 2022, tidying it up a bit in the process.

Club reborn under new owners

The Handlebar was known as grungy before grunge music was even a thing. The bathrooms were risky, sanitation-wise. You'd probably want to wipe your shoes after leaving the club. Sometimes, there would be dogs inside. It was a dive bar with killer original music by bands local and nationwide. The decor was, simply, the music and the people.

Now, the Handlebar is shining − clean fixtures, nice bathrooms, no indoor smoking, same musical philosophy.

"We have made respect and love for the Handlebar and have seen it through the ages,'' Sandstrom said. "We tried really hard to upgrade without losing what made it special to begin with."

In December, the Handlebar won a CivicCon Award for Best New Edition to Downtown Pensacola.

"I love that it's back,'' said Ward, whose band The Names was the first band to play the Handlebar − the band is also credited with bringing the wild new-wave sound to Pensacola. "It's always been a place for bands. I wish (Sandstrom and McKean) nothing but the best."

Ward doesn't make it to the Handlebar that much - married with two adorable boys will do that. But those who do who also went long ago, said that the Handlebar, besides putting on some fancier clothes, is better than ever.

One of those old-timers is Earl Lyon, a Pensacola punk rock historian and longtime leader of the beloved local band Earl's Killer Squirrel, who played many times on the Handlebar stage. ( I call Lyon a historian because he knows everything about the punk music scene in Pensacola.)

"It's always been a great place to see shows,'' Lyon said. "But now it's even better than before. It's cleaner. You can eat off the floor now. And they're still bringing in great bands here. Robert Goodspeed is the best promoter."

Goodspeed, a Pensacola musician who had previously promoted local shows, was hired by Sandstrom and McKean as general manager right away.

"The last thing I ever thought I would be doing is running a music venue and bar,'' Goodspeed said. "When (McKean and Sandstrom) took over the Handlebar, we got together and said let's do something to make this place special again. Let's figure this out together. There was a lot of dreaming."

For many, the Handlebar has always been a special place - through various owners and managers, and despite a 2001 fire that closed the bar for 20 months. The bar also closed for a few years in the late-'80s, and the building was occupied briefly by Sluggo's, another original music in Pensacola, now gone, that was located in a variety of locations through its existence.

Legendary performances

Jerry Zerbe leased the Handlebar for a few years in the 1980s from the original owners, and brought in numerous bands, including the infamous Replacements 1985 show where the band, as it was known to do, drunkenly devolved into a punky covers act.

"I remember everything about that show,'' said Zerbe, who turns 70 in March, and who is organizing a Handlebar reunion bash on March 2. The Minneapolis band showed up mid-afternoon before the show, already in a bad mood because of a pay dispute at a Mississippi show the night before. The band had requested beer and Jack Daniels on their performance riders, but the Replacements' promoter had warned Zerbe to not give the guys the Jack Daniels "until after the show or you're going to have trouble."

"They were mad and whining abut not getting paid before and I was getting tired of hearing it and said 'Here's your whiskey'."

Zerbe, and anyone who was there, remembers the result.

"They got pretty loaded and ended up with the roadie playing drums and (bassist) Tommy Stinson at the bar during the show trying to pick up girls,'' he said. "They ended up playing the 'Green Acres' and 'Gilligan's Island' theme songs and things like that."

But it's not just national acts that have made the Handlebar what it is. The club, like Sluggo's, was a vital proving ground for local bands through the ages, from Distant Silence, Woodenhorse, Pen to Plough, the Unemployed, the Beach Monkees, Maggot Sandwich, Blount, Clownskin, Brave New World, Ben Loftin & the Farm, Post Pluto, Nik Flagstar and so many more.

"There's been a ton of local bands that played here and Sluggo's,'' Lyon said before Cockfight's performance − the event was a multi-band fundraiser for Rodney Ueberroth, a talented and longtime Pensacola musician battling health issues. "There aren't many clubs that will let you play original music. Most clubs want cover bands."

Ueberroth, who attended the benefit, has played in numerous local bands, including 60 Cycles of Sound and Williams Train.

One of those on hand was Michelle Lamar, whose parents Jimmy Sr. and Sue Lamar operated the club from 1991 until the 2010s.

(I still remember the lovely Sue Lamar calling me on the phone quite often at the PNJ back in the day and telling me, in her raspy voice, about a 'great band' the club had booked for an upcoming show. She died in 2016 and is still missed in the Pensacola alternative music scene.)

Sandstrom and McKean were regulars at the Handlebar in the late 1980s and 1990s, and McKean's bands played the club during those days.

"It has meaning from our youth,'' Sandstrom said. "It does for a lot of people. I know a lot of hearts were broken when it closed, but now you'll look around and see so many familiar faces, but new faces as well. It's a real sense of community − a real place for the music community. I hate when people talk about an 'alternative crowd.' We're a venue and bar that welcomes all."

Things change, but not that much. If you want to attend the Handlebar reunion on March 2, it's from noon to 7 p.m. at the Handlebar, 319 N. Tarragona St. Zerbe expects some local musicians to perform. But why so early? The Handlebar was always known as a late-night spot.

"Most of us (old-timers like myself) are in bed by 7 o'clock anyway,'' Zerbe. "Some won't make it until then."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola's Handlebar to celebrate 40 years with old-timers reunion