History
Welcome to Mulcahy’s, Long Island’s Home of Good Clean Fun since 1965! An establishment unlike any other, we’re the railroad pub that grew – and grew and grew – into one of New York’s greatest concert venues.
With a full capacity tipping 1600, we’ve hosted countless national acts over the years, and are equally well-known for Long Island’s largest holiday parties: Halloween, Thanksgiving Eve, NYE, St Patrick’s Day… no one does them bigger, no one does them better.
the legacy
Muls started life as a small bar, under the leadership of the great Bill Mulcahy. In 1983, he sold to John Murray Jr, who had serviced the establishment as one of his jukebox accounts. By the late eighties, the jukebox had made way for the first stage – a sign of things to come – and live music happy hours, complete with free buffet, became legendary. The back patio was enveloped into the building to make space for growing audiences. The bar on this spot is still referred to as ‘Patio Bar’ to this day.
In 1994, John bought the neighboring Andy’s luggage store, and the first major expansion got underway. Now resembling more of a venue but retaining the same bar spirit, Muls was the first Long Island establishment to screen all NFL games – this involved a guy in a beach chair on the roof directing some satellites – and had fans flocking from miles around every Sunday. The best wings in town were served in football helmets at this time, and WFAN hosted live events to a packed house.
Bigger bands began to perform: Joan Jett, The Pogues, Weezer, The Nerds, The Satellites, brought more crowds than ever before. By the early 2000s, Muls had also been established as a leading fundraiser destination, and many of those early annual events have continued through the decades. The building grew again, this time to the east, and the first Out Of The Weeds parties were held. Long Island-famous for a particular age demographic, the wild industry night ran on Mondays throughout the summer.
Fast forward to 2019, John took on his most ambitious project to date: the outside brickyard bar was to be transformed into more concert hall space and a premier private room, complete with 50 foot wall bar. We still have the scrap paper that John sketched the original idea on, now framed in the office above the room itself. Construction was planned for June 2019, in part because we had to get through one of our most historical shows to date: Luke Combs. Alongside Hunter Hayes and Colbie Callait, the show sold out in less than 4 minutes… and less than 24 hours after the encore, half the room had been demolished.
The grand reopening happened in October 2019, with Locash and Shilelagh Law headlining the party. The Joe DelGiorno Gallery Room is not only a stunning private room, it boasts the unique ability to expand or reduce our concert area in little over a minute – thanks to the custom retractable wall. In August 2023, John and the Murray family celebrated 40 years at the helm of Mulcahy’s. We remain independently owned to this day, proudly combining the hospitality of a family-run business with the scale of a world-class concert space.
good clean fun?
Somewhere along this timeline, amongst one ad or another, the tag line Good Clean Fun was coined on our guitar logo. The owner has always been big on clean bathrooms, so maybe that was part of the inspo, but despite the origin being largely unknown – it stuck. The ‘Home of Good Clean Fun’ has raised laughter and eyebrows through the years (silly? sure.. ironic? possibly..) but remains a continuous thread in the company culture. We’re not a stuffy catering hall and we’re not a soulless corporate venue. We’re Long Island’s Home of Good Clean Fun – if you don’t get it, you’re overthinking it – and we don’t do that here.
