FARGO — Chub’s Pub and Package Place is marking 60 years in business and the popular Fargo bar is inviting the public to celebrate the milestone with a birthday bash set for Friday, June 5.
The Dan Brekke Band will be playing outside Chub’s Friday evening from 6 to 10 p.m. and the bar will be selling 60th anniversary T-shirts throughout the year, said owner Wade Lindgren, who has been a part of Chub’s history himself since the 1990s, when it became his college hangout.
Around that same time, Lindgren began helping out around the bar, a part-time gig that turned into something more after he graduated from college in 2002 with a degree in ag engineering.
David Samson / Forum file photo
Lindgren
that after college he “just kept working” at Chub’s, eventually becoming a bartender and later the establishment’s general manager for many years.
It was in 2023 that Lindgren purchased Chub’s from Mark Doyle and Jan Ramstad, a brother and sister whose father, Bill Doyle, bought the bar in 1980 from Maurice Gillerstein, who opened Chub’s in 1966 at 421 University Drive N.
Gillerstein had previously operated Maurie’s Bar at 321 Main Ave. in Fargo.
Forum file photo.
Lindgren said he wasn’t around in 1966 when Chub’s opened, but he has heard stories about that time.
He said it’s his understanding that when Chub’s first opened it may have been aiming for a cocktail bar kind of crowd.
If that was the plan, it probably didn’t last very long, according to Lindgren.
Contributed / Chub’s Pub
“I think all the blue collar guys came in and changed it right away,” he said, adding that around the 1980s Chub’s started to become a college bar in addition to being a neighborhood bar.
He said the Doyles expanded the building in the 1990s.
Lindgren says things have been going well since he bought the bar three years ago, adding he didn’t see a reason for making big changes.
“I already knew the ins and outs; it wasn’t like I was starting fresh from the beginning without knowing anything about the bar business,” Lindgren said.
Chris Flynn / Forum file photo
“Good employees and good customers keep a good bar going,” he added.
Lindgren said in the 2023 interview with The Forum that as he has traveled the country he has become increasingly aware of how well known Chub’s Pub is among Fargo expatriates.
He said that during trips to places like Chicago and Las Vegas people will notice the Chub’s cap or polo shirt he is wearing and approach him to share their memories of Chub’s and Fargo.
As the bar marks 60 years in business, Lindgren said it is his hope that Chub’s will always be around, even when his own time with the business is over.
Opening the bar on a recent morning with his dog, Howard, who has become something of a mascot for Chub’s, Lindgren said a couple of current employees may one day follow the same path he did as far as who might take over the taps one day, but time will tell.
“I want somebody to come over when I want to retire to take it over and do the same,” he said.
