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Famed Holiday watering hole sold
By JENNIFER GOLDBLATT, Times Staff Writer HOLIDAY -- By noon on most days, the Golden Nugget Lounge & Package Store would be bustling -- already five hours after the taps have opened, and just four away from Happy Hour. But Monday, the only people stirring there were moving out. The black leather bar stools were stacked outside and bottles of Wild Turkey, Crown Royal and Ketel One were being loaded into blue-plastic laundry baskets. "Sooner or later, everything's for sale," said owner Vasil Janevski. "Every beginning has to have an end." On Monday, he packed up a 53-year-old local lounge legend to make way for a Hess gas station. After a flurry of buyout offers from Walgreens, Eckerd and 7-Eleven over the years, Janevski decided the time was right to sell the lounge, which he bought in 1984. "A lot of big companies wanted to buy this corner," said Janevski, 62, a native of Macedonia. "Hess gas station wanted very badly for this corner. This was a fair deal for us." The land and the building were last assessed at $669,414 by the Pasco County Property Appraiser. Janevski declined to disclose the sale price. He did say, however, that he plans to reopen the Golden Nugget elsewhere in Holiday in the coming months. "Same name, same phone number, same neighborhood, same everything," he said. "I like to keep my customers happy." For years "The Nugget" as it was known, made up the southern boundary of Pasco's bar circuit -- which included only two other bars, Port Richey's Silver Spur and the Valencia in downtown New Port Richey. Many former customers and longtime Pasco residents remember the Nugget as the place to linger from the late nights into the early mornings. A panorama of local politicians, businessmen, troublemakers and journalists all found neutral ground there. In the mornings, the older crowd would line the bar, the younger crowd would turn out later to hear music and to hang out. Over the years, the Nugget was the site of everything from chicken dinner fundraisers to the arrests of inmates accidentally released from jail. But Monday all that was hanging at the Nugget was a batch of deflated balloons still taped to the ceiling from the goodbye party. "Everybody miss this place," Janevski said. "Everybody was crying last night. They had tears in their eyes. Including me." -- Staff researchers Caryn Baird and Mary Mellstrom and columnist Jan Glidewell contributed to this report. -- Jennifer Goldblatt covers business in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6229, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6229. Her e-mail address is goldblatt@sptimes.com.
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