About The Hangar

The idea for The Hangar came to Rebecca over a lunch of beer and pizza.

During that fateful lunch, former President Eduard Scheverdnadze, who also loves beer and pizza, and whom Rebecca had met in 1994 while she was flying kegs of Guinness into Moscow with her company RUS Enterprises, opined that what Tbilisi needed was a good Irish pub.

Being a cross between the late Pancho Barnes, celebrated owner of the Happy Bottom Riding Club...

and Scarlet O'Hara, Rebecca recognized a good idea when she heard one.

But, amidst the initial euphoria, her first thought was where in Tbilisi would one put an Irish pub?

One evening shortly thereafter, when viewing the award-winning Georgian film epic, Cucaracha, she recognized that the neighborhood in Old Tbilisi, where the film was made, would be perfect. And, what if she could buy the big green building in the movie?

It turned out that the building was then serving as office space for the European Union and, fortuitously, Rebecca knew the head Euro. She had smuggled him out of Prague a few years earlier, parachuting him into France, and he owed her big time. In short, he arranged for Rebecca to purchase the 110-year-old building next to Tbilisi's oldest and most revered church, Anchis Khati.

Knowing the church might take a dim view to the appearance of an Irish pub next door, Rebecca planned to open The Hangar under cover of the festival of Tbilisoba in 2002.

She thoughtfully invited the parish priests to conduct a blessing of the house prior to opening.

Following the blessing she hosted a festive block party, which, for the priests, has yet to end, and for which she has earned their lasting friendship.

The rest is, as they say, history.