Mayor Mehaul O’Leary is not leaving after all.
After leaning in the opposite direction, briefly, last spring and summer, the popular proprietor and the Irish pub/sports bar Joxer Daly’s will remain one of Culver City’s favorite twosomes.
Thoughts of selling out “have gone by the wayside,” Mr. O’Leary says as he emerges — smiling — from one of the tumultuous periods of his 50-year-old.
“It wasn’t for sale,” he said. “I was using as probably…”
Mr. O’Leary has been enduring a series of rattling changes.
“I went through a divorce, you know,” he said. “I sold my (pub) business in Moorpark. I am off the Council in April.
“Maybe this is the time for me to let it all go, liquidating and seeing what is out there. I was looking at it as a sign.”
In the midst of pondering which path he wanted to tread in the second half of his life, “the owner of the Backstage (bar) (Ben Myron) walked in the door with an offer,” the mayor recalled. “That was how it started. It wasn’t for sale.”
By Mr. O’Leary, there were not negotiations. “I wasn’t going into a note situation,” he said. Mr. O’Leary said he never had any intention of selling, of giving in to what he said was Mr. Myron’s $500,000 offer.
Briefly, the emphasis shifted.
“They decided not to go forward,” Mr. O’Leary said. “Either they found another property or another business.”
Before that, however, according to the mayor, the two sides entered into a “sale agreement. Then they wrote a letter to my attorney, saying… We never got into escrow. It was a sale agreement only (made in April).”
Mr. O’Leary admitted that he was tempted.
The offer “was appealing. ‘Maybe this is a sign,’ I thought, since we let our spiritual side get the best of us.
He said that Mr. Myron “walked in the door at the right time. I thought I would maybe need some of the money for my divorce. It turned out that I didn’t.”
As Mr. O’Leary and Joxer Day prepare to celebrate their 16th year of wedded professional bliss next month, the Irishman said he feels better for himself and especially for his staff. “I was not sure (Mr. Myron) was going to keep my staff. He said he was going to interview them.
“I watched how the other pub in Moorpark changed hands and changed staffing immediately,” Mr. O’Leary said.
Meanwhile, talk of Mr. O’Leary changing residences and exploring a run for office in the city of Los Angeles remains on the table. But that is all for now, the mayor says.
