The Triple Deuces is being deep-sixed.
The tavern, also known as the 222 Bar, has been a fixture on Federal Street since shortly after World War II. Back then, this trendy portion of the North Shore was known simply as the North Side.
"My grandmother bought the place in 1946," Jerry Reese recalled. "My dad and uncle ran it my whole life, and I've owned it for the past eight or nine years."
A dive bar in the best sense of the term, the Triple Deuces was gritty and unpretentious. Its identity was drawn from its neighborhood regulars, not from its number of its high-definition televisions or Miller Lite Girls appearances.
No more. After Reese, 40, and his wife, Heide, struggled for years to compete against what the couple derisively refer to as the "corporate bars" around PNC Park, the Reserve couple decided to sell tavern.
The building and an adjacent parking lot are making way for a $15 million, 135-room Fairfield Inn & Suites.
"We were a bar that appealed to hardworking people who wanted a good beer at a decent price," Reese said recently while removing some of the tavern's furnishings.
Which isn't to say the bar didn't attract clientele from nearby North Shore office buildings. Said Heidi Reese: "Sometimes you would have a CEO sitting next to a homeless guy in here."
In its heyday, the place also drew some of the Steelers and Pirates of the Three Rivers Stadium era.
"Rocky Bleier would buy drinks for everyone but would never let anyone buy him a drink," Reese said. "Steve Furness, when he was a coach, would come in every day after practice and buy a six-pack."
So massive a physical specimen was John Jackson, a Steelers offensive lineman during the '90s, that "he had to duck and turn sideways just to get in here," Reese recalled.
Richie Hebner, a third baseman for the Pirates in the early '70s, visited just last year after a Hebner bobblehead day at PNC Park.
"He was a regular guy," Reese said. "He sat here and signed autographs while he sipped a beer."
While newer bars and restaurants thrive in the shadows of PNC Park and Heinz Field, the Triple Deuces enjoyed its greatest success before the 8-year-old stadiums were built.
"We had customers who lived in the (Alcor Street) rowhouses, and people who lived in the seniors high-rise," Reese said.
Reese said the bar used to draw customers waiting to catch the bus at a stop just outside the front door.
"When the stadium opened, they didn't want buses going down Federal so they moved the stop over a block," he said. "There went those people."
Reese said the bar was surviving on its lunch business, but when Kratsa Properties made him an offer, he didn't struggle with the decision to sell.
Though he is surrendering six decades of family history, he insists he has no regrets.
"We didn't really fit in here anymore," he said. "This was a good neighborhood bar -- then they went and tore down the neighborhood."
