The Blue Pig brings new color to the city of bacon's bar scene

As a Packard Avenue landmark for over half a century, Vnuk's Lounge made a name for itself as both a bar and live music destination.

While Vnuk's is no more, the bar itself has recently been taken under the wing of new management – a blue wing, in fact – and reborn as The Blue Pig Bar, a name that's already striking up conversation of its own.

"That's the first thing people ask me: Why 'The Blue Pig?'" says Heather Lemcke, who opened the bar with her husband, John, in September. "Well, there's two stories. There's an evil-looking blue pig that was at our house, and when we were shooting pool one night after we were cleaning and setting stuff up for inspections we were kind of joking around about it, saying, 'Well, the walls are blue ... and, well, the pig is blue.' And, we're situated just maybe a block away from Patrick Cudahy, and usually at about 11 a.m. and then about 2 in the morning you can smell bacon through the whole city, so it kind of came together."

The name needs a little less explaining now that The Blue Pig's unofficial mascot has been relocated to the bar. It's also been making friends: an ever-growing collection of blue pigs lines a shelf over the bar to greet bar patrons as they walk in.

"We started a pig farm. None of those are ours; they were all donated," says John, who adds that on top of their current collection, they're also expecting a blue NASA-themed pig in the mail from a friend's visit to Houston's space center. "They're coming in fast – about one every two weeks. We won't know what to do with them in a year or two."

While the pig farm is expecting its fair share of additions, loyal Vnuk's patrons can rest assured that John and Heather don't have any drastic plans to change the bar. Regulars to the old bar themselves, they've set their sights on improving the exterior of the already well-established venue.

"Hopefully next year we would like to turn the side yard of the building into a beer garden," says Heather. "The whole side yard will be fenced in, so people will be able to actually go outside with their drinks. Right now everybody's leaving everything here, going out front, smoking, coming back in. We're going to make it a little more accessible to them – and covered."

"When we start pulling in a steady income we'll just dump it all into the beer garden," adds John, who says the pair will also take advantage of Cudahy's façade grant to restore the brickwork on the front of the bar. "My goal, personally, is to do it at the same time. Fix the brick here and do the beer garden at the same time so the bricks match."

As for what goes on inside the bar, not much is changing. John and Heather both want to continue Vnuk's live music tradition at The Blue Pig, and with the help of Dave Vnuk himself, they're working on securing long-term connections in the local music scene.

"We've known Dave Vnuk for about 15 years. He's helping us a lot with the place, and he's helping us book bands because he still has that connection," says Heather, who also intends to host cover bands and more genres of music in the future. "He didn't really steer too far from heavy metal, so we're kind of going to cross a few borders in that aspect. It's not exactly the same, but primarily it'll be a lot of the metal. Get a little more of a crowd and a little more variety."

Though the regular music lineup makes The Blue Pig more of a weekend bar, it still attracts a fair amount of business during the week from their nightly drink specials and the daily two-for-one happy "hour" – which runs from bar open at 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., effectively making it Cudahy's longest. They've also partnered with Packard Café to offer a full order-in menu, and have been working to put together pool, volleyball, softball and bowling leagues to help bring more attention to the bar.

It's only been a few months since the bar opened, but even though The Blue Pig is just getting started the pair says they've gotten a great response from locals and longtime Vnuk's regulars alike.

"A lot of people are very happy that it's open," says Heather. "A lot of people that live near the area walk down here. We had a few people that hadn't been here for like 20 years."