View additional photos:
	Photo by Sam Yu Mike Michalik stands behind the 31-foot bar he built his house around near Sabillasville. The Art Deco bar was originally in a tavern called the Barbary Coast in Nanty Glo, Pa.

Nanty Glo is Welsh for "stream of coal," and when the coal dried up, so did the town's two mines, then its chemical and bottling plants, the dress manufacturing firm, and, of course, the Barbary Coast.

It's not far from Pittsburgh and Aliquippa, where Michalik was born and raised.

An air traffic controller stationed in Leesburg, Va., Michalik built a big house in Sabillasville around that bar, refurbishing it with his dad, a former building supply manager.

"He's the carpenter," Michalik said. "It wouldn't have been done without him."

He installed a flat-screen TV over the bar, stocked the 8-foot-high Art Deco back bar, and set 18 bar stools in front of his masterpiece.

Michalik kept the bar in storage for a while. "My wife, Deb, would bring me the house plans, but I kept telling her I needed a really long wall in the basement for the bar. That was it. And, two French doors to get it in. The rest of the house was hers to pick out."

A typical basement man cave this is not.

It is a museum of brewing history -- and just plain history -- of western Pennsylvania. An homage to Pittsburgh and brewers such as Iron City, Duquesne, and Fort Pitt, and to the neighborhood culture that quenched the thirst of generations of working men, like his father.

The walls around the bar are covered with pre-Prohibition advertising billboards and post-Prohibition trolley signs, tin serving trays, coasters collected from traveling salesmen, and statues of mustachioed men toting mugs of frothy beer.

His collection extols brands largely gone: Falls City, Tube City, Silver Top, Old Shay and Fox Hunt Ale, Hof Brau and Dutch Club Beer, King Cole, E & O, and Olde Frothingslosh. Stoney's and Straub beer have managed to hang on.

Among the treasures are turn-of-the-century photographs of the thick-armed coopers who made heavy wooden kegs at each brewery. A 1933 portrait shows truck drivers posing with their wood-framed beer delivery wagons at a baseball and beer outing.

"I'm kind of fascinated by that photo of the drivers," Michalik said. "There's a guy with a concertina, another with a violin.

"Look at their faces. Some of them, with their hairstyles and such, would fit in today. Others are just from another time and place."

Michalik is a member of the Eastern Coast Breweriana Association, a group dedicated to the preservation of the history of the American brewing industry through collectibles and antiques. They're holding their annual spring Beer & Brewery Collectibles Show in Frederick on May 9.

"Guys who save stuff related to beer history, serving tins, cans, coasters and 'chalks' (statues designed to fit snugly on back bars) tend to do so from where they grew up," Michalik said. "Baltimore guys collect from Baltimore: Natty Boh, for example."

Michalik is no exception.

"This stuff means the world to me," he said. "Pittsburgh is near and dear to me, and I aim to move back."

When he does, he said he'll leave the bar behind, but not the collection.

Saving memories

Jim Dickel, another ECBA member, lives near Cumberland and collects Old German and Old Export memorabilia. Those brands, date back to 1901 and 1890, respectively, and were longtime regional rivals.

"My dad drank Old German, just about everyone in the area did, because you had a family member who worked there or knew someone who did," said Dickel, 54. "They sponsored bowling and athletic teams, and played a big role in the community."

Old Export was made by the Cumberland Brewing Co., which went out of business in 1974, he said, but former employees kept the annual company picnic going until 2007.

Chip Zeiler, 48, grew up just north of Baltimore. He recalls stealing sips of his dad's National Premium between slices of pizza on Friday nights while they listened to Orioles games on the radio. He collects "Natty" Premium, Gunther, Free State, American and Arrow signage, and the crock bottles that were in favor before 1900.

However, the breweriana from National Bohemian -- "Natty Boh" in Charm City vernacular -- first brewed in 1885, stands out.

"The Natty Boh guy is an icon," Zeiler said. "It's bigger than beer. If I look at that face, I see Baltimore."

Pre-radio and pre-television, Michalik noted, beer companies poured their advertising dollars into seasonal murals, hand-painted glass signs, clocks, etc. Behind his bar hang a great clock from Heigh Ho, brewed in the mid-1930s in Homestead, Pa., and a kitschy '70s time-piece from Iron City.

Nearby, a 1913 tin sign depicts a gray-haired couple sharing sausages and an Emmerling's "Grossvader" -- German beer with the catch line, "Das Schmeckt Gut."

"It's ugly," Michalik laughed. "They used a lot of old white guys to sell beer then. Not like today, it's hot chicks and cars."

Missing from his collection is Rolling Rock. Michalik said he sold most of his Latrobe Brewing Company collection a couple of years back to buy other brands. He wasn't happy when Anheuser-Busch bought Rolling Rock's name in 2006 and shipped its manufacturing jobs to a Newark, N.J., plant.

The idea ran contrary to the memories collected in these shiny old things.

"It used to be if you lived on the south side of Pittsburgh, you drank Duquesne, which was brewed there," Michalik said. "If you lived in Homestead, you would've drank the Hof Brau."

As refrigerated trucks hit the road and bigger breweries swallowed the little guys, such loyalties faded. When national brands consumed the market, many local bars lost a part of their identity.

"I remember as a kid sitting next to my dad in our neighborhood bar, the Holiday Lounge, which seems funny now, but that's what you did if you wanted to see your dad after work," Michalik said. "It was walking distance from the house. I'd drink a chocolate pop.

"On a Friday night, we might go out for a family dinner to a local bar and grill, which in those days, had good food. They were the focal point of the town. It's where people gathered to talk about their day, tell a joke, connect with neighbors."

And, if anyone is wondering where the 50-yard line from old Pitt Stadium, where Dan Marino and Tony Dorsett led the local college 11 to the 1976 national championship ended up, the AstroTurf with the big 5-0 is at Michalik's bar, too, hanging on the wall, under original bench seats from the ballfield.