Name: Pat's In The Flats: Legacy Exhibition
Start: 2025-10-10T18:00:00-04:00
Location: doubting thomas Gallery

On Friday October 10th from 6-10 pm join us in celebrating the legacy of iconic rock club, Pat’s in the Flats. The family-owned bar that operated over 60 years down Literary hill at the foot of the Tremont neighborhood and catered to everyone from 3rd shift truckers to lowly punk rockers. This exhibition will feature photos, and video from:
Jay Brown
Anastasia Pantsios
Lou Muenz
Malcome Ryder
Shawn Mishak
Curated by: Shawn C. Mishak
There will be talks and programming scheduled throughout the month of the exhibition including talks and live performances.
Also on display will be archival pictures, fliers, memorabilia and more. *If you have any images, memories or memorabilia you’d like to share, please contact Shawn Mishak at [email protected]
*Below you will find an excerpt from an article which was originally published in Scene Magazine after Pat sold the bar, which gives you details of the history of the place.
Thanks!
It was a bittersweet farewell for Patricia Hanych as she handed over the keys to legendary live music venue, Pat’s in the Flats this past Monday just days before her 81st birthday. Hanych decided to put the building up for sale a couple of years ago due to health reasons. The business has been in her family since her father, William Hanych purchased it in 1945.
It was purchased under the name Pickles which remained as until changing the name to Anne’s in 1952 after Hanych’s mother. Hanych has worked there since she was in high school with a brief hiatus where she went to Ohio State University where she received her bachelor’s degree in political science and Russian.
In the beginning the business was full-service restaurant and bar tending to the needs of the local Incinerator Plant and other industrial workers. “In the summertime, the guys would be working in the garbage plant, and they’d come in for lunch,” says Hanych. “The stench they would bring with them because they worked with all this garbage so they kind of filled up the business with the smell at the same time.” The men workers were not educated and many of them didn’t know how to read so would pretend to read the menu board before looking around the bar to see what the others were eating and say, “I’ll have what he’s having.”
Haynch recalls one of her fondest memories of working there which was on her 21st birthday, “…I was down there and the guys that were working at the sewer department brought me cake and then my aunt and uncle came down at lunch time and brought me another cake and then after work that night, there were some more cakes so that was busy day not mention al the drinks that were involved in-between all those cakes but none the less that was one to remember.”
But the venue holds more than just delightful memories of the past. It was a dark day in January of 1969 when her brother (also named William) was shot and killed in one of the 3 hold-ups that had happened there over the years. Her father took her mother, Anne to Florida for get her out of her, “funk” before her father passed from a heart attack. Pat says she thinks the grief of the death of her brother was partly at fault.
“It made me mad about how this had happened to my family. My mother wanted to sell right away as soon as my dad died,” explains Pat. “I said give me five years, I think I deserve that much. So she said “okay.” We were doing alright, so I said give me another five years. So that’s how that many years plus I enjoyed it…”
Flash forward to 1987 where a local act called, “Pat’s Hot Knights” needed a place to play. Pat agreed and before long more bands got wind of the bar being a place for original live music and thus began the metamorphosis from Anne’s, simply a blue caller restaurant and shot and beer joint to one of the most legendary underground music venues is Cleveland history. Among the thousands of bands who played there over the years there was American rock duo from Detroit, The White Stripes played one of their first shows outside of their home town at Pat’s.
Among her favorite local bands over the years she lists the mid-2000s Cleveland power pop-darlings, “Machine Go Boom” because she said she was able to sing along to their songs. I reached out to ‘captain’/principal song writer, Michael “Mikey” Baranick for comment, “Pat's in the Flats was a place I could seek refuge from the boring nightlife and see genuine music played live,” laments Baranick. “I remember seeing the White Stripes opening a show there when they were still figuring themselves out, the headliner (The Hentchmen) were much better that night. Over the years of playing in bands I was lucky enough to form a bond with Pat. We would put on shows there and usually pack the place. She was always the sweetest person to me and sometimes I wished she was my aunt or something. I'll always hold that club, and Pat near and dear to my heart.”
Pat wishes she could have continued going with the club for longer but ultimately it was health issues which made her give the business up “My head says I could, and my body says forget it,” says Hanych. She’s happy to be home and says she has plenty to keep herself occupied as she cooks and looks after her 4-year-old hound dog, Brutus. When I asked her what she might like to convey to all the patrons and musicians she’s connected with over the years, she had this to say:
“I miss them, I wasn’t happy the way this all turned out in the end for me, and I never expected it to be a health issue, but you don’t know in life. I had hoped we could go out in a different way...I had a good time, and I couldn’t have asked for a better job, for me, for what I like to do which is talk a lot and make friends…”