While I’ve worked at some shitty restaurants in my life, the worst and shortest stint I ever worked was three weeks at the Iron Horse Pub & Grill on North Higgins in Missoula, Montana. Since the owner of the Iron Horse recently passed away, I was curious to see what the reporting would be like. The Missoulian didn’t disappoint:
Tami Ursich, the Missoula woman who founded the Iron Horse Bar and Grill 35 years ago, passed away recently.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of our beloved Tami,” the Ursich family posted on social media on Wednesday. “Tami was truly one of a kind, a bright light in our community whose warmth, laughter, and generous spirit made everyone feel like family. Whether you knew her for years or just met her once, she had a way of making you feel welcome, heard, and at home. The Iron Horse wasn’t just a bar to her — it was a gathering place filled with stories, friendships, and unforgettable moments, all shaped by her heart and her love for people.”
…
“Tami would have wanted the show to go on. Please come in, enjoy some great food and drinks, support the Iron Horse, and celebrate Tami the way she would have wanted — with laughter, good company, and a full house. Thank you for the love, prayers, and support you’ve shown our family during this difficult time,” the statement concluded.
While it’s pretty common to say nice things in an obituary when someone dies, words like “warmth” and “generosity” are NOT words I associate with Tami Ursich, and I’m not the only one. For an idea of how many NEGATIVE stories exist about this bar owner, here are some comments I curated from a Reddit thread:
Verbally abusing staff, blaming victims for getting roofied, and regularly driving while intoxicated, and that’s just from 5 minutes scrolling a Reddit thread. Wow.
Instead of dealing with the reality of an alcoholic bar owner who EVERYONE KNOWS acted like this ALL THE TIME, our local paper of record decided to quote Kyle Riggs, the loser who got local narrative controllers to cast him as the victim in the implosion of the Pangea restaurant empire.
Kyle Riggs, a Missoula sommelier, bartender and entrepreneur, said he worked for Ursich for many years.
“I spent 18 years at the Iron Horse,” he said. “I always respected her as a businessperson. It’s a hard business and she was always there and doing it and was rock solid and took pretty darn good care of her people.”
He noted that Ursich, along with Tim France at Worden’s Market, Jurgen Knoller at Bayern Brewery, and Kevin Head at the Rhino, started Montana’s first brewfest, called BRIW Fest, in Missoula in 1992.
Respecting Tami Ursich as a businessperson? That’s rich. What Kyle Riggs is actually saying here is that he respected Tami’s protected status as one of Missoula’s untouchables, something his former business partner, Scott Billadeau, didn’t have the benefit of after he became one of the few business owners who STOOD UP to the pandemic cultists six years ago.
I also suspect Riggs appreciated how Ursich, like many business owners in Missoula, accessed Tax Increment Financing for her business, which I found listed in this MRA master list:
If you can’t read the small print, in 1998 the Iron Horse got $74,482 dollars in public money for the… “Expansion of vacant former café to large restaurant building. TIF Program used for clearing the site, sidewalks, and street trees. CRLP interest write down program used to renovate retained portions of the existing façade.“
Giving money to an abusive alcoholic, then protecting her from the consequences of her abusive actions, is what this town is all about, so I’m happy to see the Missoulian’s editor, Cory Walsh, keeping the tradition alive. Good job, Cory! We couldn’t have our own version of Laurel Canyon without the help of our pathetic local media, right?
Right.
On Sunday I’m going to write about someone who died at the end of last year, my fellow blogger, “JC”, because JC was everything Tami Ursich was NOT. Like me, JC stopped drinking, he stopped believing Democrat lies, and he chose to live a modest life doing the things he believed in, like opposing a gravel pit near his home in Arlee, and helping others stay AWAY from the poison Tami made her money selling.
I have one final story, told to me by a friend earlier this week, about Tami that exemplifies how perfectly representative she was of the NEW Missoula ethos that emerged in the 80’s, when Tax Increment Financing was first deployed to save downtown from the popularity of the Southgate Mall.
The most historically and culturally relevant bar in all Missoula, Charlie B’s, also has a tradition of employing some of the most badass bartenders. That’s why Tami showed up one morning when my buddy was sitting at the bar, with his dad and the other old-timers drinking coffee.
After squeezing into the empty chair between father and son and brashly demanding cigarettes be put out, Tami’s intent became clear: she was trying to poach Charlie’s bartenders for her new bar and grill, which sat kitty-corner to Missoula’s true watering-hole heart.
If Tami Ursich was a man treating her staff the way many have claimed they experienced and/or witnessed, would she have been treated with such obvious media deference and law enforcement protection? It’s impossible to say, but I’m sure Drake Doepke would like to know, since his allegedly criminal touching of staff, charges that were later dropped, got plenty of media attention, just like the Missoulian’s HEAVY coverage of Pangea’s financial troubles before that set of restaurants filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
If local media was capable of doing their jobs without the pro-business protection racket inherent in newspaper narrative control, I wouldn’t have to balance their bullshit with the ugly truth, but here we are.
Thanks for reading!