Where everybody knows your name

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

	Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY Bill Sharp and Alex Laird man the bar at Scotty’s Bayside Tavern, west of Fenwick Island.

The recent arrival of Scotty’s Bayside Tavern has created a bit of an oasis in the no-man’s-land west of the Keenwicks (approaching Williamsville), for locals looking to wind down with a game of pool, darts or shufflebowl.

Scotty’s, on the south side of Route 54, a stone’s throw east of the intersection at Route 20 (West Fenwick Station) offers all three, including four brand new pool tables and side-by-side bristle boards for steel-tip darts – a rarity in the area.

Proprietors Alex Laird and Bill Sharp, of Millsboro, West Fenwick and Millsboro, respectively, expanded on the theme.

Laird and Sharp are both Delawareans (from Wilmington) and went to high school together — they’ve been lifelong friends ever since.

Sharp said he was originally a mechanic by trade, and started minding the shop at his family’s gas station at age 12. He took over the business in his late 20s, and worked there for 30 years.

As far as restaurants and bars, Sharp said his training had been strictly on-the-job, but he suggested the professions had their similarities.

“There, I was working from 6 (a.m.) to 6 (p.m.) — in this business, I work from 2 (p.m.) to 2 (a.m.),” he said.

And their dissimilarities — “There, gas hits $2 a gallon, everybody’s complaining,” he continued. “Here, a beer costs $2, everybody’s still happy.”

Laird, on the other hand, comes from a white-collar background. He said he’d worked in financial services for most of his life – investment management and marketing, primarily.

Is the tavern business a good bet, for people hoping to work their money a little harder? “It’s been one of the best investments I’ve ever been involved in, that’s for sure,” Laird stated.

He and Sharp entered their first collaboration back in 1994, at a Wilmington nightclub, and Laird said they’d purchased and sold various ventures since then, typically buying for investment and turning them over in the short term.

From 1999 to the present, Laird said he’d focused primarily on his work at an investment firm.

“Bob had a couple places in North Wilmington, but I was based in North Carolina,” he said. Laird said he’d been thinking about a return to Delaware anyway, and when the restaurant that’s now Outrigger’s Seafood Grille and Market came up for sale, he moved back.

That property proved a bit out of their price range, but that didn’t stop them. They just took the newly constructed storefront at the West Fenwick Station instead.

“In our travels, after we moved down — we kept running into old friends who’d retired to the area,” Laird pointed out. “And there were a lot of complaints that there was nowhere to go.”

At 2,600 square feet, Sharp said it was the smallest establishment he’d run to date, but Scotty’s still seems quite spacious, with plenty of glass and elbow room around the shufflebowl, pool tables and dart boards. Perhaps that’s because none of that room is taken up by kitchen, dish room or refrigerators.

Scotty’s strictly bring your own picnic lunch, he pointed out — “Potluck is welcome.” They provide menus from some of the local restaurants, including neighbors Al Casapulla’s and the Cactus Café, also at the West Fenwick Station.

Sharp’s run his share of restaurants, but as Laird noted, they were looking to keep things simple at Scotty’s.

“We’re focused on creating more of a neighborhood bar, like you might associate with ‘Cheers,’” he said.

Laird will eventually take over as head honcho at Scotty’s — he not only lives nearby, but his wife works right around the corner, at Coastal Concepts.

He and Sharp are opening another venture on Route 24 — the Gray Hare Tavern (especially for the over-40 crowd) — and Sharp said he’d likely be spending most of his time there by early next year.

In the meantime, he and Laird have all the traditional tavern accoutrements at Scotty’s — the games, televisions, four beers on draft (Budweiser, Coors Light, Yuengling, Miller Lite) and 30 more in the bottles.

They’re running daily drink specials, and will be hosting celebrity bartenders on Thursdays (tip your bartender to support local charity). The tavern’s open from noon to 1 a.m. every day.

Scotty’s is located 3.5 miles west of Fenwick Island on Route 54 — for more information, call (302) 436-1941.