story by Laurie McLaughlin
image by Jeanine Hill
Fresh out of college, Brian Fairley '77 took a job with a paper manufacturer selling corrugated cardboard. It didn't take long for him to realize that this line of work was not what he wanted to do with his business degree.
He quit and went back to his college bartending job at El Paso Cantina across the street from his alma mater, and he wasn't sure what the next step in his career would be.
"One day, one of my former managers came into the bar and said, 'Why don't you open up your own bar?'" says Fairley.
By the end of the next weekend, he had found a property, raised fundsin four months and opened Brian's Bar at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Placentia Avenue.
"Luckily, it did well from the very first day," he says, and 25 years later, it's still a popular watering hole. Soon after, he opened B's Barbecue restaurant next door and also started a beverage catering business.
In 1993, one of his salesmen mentioned that the former El Paso Cantina, which had become an Italian eatery, Scalzo's, was up for sale. "Within 10 minutes I was over there looking in the window, and before the end of that weekend, I had a skeleton plan and a name for it," says Fairley, who graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1977. He remodeled it and named the restaurant/nightclub/sports bar, Off Campus Pub.
Weekend nightclub action packs the place, and university students and staff walk over for lunch on the weekdays. Sports memorabilia from a number of universities hang on the walls, but the Titans are obviously front and center.
"Yes, there are other schools represented," laughs Fairley, who was on the wrestling team in college and has attended three of the CSUF championship games in Omaha, "but let's not kid ourselves, CSUF is the hometown team."
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