Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Shenanigan's to 149 East Ridge Road (the space formerly used as the Garage Door) in the lonely and relatively bar-free town of Irondequoit. For those of us who live away from the city, an Irish pub down the street is a blessing. Thankfully, there's experience behind the new bar as well --- the owner, Brandon Thompson, also runs the legacy that is Woody's.

I attended the grand opening last week and the bar was bursting with people. The crowd looked relatively like the one you'd find on Monroe on Wednesday nights at Woody's --- 30somethings, and a generous mix of every genre of bar patron known to man. In my mind, that's a good thing. People reminisced about using fake IDs to get into the Garage Door in the '80s. For those of you who never made it in there, the place is big.

Shenanigan's has a great bar; a beautiful, winding slab of wood that spans the length of the room and holds the drunken tales of patrons past (if bars could talk...). The owners updated the place with plasma and projection TVs to show sporting events, the better to sate those March Madness fanatics. Live music and a spacious upstairs for private parties are also on the ticket, as well as classic bar food. Shenanigan's serves lunch and dinner daily 11 a.m.-2 a.m., dine in or take out. The chicken wings are excellent and the list of panini sandwiches includes the Buffalo Chicken, with chicken fingers, buffalo sauce, blue cheese, and mozzarella. It looked very tasty. My companion had the Drunken Fries, sloshed with Guinness gravy.

Head to Shenanigan's to watch a game this week. The beer is cold and the food is good.

In other news, on March 15 the Pig ‘N' Whistle on Lawrence Street was rechristened Bayou Billy's Cajun Restaurant. The bar, owned by Ronnie Davis, claims that it has the best New Orleans-style Cajun in town. I'm looking forward to finding out if that's true.

Finally it's starting to get warm again, and that means people are beginning to crawl out of hibernation, into less clothing, and stepping out into the ever-expanding bar scene. I'll see you there.