Latest posts
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Whisky, Hospitality, and Detail: Paul Leongas on What Made The Curragh Work
Whisky Magazine once named The Curragh Traditional Irish Pub one of the great whisky bars in the world. That recognition meant a lot to me, because a great whisky bar is not built on having the most bottles. It is built on care. If you want to understand how Paul Leongas thinks about quality, the…
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Three Curragh Locations, One Lesson: Paul Leongas on Running a Place People Return To
Over the years my family ran The Curragh Traditional Irish Pub in three places: Schaumburg, Edison Park, and Skokie. Three locations, three neighborhoods, three different crowds. If there is one lesson Paul Leongas took from running all of them, it is that the goal is never a busy opening night. The goal is a place…
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What Running an Irish Pub Taught Paul Leongas About Building Them
I spent the first part of my working life running pubs, not building them. So when people hear that Paul Leongas now develops and constructs commercial property, they sometimes wonder what one has to do with the other. The honest answer is that operating a building taught me more about how to build one than…
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From Behind the Bar to the Job Site: How Paul Leongas Reads a Room
Behind a bar, you learn to read a room fast. Who is happy, who is about to be a problem, who needs attention and who wants to be left alone. You read it in seconds, all night, for years. I did not realize how rare that skill was until I left hospitality. Now, as Paul…
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What It Takes to Direct Plans and Programs at a Joint Base
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling Is Not a Quiet Assignment Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling sits in Washington DC and hosts units from multiple military branches plus defense agencies. Directing plans and programs at a joint base means working across service cultures, competing priorities, and administrative systems that weren’t designed to talk to each other. Jason Goins Air Force…
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The Perfect Pint: How Paul Leongas Earned the Guinness Gold Standard at The Curragh
In 2002, The Curragh Traditional Irish Pub earned the Guinness Gold Standard Award for the Perfect Pint. People sometimes assume an award like that is about luck or marketing. It is not. It is about getting a hundred small things right, every time, on a product most customers think is simple. I learned more about…
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Why Counter-WMD Policy Needs Scientists at the Table
Policy Without Science Is Guesswork Counter-WMD policy in Washington DC involves some of the highest-stakes decisions in national security. Which threats are credible? What detection capabilities exist? How should resources be allocated across nuclear, chemical, and biological programs? Jason Goins Air Force officer worked as a counter-WMD policy analyst, bringing scientific training directly into those…
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Paul Leongas on Hiring, Hosting, and the Habits That Carried Into Development
The restaurant business is a people business first and everything else second. You can have the best location and the best product, and it still falls apart if you cannot hire well and take care of the people who walk in. Those two habits, hiring and hosting, shaped me more than any others, and Paul…
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The Story Behind a U.S. Patent on Cargo Ramp Design
Patents Don’t Come From Brainstorming Sessions In 2023, Jason Goins Air Force officer received a U.S. patent for a cargo ramp design. That sentence is easy to read and easy to forget. But a patent represents years of work: identifying a specific problem, testing solutions, documenting results, and surviving the scrutiny of the U.S. Patent…
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Paul Leongas on Why a Great Bar and a Great Building Solve the Same Problem
On the surface, running a bar and developing commercial real estate have nothing in common. One is late nights and conversation. The other is permits and foundations. But the longer I do the second, the more I see how much the first prepared me for it. To me, Paul Leongas, a great bar and a…