At the end of 2020, downtown Lincoln’s McKinney’s Irish Pub was burglarized, and about 3,000 dollar bills decorating the bar walls were stolen. Years later, those patron-personalized dollars have returned home.
The entrance to McKinney’s Irish Pub, 151 N. 8th Street. (Chase Porter, KLIN News)
Days before the calendar turned, on December 30, 2020, Lincoln Police were called to the Haymarket bar on N.8th and “P” Street after a man smashed a front window to the building and tore down an entire wall’s worth of bills which had adorned McKinney’s walls via scotch-tape for years.
Those bills were not stitched together as a ritzy, pretentious wallpaper. Each bill was wholly unique — personalized by hand from pub-goers with signatures, tributes, sketches, and the occasional dead presidents parody.
Each bill was a memory for someone. The lasting mark of a bar visit, for the low price of $1.00.
Lincoln Police immediately began their investigation. Over the next 3½ years, officers would occasionally return clusters of the stolen bills to the pub — obvious by their unique and sometimes crude markings.
Fast forward to June 2024, Lincoln Police told McKinney’s staff there were “some items” they had to pick up.
McKinney’s shared on social media: a plastic forensic bag containing over 1,500 bills — the largest bundle ever recovered from the 2020 burglary.
Previous clusters of returned bills were often torn up, soiled, burnt, or otherwise unsalvageable, “and all the $5, $20, and $100 bills didn’t come back, unfortunately,” McKinney’s Manager Delaney Walsh tells KLIN News.
However, Walsh says most/all of the returned $1’s (and one Ugandan shilling) were salvageable and will be reposted to on McKinney’s walls — or ceiling. bar top, door frames, vents, really anywhere they can be taped.
“Hopefully we can find room somewhere on our wall to put them back up,” Walsh admitted, as the space-made-bare has been filled with new dollars. “We kind of lost hope, and thought all of them were gone”
In the wake of the 2020 burglary, neighboring bars banded together to lend a hand to their Haymarket competitor. Kinkaider Brewing donated 100 one dollar bills to McKinney’s and JJ Hooligans held a ‘Dollar Drive,’ inviting people to sharpie a note onto a dollar bill and drop it off down the street.
Walsh emphasized how these dollar bill are worth a lot more to returning guest’s than 100 pennies.
“The amount of times we’ve had people come in looking for a dollar bill — especially out of towners — that met their husband or wife here, and they made a dollar bill the night they met, or people that made a dollar with someone who has now passed away… it’s really nice that we’ll be able to go through all these bills and restore some of the memories that were made here,” Walsh said, adding that McKinney’s staff members are among those with posted dollars dedicated to loved ones who have since passed.
“We personally always wanted the bills to return to for our own memories, so we’re really excited to sort through them to find, not only memories of our own, but everyone else’s,” said Walsh.
Due to the lack of real estate, McKinney’s plans to sort through the newly returned bills and post them on social media searching for the original inscribers, giving them the option to claim their dollar back, or repost it in the bar.
The dollar-decorated wall and vent system of McKinney’s Irish Pub, previously burglarized. (Chase Porter, KLIN News)