Johnny Foley

Johnny Foley was an Irish born tenor and singer whose name has hung over one of San Francisco's best known Irish pubs since 1998. He died on Saturday, 7 November 2026, at the age of 94, according to an announcement from Johnny Foley's Irish House that was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle the following day. The pub called him an icon within the San Francisco Irish community and said he had long been part of its extended family.

Details of his early life in Ireland are not well documented. The account kept by the pub is that he loved to sing from childhood, had a true Irish tenor voice of a kind rarely heard today, and arrived in New York by ship from Ireland in the late 1950s, never looking back. He later made his way west to San Francisco, where he became part of the city's counterculture and the Summer of Love.

In San Francisco Foley was known as a performer rather than a businessman. He was celebrated for his tenor voice and his love of Irish rebel songs, and the pub describes him as a musical rebel who blended the best of Irish song with a creative spirit that could flourish only in San Francisco. Friends remembered him as a lifelong entertainer and a high spirited companion whose stories were hard to believe.

When Martin and Mary Connolly, immigrants from County Cork, opened their pub at 243 O'Farrell Street near Union Square in 1998, they named it after him. The owners later said it was an easy choice as the opening approached. The pub opened with members of the Riverdance cast cheering it on and became a downtown fixture, with a main bar upstairs and a downstairs Cellar that hosts dueling pianos and live music for locals, theatregoers and convention visitors.

The place and cause of his death have not been made public, and no funeral arrangements had been announced at the time of reporting. His legacy lives on in the songs he sang and in a pub that has carried his name, and his spirit, in the heart of San Francisco for nearly three decades.