The bar’s ownership group has grown over time, today including Charlie Fernandez, Arian Owns, Pam Pellegrino (girlfriend of founder Rich Prater who passed away in 2012) and Brad Moore, a veteran of the bar scene in Houston responsible for a number of businesses that fall into the same come-as-you-are category embodied by Big Star Bar. Ownership has not come without its hiccups of course, Big Star Bar announcing in 2019 that the property’s owners planned to sell the structure, leaving the Houston dive bar without a home.
No ill will was expressed by Moore and partners at the time, recognizing that long-term landholders in what was once a less-than-desirable part of town had every right to profit from the newfound notoriety of the neighborhood. While making final preparations for a sale, the owners expressed a change of heart, ultimately deciding to continue ownership of the plot, extending Big Star Bar’s lease and providing relief to the Houston dive bar’s dedicated following.
To say that the Big Star Bar space feels organic is an understatement, the deceptively cavernous structure a hodgepodge of string lights, mismatched furniture and checkerboard flooring distributed across a number of distinct seating areas. The tone is set outside, bold blue paint set against a large red star painted on the building’s exterior playing off the a mural that includes Houston’s city skyline on the adjacent fence. The gravel parking lot would normally be visible from two small windows set into the building’s front wall but in true dive bar fashion, the windows have been boarded up to ward off any suggestion of daylight inside.