For decades, this Boise bar was famous for ‘no lawyers.’ Closing it is ‘bittersweet.’

When Jody Morrison’s dad hauled her into the original Crescent Bar to teach her to do books at 6:30 a.m., she was 13 years old.

“Did I like it? No. Did I do it? You bet,” she remembers with a chuckle.

Five decades later, she’s closing the book on her family bar business.

Morrison, 62, and her husband, Butch, 78, are selling their locally famous Crescent “No Lawyers” Bar and Grill at 5500 W. Franklin Road. They closed it just over a week ago.

“Butch and I are retiring, and that means the Crescent Bar as such is retiring as well,” Jody Morrison said Monday.

The 8,600-square-foot sports bar will reopen under new ownership, she said, with the same liquor license but a different name and concept. “They’ve got a whole new vision for the bar and the property,” she said. “However, they are going to keep the big Crescent neon sign in the game room as a part of historical Boise.”

Ending the Crescent’s long run is “very bittersweet,” Morrison said through tears. “You don’t meet as many nice people over the years as we have — and you become family and good, good, good, good friends.”

Long before its “No Lawyers” slogan was created, the Crescent opened in 1965 at 413 N. Orchard St. — now Campos Market. Jody Morrison’s parents, Ray and Hazel Ballard, bought the bar in 1970 and ran it for a decade before selling it to her and Butch. They built a larger new bar on Franklin Road and moved the Crescent in 2003.

The “No Lawyers” theme started in 1984 after the Morrisons got into a legal fight with a neighbor — who was an attorney — over a swimming pool they wanted to build at their home. The tiff generated unexpected attention — and lucrative publicity for the bar. Soon, the Crescent began selling “No lawyers” shirts, hats and menu items.

Banned or not, attorneys did frequent the Crescent. A few probably even enjoyed the Crescent’s signature “lawyer fries” — aka Rocky Mountain oysters. But it’s the Crescent’s tasty finger steaks that many Idahoans will miss. “We used to call them, ‘Give your lawyer the finger steaks,’ ” Morrison remembered with a laugh. “That was on the menu at one point.”

To natives, seeing the Crescent Bar go dark might feel like watching part of Idaho’s soul vanish. As a sports bar, the Crescent was “basically the first DirecTV commercial installation in the city of Boise,” Morrison said. The Crescent’s state-issued liquor license number is 40, she added. “That tells you how long it’s been.”

But Morrison is confident that the change will be good for the bar and restaurant — and Boise Bench neighborhood.

“I think it will be nice to have new blood in there. Because Butch and I are too tired at our ages,” she said with a laugh. “It’s time to restore life to the Crescent that we can’t give it.”

“For the last two nights, I actually got to turn my phone off,” she added. “Slept like a baby.”

This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 4:00 AM.