Hartford
Happy Hour Becomes Happy Birthday
by | Feb 2, 2024 12:29 pm
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Posted to: Food
Jamil Ragland Photo
Beacon Cafe
Hartford
Jan. 30, 2024
How good does a happy hour have to be for someone to fly a thousand miles just to experience it again?
Made it just in time for the festivities.
I found that out when I visited Beacon Cafe. an unassuming bar tucked away on Capitol Avenue in Hartford.
I was out with a friend and they told me they were taking me to a bar that had a happy hour that went until 9 on a weeknight. That was practically unheard of, as most bars end their happy hour by 6, 7 if they are an outlier. I was already intrigued.
We walked into the one-room establishment, and it was packed with people dancing and laughing. On a table near the door were a couple of fancy gift bags and a few balloons. Over the bar counter, in colorful letters, hung the words “Happy Birthday!”
The first person I talked to was Kenny, who isn’t your typical barkeep. He started working at the cafe 30 years ago, in another lifetime. Back then, he’d been a recent college graduate who majored in architecture.
Kenny, owner of Beacon Cafe.
“My buddy bought this bar 30 years ago,” he said to me as he made our drinks in a small plastic cup. “One day he asked me to come in and bartend for him, and I never left. I loved serving people.”
He worked as a bartender there for 20 years before his friend sold the place to him.
I asked him how much longer he planned on staying at Beacon.
“Until I die,” he said, handing us our drinks.
After my first sip, I was glad that he gave us such small cups. The drink was strong. It was simple and tasty, a perfect mix of Wray and Nephew rum and pineapple juice that felt nice as it went down.
But it hit like a gut punch, and I was tipsy before I even finished the cup.
Believe me, Kenny is doing you a favor with the drink size.
Finally, I made my way over to the birthday girl, a woman named Tia.
She was dancing at the bar, talking to a couple of women who were sitting there. I told her I’d heard from the other patrons that she’d come from quite a distance for this evening.
“I live in Florida,” she said, “But I’m back for 36 hours to celebrate my birthday!”
Florida?!
What was so special about this place that it made her fly 1,000 miles to celebrate her birthday on a Tuesday night?
“This isn’t a bar; it’s a family,” she explained. “I’ve been coming here since Kenny was an assistant. We’ve all known each other forever. We’ve been to each other’s family’s funerals. We’ve been connected for that long.”
The birthday girl herself, Tia (right), talks to longtime friend Kristin (left)
“Yeah, sometimes you want to go where everybody really knows your name,” her friend Kristin said laughing.
She met Tia while the two were working at a music store. They basically became sisters. Tia brought Kristin to the bar a few years ago, and as with everyone else there Tuesday night, it became her home away from home as well.
I met some amazing people: A Cowboys fan who was actually tolerable. A 70 year-old Jamaican man who’d lived a whole life in his home island before coming to America to start a new one. A bartender who was too busy drinking and having a blast to work that night.
Not to be corny, but it was exactly like one of those bars that you hear about, where everyone knows everything about each other, and it binds them together closer than any flesh and blood family could ever be.
As I finished my interviews, Kenny turned the questions on me.
“How did you find this place?” he asked. “This is just a neighborhood bar. Everyone who comes in here lives right down the street.”
I told him that my friend has a friend who actually does live right down the street. They’d come together before, and now it was my turn to experience it.
Now I’m telling you to experience it. There are bars with fancier drinks, larger menus bigger buzz, but you will absolutely never find a place with better people. And yes, they will remember your name.
NEXT
Beacon Cafe is hosting a potluck-style Super Bowl party on Sunday, Feb. 11.
Jamil kicks off Black History Month by learning about the legacy of Black inventors.
Very well captured. I first set foot in the Beacon as a college student in the late 80s when Kenny, Tommy and the crew always took very good care of me and my friends. It was my local bar while I stayed in the area to work after graduating before moving away. I stopped in while passing through the area a couple of years ago for the first time in decades. Very little had changed - and thats a good thing. And, no surprise, the warm welcome I received from Kenny was as if I had never left. Cheers!