Namaste & Midtown

Namaste & Midtown is an alcohol-free kava and healing lounge at 1415 W 39th Street on Kansas City's 39th Street corridor, which reopened on 1 August 2025 in the space that had been Midtown Kava. It comes from three owners with unusually varied backgrounds: Moon Brown, a community leader and abolitionist with nearly two decades of anti-violence work behind her, who previously ran a metaphysical boutique in Belize; Alan Wayne, a Kansas City rapper who brings the energy of his Namaste & Shit clothing line to the room; and Andrew Beck, whose background is in construction and project management. Startland News covered the reopening under the headline "Sacred sips", describing an alcohol-free bar creating a healing space where every drink is medicine. Brown's own framing of why the format works is the most useful line written about kava bars in this city: kava, she said, lets people with anxiety be in a bar without alcohol.

The drinks are built on traditional kava, and the lounge kept the staples of its predecessor — kombucha, traditional kava preparations and herbal teas — while adding its own. Blue Moon combines house kava with creamy coconut, 10mg of CBD and a microdose of THC. Glitch in the Matrix pairs kava with ube coconut cream and vanilla matcha. Astral Grounds is the most caffeinated, layering cold brew coffee with functional mushrooms, cacao and eucalyptus honey over traditional kava. Two things need stating plainly. First, several drinks here contain THC and CBD, and the herbal teas carried over from Midtown Kava are THC-infused — so while nothing on the menu contains alcohol, this is not a venue for anyone avoiding psychoactive substances generally, and kava itself is psychoactive in its own right. Second, the lounge maintains no website we can find, and its only surviving social presence is under the former Midtown Kava name, so hours and the current drink list are best confirmed by calling ahead or asking in person.