Pop's Blue Moon

The building at 5249 Pattison Avenue was framed with lumber salvaged from the 1904 World's Fair, and it has anchored The Hill ever since — three generations of the Gianella family ran the tavern through Prohibition and two World Wars before Terry Grigaitis and his 21-year-old son Josh bought the bar for $100,000 in 1999 and renamed it Pop's Blue Moon. The Riverfront Times has gone as far as calling it St. Louis' oldest continuous bar. Under Josh Grigaitis — a bar-industry lifer who also ran the Cherokee Street nightclub 2720 — the little tavern grew into one of the city's most beloved live-music rooms.

Grigaitis' own decision to step back from drinking reshaped the bar. In November 2018 he launched New Moon N/A Saturday, a fully booze-free bar night with live music that ran weekly and drew coverage from St. Louis Magazine, Feast and the Riverfront Times (call ahead for the current schedule). The non-alcoholic stock is an everyday feature, though: more than 30 NA canned drinks, Athletic Brewing and WellBeing beers, around ten varieties of Lyre's zero-proof spirits, and Grigaitis' own Cheerz NA seltzers in flavors like orange jasmine and purple rose. By October 2022, Feast reported that 30 percent of the bar's sales came from its NA offerings. One honest caveat: Pop's is alcohol-free-friendly, not substance-free — it also pours CBD, CBG and delta-8 THC-infused drinks and has served as a tasting room for local cannabis-beverage brand Mighty Kind.

Sauce Magazine put it plainly, placing Pop's at the forefront of the NA bar movement, and the bar's Instagram bio now reads simply "A Mindful Bar." Expect a genuine dive in the best sense — a tiny, century-old room hung with Italian-American memorabilia, a vinyl record jukebox, and bands packed close to the crowd — where asking for a beer gets you a follow-up question: with alcohol, or without? Doors open Tuesday through Saturday evenings; check the shows calendar before you go.