Louis Connelly, owner of Louis Connelly’s Bar for Fun Times & Friendship in Midtown, is continuing his brand of buying “dive bars” with his latest addition, Kickstart Bar & Grill at 5960 Highway 51, about 10 minutes from Millington, Tennessee.
“This is just OG dive bar feel,” Connelly says. “You can tell it’s been around for many years.”
People are going to see motorcycles parked outside. “It’s always been a biker bar. Back in the day, it was probably pretty rough, but from what I hear, all the bikers consider it neutral ground,” says Mickey Blancq, Connelly’s business partner. “So they won’t be aggressive to each other while they’re there. Iron Horsemen or Outlaws or whatever biker club has claimed its own territory.”
Small diamond-shaped windows flank the entrance to Kickstart. A 15-foot Miller High Life beer glass made out of concrete stands on one side of the building. “There’s two wooden doors,” Connelly says. “And the door is incredibly heavy. You kind of yank it to pull it open.”
Inside, the place explodes with the colors of the neon beer signs that dot the walls along with photographs and old album covers. “Weasel,” one of the regulars, attached various things to the walls over the years, Blancq says. “Every inch is covered,” he says. “All kinds of stuff. Old beer signs, license plates. You name it. Elvira cutouts.”
“You look around and you’re in a totally different world,” Connelly says.
Two pool tables stand in a separate room to the right of the bar. And a “really beautiful shuffleboard table” stands to the left when you walk in. Adam Phillips, who, along with his wife Mitzi, previously owned Kickstart, “services shuffleboards all around the city,” Connelly says.
The clientele ranges from “young 30s” to people “in their 80s,” Connelly says.
“Everyone here looks out for everybody else,” Blancq says. “If they have a bad character, they all band together: ‘You’re not welcome here’ kind of deal. ‘This is our house,’ you know.
“They have a list of people who have been banned over the years,” Connelly says. “It’s passed down. People who currently work there have never met them. They’ve been banned in previous administrations, so to speak. We’re keeping that list going. Somewhere in a file are pictures of some of those old characters that have received lifetime bans.”
Outside, a lone truck door stands next to the giant concrete Miller High Life beer glass. The door belongs to one of their regulars, says Kickstart manager Nate Cox. “He was getting body work done at a body shop and it got absconded by some people who didn’t need to abscond it,” Cox says. “And we had to go on a little recon mission and get his door back for him.”
They found the door “at a meth head’s house,” Cox says. “We’re a ‘family network’ out here. I’ll use quotation marks on that. If something happens to one of us, we go take care of it. We handle business ourselves.”
Connelly is impressed with his customer base. “Every time we’ve been out here, everyone is so super nice,” he says. “They all know each other and they’ve all got names for each other. That’s how they introduce themselves: ‘My name is this, but people call me this.’”
One guy goes by “Bobby Two Hats.” Another goes by “Dog.” “He barked at me,” Connelly says.
Another “Bobby,” Bobby Crisel, goes by his “Bobby Big Head” nickname. “Ever since I was in elementary school I’ve been called ‘Big Head,’” Crisel says, adding, “I’ve had it my whole life. I just have a big head.”
Crisel, 56, who lives in Shelby Forest, owned Kickstart for about four years around 2016 when it was known as The Point. But he’s been around the bar most of his life. “I kind of grew up in that place.”
He’d go to the bar with his dad. “I’d go to work with him doing construction and we’d stop by. It’s always been like a buddy bar. Everybody hangs out there, drinks a few beers, stretches the truth about a few things.”
Then, he says, “Got to the age where I was driving him home. And next thing you know, I got to the age where I’m hanging out.”
“If Bobby gets too drunk, he calls his son and his son comes and picks him up in the tow truck and takes his car home,” Connelly says. (Bobby’s son has a tow truck.)
“If I sit there a little bit too long, I call him up and say, ‘Come get me, boy,’” Crisel says.
Kickstart Bar & Grill went by other names over the years. It was known as The Point before Crisel owned it. Then it changed to Tom Cat’s and then Chuck’s before going back to The Point. “It’s an old dive bar,” Crisel says. “Been that way my whole lifetime.”
It was called The Point because it’s at Old Millington Road and Highway 51, Crisel says. “Right there at the point of them. Still today, all the old people say, ‘We’re going to The Point.’”
For now, Kickstart serves “just beer and a couple of nice hard lemonade-type drinks,” Connelly says. “We have applied for a liquor license, and we’ll be adding liquor in a couple of weeks.”
As for its cuisine, Connelly says, “There’s a small food menu. All bars are required to serve food.”
Kickstart’s menu is “not as extensive” as their Midtown bar at 322 South Cleveland Street in Midtown. “They don’t have fryers. It’s pizzas and nachos. We may end up changing that a little bit. We just bought a new pizza oven. The current pizza oven was Bobby Big Head’s dad’s pizza oven they were borrowing.”
They’re considering putting in one of those “gas station hot dog grilling stations,” Connelly says. And bringing in food trucks is “probably something down the road,” Blancq says.
We don’t want to change too much, but we want to put a slightly more professional face on this,” Connelly says. “Make sure the equipment is up to code.”
Like its regulars, Connelly and Blancq love Kickstart Bar & Grill, which is about a 15- to 20-minute drive from Midtown. “We want it to succeed,” Connelly says. “This is a nice place to be when you’re not home or at work.”
