After more than 70 years, Kansas City dive bar has closed: ‘Now was the time’
Dave’s Stagecoach Inn, a fixture of Westport nightlife dating back to the Truman administration, has closed.
Joyce Hess, who owns the bar with her husband, Jim, said the last day of service was Wednesday.
“We’re retiring,” she said. “We’ve been thinking about it for a while. Now was the time.”
One of Kansas City’s quintessential dive bars, Dave’s opened early — 2 p.m. on weekdays in recent years, but in the mornings for decades prior to that — and closed late, at 3 a.m. It had a railroad layout with a 35-foot bar and one pool table in the back. Out front, a loud neon sign loomed over the sidewalk between Bradford pear trees.
The crowd was diverse: postal carriers and punk rockers, fixed-income retirees and art-school undergrads.
Hess’ father, Dave Golad, opened the bar in 1952. It was originally called 423 Club, named after its address at 423 Westport Road. Golad moved the bar across Broadway Boulevard to 316 Westport Road in 1972 following the construction of Westport Square. He renamed it Dave’s Stagecoach Inn as a nod to the area’s heritage as a starting point for 19th century traders and trappers headed west. A large painting of a stagecoach by a former Dave’s bartender, Carl Martin Jr., still hangs on the west wall to this day.
Jim Hess started working at the bar in 1981 and took over from Golad in 1995. He was known to run tabs for regulars. (A dry-erase board behind the bar, titled “Dave’s Deadbeats,” kept the barflies honest.) For a time in the early 2000s, a notorious local panhandler used the bar as his mailing address.
In the late 1990s and 2000s, Dave’s was synonymous with bartender John Yuelkenbeck, who curated an eclectic CD jukebox that helped popularize the bar with members of the local music scene. Shortly after Yuelkenbeck quit, in 2011, the machine disappeared too, replaced by a TouchTunes.
The building is owned by Thomas and Stephen Platt of Westport Land & Management Co., longtime property owners in the neighborhood. Hess said she’d be interested in selling the bar and has already heard from a few interested parties.
“We’d love to see it continue as Dave’s,” she said. “It just needs somebody young and dedicated to come in. It’s a great spot for a neighborhood bar.”
