Banks Street Bar
Bar · Mid-City ·
Playful art, seafood meals, live music, and cheap drinks
Playful art, seafood meals, live music, and cheap drinks
"I observed that Banks Street Bar, which Owens bought in 2018, likewise remains open and is still owned and operated by a small group of Owens’s family members and friends." - Clair Lorell
"One of the businesses tied to Rand Owens’s group that remains open after Mid City Pizza’s closure, now owned and operated by a small group of Owens’s family members and friends." - Clair Lorell
"In 2018 Owens bought the half-century-old Banks Street Bar, a dive bar and music venue across the street from Mid City Pizza and in the same building where he first started slinging slices; in August 2022 employees commandeered the bar’s Instagram to chronicle a staff-wide firing by new management, prompting local support and disappointment for the workers, and the bar remains open." - Clair Lorell
"A dive bar in New Orleans’s Mid-City open since 1959, Banks Street Bar and Grill hired new management this week — and one of their first actions was apparently to fire the entire staff. At least one employee still had access to the bar’s Instagram account and has been chronicling the saga, posting a screenshot of a note from management saying it was time to "clean house," that interviews for "those who wish to remain a bartender" would be held over the next two days, and that "As of today everyone is being terminated," while subsequent posts have been memes and screenshots suggesting the page is controlled by a former employee. Public support for the staff has been immediate, bolstered by first-hand accounts and a screenshot of an email from a manager that said, "Let's just fire everyone and start over," and the bar’s account even posted, "Good luck 'starting over,' hiring and training an entirely new staff when everyone in the industry sees the way you treat your employees." The staff — reported as 12 people — were allegedly fired "during the slowest season of the service industry (summer) with no backup, no pay, and no notice," and a fundraising page organized by Cheyenne Nichols aims to raise $1,000 for each employee; the owners have not publicly responded. The bar’s recent turmoil is being framed in the shadow of former owner Rand Owens, who bought the bar in 2018, founded Mid City Pizza in the bar’s kitchen, and died in 2020 at 33; ownership continued with Owens’s siblings and a family friend." - Clair Lorell
"Bought by Owens in 2018, this nearly half-century-old dive bar and music venue sits across the street from Mid City Pizza in the same building where he first started slinging slices; it remains open and will continue to be run by his family." - Clair Lorell