February 4, 2016

By Amanda Battmer

Late last year, one of CoMo’s favorite bars, The Penguin Piano Bar, faced a change in ownership. The Penguin is known around town for its live, dueling piano shows and special drink offers. Roxy’s co-owner Jesse Garcia now runs the place, hoping to improve the bar’s overall efficiency and add some new traditions while aiming to keep the spirit of the place alive.

MOVE got to sit down with Garcia’s wife and co-owner of Lips and Curls salon and The Social Room, Heather Garcia, to get the inside scoop.

“We’ve taken over The Penguin, but we made sure to keep it what it is,” Heather says. “We are going to add live music sometimes, just for fun, just on off-nights to bring people in. But for the most part, we want to keep that the same.”

According to Piano’s website, the Garcias are planning to make a few small changes to the bar’s daily operations, such as increasing seating and rearranging tables for a better view of the room. The bar also plans to bring in more musicians and host more special events. As far as the menu goes, Jesse plans to experiment for a while and expand on the drink selection.

“I went the Friday after my twenty-first birthday and it was very, very crowded,” senior and Penguin customer Shelby Mann says. “They’ll play a lot of oldies but goodies … I know a lot of people who really like it. It’s not like going to a wine bar, it’s not like going to the Beer Cellar, but it’s also not like a Harpo’s Greek life-only (atmosphere). It’s a nice medium.”

The Garcia dream team has successfully contributed to Columbia’s bar scene for years now, and aims to create a new atmosphere with each new location. According to Heather, each bar has its own unique vibe.

“I think (the three different bars) just add different facets to (Columbia’s bar scene),” Heather says. “There are a lot of bars that are really similar to each other, and I appreciate the fact that we kind of stand out a little bit from that. We still get college students, but we also get young professionals and graduate students and people that are over 40. I’d like to say that we kind of just add to what was already there, which has always been good. Columbia is just a really cool city all around. Tons of good bars, tons of good bar owners and lots of people having fun.”

Heather describes The Social Room as the “chill” one of the three, while Roxy’s serves as its own fabulous, “beast of a nightclub.” Piano is home to a completely different vibe, and will further grow into it with the years to come.

“There are people on these stages doing kind of karaoke stuff, a bunch of drunk people just like, belting their hearts out,” Mann says. “Piano is kind of in the middle between Greek and a house party.”

The Social Room opened in May of last year, and one of its coolest components has been its connection to Heather’s salon, Lips and Curls. Heather refers to the salon and The Social Room as “one in the same,” and even comes into the bar two nights a month to do hair and show customers what the place is all about.

“(Jesse and I) always kind of had the idea to do like a ‘one-stop-shop,’ we called it when we were first dating, and so it kind of just surfaced when I wanted to get my own place to do hair,” Heather says. “So he built the bar in the back. A lot of the reason was so that I wouldn’t have to worry about making a lot of money right away, so I could kind of just take my time with it. It’s something we’ve always kind of thought would be cool and we just finally got to a place that we could do it.”

Lips and Curls is a vintage beauty parlor, offering everything from pedicures to vintage hair and makeup tutorials. The unlikely combo has proved to work well together, considering both have an old-fashioned feel (be sure to check out Retrorama, a throwback dance party every week at The Social Room). Drinks served in mason jars, colorful couches and old-timey wall art are all found in the mix.