On Saturday, November 4, Soo Kim and her fiance, Michael Rey, excitedly approached the front doors of Takashima Record Bar, eager to work out the final details of their wedding reception, which was scheduled to be held at the Grove bar and vinyl listening lounge four weeks later. They had an appointment with the general manager for 3 p.m., but when they arrived just before that and found the doors locked and the place dark, they became suspicious. When no one showed up and their calls went unanswered, they started to panic.
“They didn’t show up; they weren’t answering calls,” Kim says. “Once we realized something was wrong, we started walking up and down the Grove to see who knew what. That’s when we found out a Halloweeen event the previous weekend had been canceled, and no one had been there for two weeks.”
Kim and Rey’s experience — one that resulted in the pair scrambling to find a new venue for their wedding in less than a month — confirmed what has otherwise been under the radar for weeks: Takashima Record Bar is no longer in business. Though Google lists the lounge as “Temporarily Closed,” a source with knowledge of the matter who wishes to remain anonymous confirmed that Takashima’s last day of service was October 21 and that the aforementioned Halloween event scheduled for Saturday, October 28, was canceled due to the abrupt closure.
Dan Hayden, who reportedly bought Takashima from its original owners in 2021, declined to comment on the status of the lounge, noting only that “things are still up in the air on the future of the company” and described the situation as fluid. (The property management company that owns the building where Takashima is located, Green Street Real Estate Ventures, did not return a call seeking comment.)
Kim and Rey tell the RFT that when they were finally able to reach Hayden by phone, he said he had not been involved with day-to-day operations for months.They say, however, that Hayden refunded the couple their deposit from his own pocket.
The current closure, event cancellation and uncertainty surrounding Takashima is the latest in a series of problems for the once-hyped venue. Originally opened as Takashima Records in February of 2020 by a partnership group that included Grove fixtures Sean Baltzell, Mike Cracchiolo, Casey Colgan, Matt Leach, Josh Martin and Casey Watson, Takashima was billed as a vinyl-centric bar modeled after the listening lounges Baltzell encountered in Japan. The spot was poised to be a Grove hotspot, building upon much of the partnership group’s success with the popular arcade bar Parlor.
Takashima encountered its first setback in March of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the lounge to temporarily shutter and reinvent itself as a ticketed private dining space.
That rebrand was underway when Takashima became the epicenter of explosive sexual assault allegations lodged, via social media, against several individuals associated with the business. The allegations, which were found to be part of a larger pattern of abuse that permeated the overlapping Grove nightlife scene and parts of the St. Louis tattoo subculture — led to both a dissolution of the partnership and the closure of Takashima.
In April of 2021 it was announced that Hayden and his then-wife, Robbie Fogarty-Hayden, would be reopening the bar under the slightly different name, Takashima Record Bar. Though Hayden was affiliated in some capacity with Takashima’s first iteration (opening press for the venue noted him as being involved with a record label, Takashima Records) he noted in an interview with the St. Louis Post Dispatch that nothing ever came of that association. Robbie later told Sauce Magazine that no one from the previous ownership group was involved in the new venture.
Records from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office list Fogarty-Hayden as the current Registered Agent for Takashima Record Bar, a position she has held since February 2, 2022, 10 months after she and Hayden reopened the lounge.
More recently, Kim and Rey say Hayden told them he ceased involvement with the day-to-day operations earlier this summer. They say he also told them he was only a minority owner of the business.
“According to our conversation, Dan was only [a] 20 percent owner,” Rey says. “He told us that he was part of the business until around June but that he was told to step aside and was in some way removed but is still in some ownership capacity. He told us that he didn’t know anything about this, which tracks because he wouldn’t have been involved when we went under contract.”
Kim and Rey had no idea of the bar’s complicated backstory when they booked Takashima for one of the most important days of their lives. Having only moved to town from Texas one year prior, the pair happened upon the place and were immediately taken by its low-key vibe that fit the style of wedding they were trying to have. That they unwittingly stumbled into the middle of the latest chapter in a space mired in drama in unsettling to them, and they insist they want no trouble. They just hope that by sharing their story, they can aid in getting to the bottom of the situation so that they can help others who might be impacted by Takashima’s abrupt closure.
“We’re really private people, and the wariness we have of telling this is because of how other people were [acting] when we were trying to get answers,” Kim says. “How could a restaurant disappear off the face of the earth and no one knows anything about it?”
Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters. Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
