VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Atomic Liquors Opened in 1952

Posted on: February 3, 2025, 07:55h. 

Last updated on: February 3, 2025, 10:15h.

Atomic Liquors is the oldest freestanding bar in Las Vegas. However, not unlike the Golden Steer, it lies about its age. It didn’t open until 1954. So why does it claim to have been established in 1952? Welcome to the first of these myths we busted so hard, we actually got our subject to stop perpetuating it.

Atomic Liquors celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2022, when it was 68. (Image: travelnevada.com)

Myth Understood

In 1939, a woman named Virginia Barrett came into a plot of land between 9th and 10th streets on Fremont Street. She inherited it from John Busteed, the generous Nevada judge for whom she worked as a housekeeper.

In 1944, Barrett opened a gas station/garage at 927 Fremont St. A year later, next door at 917 Fremont St., she and her husband, Jack, built a café to serve food to travelers who stopped to fill up.

Virginia and Jack Barrett with Joe Sobchik (rear) at the Helldorado Days parade in 1945. (Image: Atomic Liquors)

To run Virginia’s Café, Barrett summoned her daughter, Stella — and her husband, Joe Sobchik — from upstate New York.

On April 22, 1952, Joe and Stella joined the latest Las Vegas craze. They started serving “atomic cocktails” on their rooftop deck to guests watching the mushroom clouds rise from nuclear blasts at the nearby Nevada Test Site.

The problem — other than people thinking this was perfectly sane behavior — is that Virginia’s Café served illegally. It had neither a general liquor license nor one for beer and wine.

By 1953, sales of their outlaw concoctions were so brisk, the couple decided to stop serving food — which Joe hated grilling anyway — and convert entirely to a (legal) bar.

This ad for the grand opening ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s April 17, 1954 edition. (Image: Las Vegas Review-Journal via X/@vintagelasvegas)

They purchased a liquor store license for the front half of their new establishment. Then they successfully petitioned the city to create its first tavern license — for serving alcohol outside a restaurant, hotel, or casino — and issue it to Atomic Liquors, for a bar it built in the back.

Atomic Liquors debuted on April 17, 1954. Check out the Las Vegas Review-Journal ad announcing its grand opening on the left. (Thanks to the X account Vintage Las Vegas for digging it up!)

Nuclear Exchange

After we asked Lance Johns, who purchased Atomic Liquors in 2012 with his brother Kent and Derek Stonebager, about the factual discrepancy, he replied that the bar’s landing page is “completely accurate” because it only reads “serving Vegas since 1952.”

That’s technically true, though it is misleading.

I guess officially as far as the City of Las Vegas is concerned, Atomic Liquors opened in 1954, even though Joe and Stella began serving ‘atomic cocktails’ to customers in 1952,” Johns explained in an email. “Obviously, that’s where Joe and Stella came up with the name Atomic Liquors.”

OK, but that didn’t explain why the title of Atomic Liquors’ website — revealed when you Google it — was “Atomic Liquors | Las Vegas’ First Bar, Est. 1952.”

Other than its vintage, did you catch the other fabrication there?

Atomic Liquors was, by no stretch of the imagination, Las Vegas’ first bar. It wasn’t even its first freestanding one. That honor belongs to the Arizona Club. It was founded in 1906 — only a year after Las Vegas was! — on Block 16. That was the only district where alcohol could legally be served outside hotels at the time. (Liquor was served back then without specific licenses permitting it.)

The Gem, Arizona Club, Red Onion Club, and the Arcade saloons occupy Block 16 circa 1908. The district was located on First Street between Ogden and Stewart Avenues, which today is a parking lot behind Binion’s Gambling Hall. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)

Atomic Blows Us Away

Our inquiry actually got Atomic Liquors to change the misleading title of its website. (Image: Google)

Within two days of emailing Johns again, asking him to specifically explain his website’s inaccurate title, it was altered to align with the facts as we know them today.

It now reads “Atomic Liquors | Las Vegas’ Oldest Freestanding Bar.”

After 130 of these columns, this is the first time (we know of) that a correction was made in the real world because of a myth we busted in our world.

We know we’re making a bigger deal about this than deserves to be made. There are much more pressing issues in today’s troubled world than shaving two fake years off a bar’s history.

In addition, next month, Atomic Liquors will probably just change its website back again.

But this is all we do, so please allow us this one brief and shiny overindulgence. After three years of thanklessly battling the overwhelming forces of Las Vegas misinformation, it feels nice.

Also, our mother still holds our not going to law school against us, and we’re hoping this will finally make her proud of what we decided to do with our life.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on  Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.