By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — After a year and eight months of preparations and waving through red tape, the owners of Lipstick Lounge have finally been able to announce their upcoming addition to their locally celebrated bar, Chapstick. Lipstick Lounge’s co-owner and co-founder Christa Suppan said Chapstick has been nearly 20 years in the making, with her and her business partner Jonda Valentine first kicking around the idea for opening an all-inclusive sports bar during the early days of Lipstick’s opening. Suppan said construction will include 1,500 square feet and a patio being added to the property. She said Chapstick will hopefully be open in early 2025 as a more laid-back option for those who are interested in going out but would rather socialize in a more easy-going environment.
Suppan said she’s had many allies, several of whom have been supporting her and Lipstick Lounge for many years, helping her and Valentine with obtaining all the permits needed to begin construction. Suppan said Chapstick will also include free parking on location, and that the cigar lounge available above the Lipstick Lounge, the Upper Lip, will remain open as well.
“As some of us get older, we might want to be in a more chill location,” Suppan said. “It’s just giving different options. If you feel like, ‘You know what, I’m ready to party!’ You can go down to Lipstick. Or, ‘I feel like I may like a cigar, I’m going to go upstairs,’ or ‘I think I want to just chill and talk to my friends. I’m gonna head over to Chapstick.’ It’s giving everybody options.”
Suppan said that she is thankful that Lipstick has been embraced by the Nashville community, and in that time, Lipstick has become a late-night bar that can get pretty loud late into the night given the space’s karaoke theme. Suppan said she and Valentine leaned into Lipstick being a karaoke-themed bar when they saw how their karaoke nights were easily their most popular soon after they had first opened. Suppan said it was this practical consideration that led to the pair choosing to shelve the sports bar theme they both wanted to explore, at least until Chapstick’s recent announcement.
“If we’re going to do something, we’re going to be the best at it,” Suppan said. “But you can’t be the best at everything, so you have to pick something, and we really wanted to focus on our karaoke.”
Suppan said the goal of Chapstick, as well as all of their locations, is to cultivate an all-inclusive space that honors their tagline “a bar for humans.” She said one way Chapstick will do this is by giving both men’s and women’s sports an equal chance to be played on the televisions that will be located throughout the bar. She said in many ways the rapid increase of popularity of the Women’s National Basketball Association has come at a perfect time to be featured on the screens of the upcoming bar and provides a good example of the kind of popular women’s dominated sports that will be shown at Chapstick equally alongside male-dominated sports.
Suppan said at large she’s seen Nashvillians celebrate the news of the construction of Chapstick. She said Chapstick will be hosting fun events after its opening as well, which will be announced closer to or after the space has been officially opened. Suppan said that Nashvillians looking to keep up with future updates regarding Chapstick can do so on the space’s Facebook page, Chapstick37206, or on social media operated by the Lipstick Lounge.
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