Just over six months after its grand reopening, Sonny's Cocktail Joint was forced to shut down again after a flood inundated the storefront this month.
While South Street's beloved bar, which took years to recover from a 2022 structural fire, is facing another setback, owners remain optimistic about a timely reopening.
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"I cannot make this stuff up," said Susan Freeman, a partner with the bar's ownership group Happy Monday Hospitality. "We speculated that [the chimney] got struck by lightning, but we really have no idea how it could have happened."
For the first half of the year, business was running smoothly for Sonny's Cocktail Joint, located at 1508 South St. The bar reopened in January with a new food menu, pool table and live music.
But then a heavy rainstorm hit the region on July 8. Freeman said the bar flooded and the chimney of the neighboring building collapsed onto its already waterlogged roof. Employees on site quickly noticed the flood water creeping up and promptly called management, who deployed a crew equipped with buckets, shop vacs and mops to try to keep the damage at bay. Sonny's took to Instagram to post photos of leaks from the ceiling.
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Freeman said cleanup has been going smoothly and ownership hopes to be operational around the first week of August.
"[It] could be sooner, could be a little later, but I'm hopeful it's minimal time that we're closed for renovations," Freeman said.
Around 25 people are employed at Sonny's and remain on its payroll until it reopens, Freeman said.
In 2022, Sonny's and its neighboring sister establishments Wine Dive and Rabbit were damaged in a fire that started in an upstairs apartment. While Sonny's was closed for nearly three years, Wine Dive and Rabbit never recovered.
"We're all keeping our head up," Freeman said. "Can't let it get us down."