"Small Town Potential" couple Davina Thomasula and Kristin Leitheuser have their own meet-cute story. As Leitheuser told HGTV, she and some friends dropped by a New York bar where one of them knew the bartender — who just happened to be Thomasula. "I played it safe and ordered a Guinness," Leitheuser recalled, "and the rest is history."
Thomasula tended bar for more than 10 years, and had always fantasized about owning her own watering hole. That dream became a reality when she and her business partner, Megan Giometti, opened their bar, Goodnight Kenny, in Poughkeepsie, New York. The bar's name, Thomasula explained, is in honor of her father, Kenny, a musician who performs at night and sleeps during the daylight hours. "Goodnight Kenny is what we scream to him every time he goes for a nap," she said with a laugh. "It's a little bar — only about 700 square feet," added Leitheuser. "When you're there you feel like you're hanging out with people in your living room."
Speaking with the Poughkeepsie Journal, Thomasula revealed that the bar is imbued with history; back in the 1940s, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt imbibed there, when it was known as The Ritz. In its current incarnation, Thomasula is keen to let the place establish its own identity. "We want it to be the neighborhood bar and then we kind of just let the neighborhood create what it's going to become," she said.
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