Zoo Bar

Zoo Bar is a cash-only downtown Kansas City dive bar at 1220 McGee Street, on the southeast corner of 12th & McGee, that has poured on the same block since it opened in October 1982 as the successor to a 1977 bar called Up The Street.¹² Graffiti-covered walls, year-round Christmas lights, a working jukebox, and a pool table define a room that outlasted the rest of downtown’s old dive-bar row.¹³

Description

Zoo Bar occupies the southeast corner of a two-story building at 12th and McGee in downtown Kansas City, a few blocks from the Central Library.¹ It opened October 24, 1982 as the direct descendant of Up The Street, a bar that had run since 1977 on the 12th Street side of the same building, and for years it drew a lunchtime-and-afternoon crowd of lawyers and courthouse regulars, with pool tables in the back room.¹

It is a dive in the full sense: graffiti covers nearly every surface, Christmas lights stay up all year, the jukebox gets used, and the bar takes cash only, with an ATM on hand for those who arrive without.¹³ The Pitch, describing the room in 2007, catalogued the “plethora of animal props” on the liquor shelves — a mongoose fighting a cobra, a badger, a cow skull in a wig, a stuffed bear — the menagerie that gave the Zoo Bar its name, and a crowd of “lawyers, doctors, judges and ordinary people.”⁴ There is no kitchen — the draw is cheap beer, a pool table, a patio, and a wall’s worth of accumulated photos and clippings that reward a slow look.³ When downtown’s dive-bar row thinned out in the late 1990s, Zoo Bar was the one that stayed; for a stretch it operated daytime-only, kept alive by a small core of daily regulars.¹

Ownership and history

Zoo Bar traces to Up The Street, which opened in 1977 on the 12th Street frontage of the building; the corner bar reopened as Zoo Bar on October 24, 1982.¹ A 1984 fire closed it for several months — a detail The Pitch confirmed independently in 2007, when it also reported the bar as roughly 25 years old, corroborating the 1982 opening.¹⁴ Through the downtown decline of the late 1990s, when most of the surrounding dive bars shut, Zoo Bar survived — for a time as a daytime-only room supported by its regulars.¹

The business operates today as The Zoo Bar, LLC, a Missouri limited liability company on record since 2013, and is locally owned.⁵ The Pitch named the owner in 2007 as Ray Webb, a former Jackson County prosecutor — the likely origin of the “former judge” description that circulates on aggregator listings.⁴

Menu

Last verified: 2026-07-24 · Source: Scooter’s Bar Journal¹; Yelp²; IN Kansas City³; official Instagram (@zoobarkc — primary web presence, no standalone website) · URL(s): https://www.instagram.com/zoobarkc/ · https://m.yelp.com/biz/zoo-bar-kansas-city · Confidence: Medium on format (dive bar, no kitchen, cash-only — well corroborated); drink list itemization not possible — Zoo Bar publishes no menu: it has no website, no kitchen, and no posted drink/price list on its Instagram or any official surface. This is an honest partial by the nature of the venue, not a research gap to be closed.

Cash-only neighborhood dive bar. 1220 McGee St, downtown (12th & McGee). No kitchen. Jukebox, pool table, patio; on-site ATM.¹³

Bar (no published menu):¹³

• Full bar — cheap beer, well spirits (a dive-bar drink program; no cocktail/beer list is published by the bar)
• Cash only (ATM on site)³
• No food — the bar has no kitchen¹³

Downtown’s surviving dive-bar-row holdout since 1982. Graffiti walls, year-round lights, a jukebox that gets played.

Links

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoobarkc/ (primary web presence — no standalone website)
• Phone: (816) 842-6060²

Sources

Footnotes

1. Scooter’s Bar Journal — “Zoo Bar,” June 2006 (with later notes). http://www.scootersbars.com/2006/06/zoo-bar-2/ — asserts: opened October 24, 1982 in the southeast corner of a two-story building at 12th & McGee; direct descendant of Up The Street (opened 1977 on the 12th Street side of the same building); lawyer/courthouse hangout with back-room pool tables; 1984 fire closed it several months; late-1990s downtown decline shut most of the dive-bar row while Zoo Bar remained; operated daytime-only for years on a core of dedicated regulars; owner described as a former judge; cash-only. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

2. Yelp — Zoo Bar, 1220 McGee St, Kansas City, MO (listing updated 2026, categorized Dive Bars). https://m.yelp.com/biz/zoo-bar-kansas-city — asserts: address 1220 McGee St, KC, MO 64106; phone (816) 842-6060; dive bar; cash only; currently open with 2026 reviews and hours. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. IN Kansas City Magazine — “Thirsty? Try the Top 11 Dive Bars in Kansas City.” https://www.inkansascity.com/eat-drink/bars/thirsty-try-the-top-11-dive-bars-in-kansas-city/ — asserts: Zoo Bar as a downtown dive with graffiti-covered walls, cash-only with ATM, jukebox, pool table, cheap beer, strong local following. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. The Pitch — Jen Chen, “Downtown Zoo,” May 24, 2007. https://www.thepitchkc.com/downtown-zoo/ — asserts: owner Ray Webb, a former Jackson County prosecutor; bar ~25 years old in 2007 (opening ~1982); 1984 fire closed it temporarily; located at 12th & McGee sharing the building with a bail-bonds office; graffiti-covered dive; animal props on the liquor shelves (mongoose vs. cobra, badger, cow skull in a wig, stuffed bear) behind the “Zoo” name; clientele of lawyers, doctors, judges and ordinary people. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Better Business Bureau — “The Zoo Bar, LLC” business profile, Kansas City, MO. https://www.bbb.org/us/mo/kansas-city/profile/bar/the-zoo-bar-llc-0714-1000025741 — asserts: the bar operates as a Missouri LLC (“The Zoo Bar, LLC”); business-record listing of the operating entity. ↩