photo: Adam Wallcavage
person
Mom
Sugar Mom's owner Kathy Hughes, better known to her numerous friends, bar patrons and band guys worldwide as "Mom," takes on the world with big chuckles.
"I was walking on my block the other day," says the raspy-voiced 41-year-old, "and one of my neighbors saw me smiling and laughing as usual. She said I made her day."
Smiles aside, Hughes does not seem like the turn-your-world-on-with-a-smile Mary Tyler Moore type. This handsome woman is no waif; with shifting colored hair, coupla' tattoos and a unique fashion sense, Hughes is a grande dame. Yet, as owner of the circus-like grotto bar In Old City, Sugar Mom's, the proprietor of the as-yet-unopened Mom's on South Street, and crash-pad hostelier to traveling punk rock bands ("I don't know how they find me!"), Hughes maintains a giddy restlessness ("it's because I'm single!") and a dedication to treating people nice.
Hughes now-retired father, Mickey Hughes, was some of the source of her inspiration. Partnered with Ringling Brothers North, Hughes was one of the first importers of amusement park rides from Europe.
"It's all my daddy's stuff that's in my bar. That's how I define my spaces... it's all my stuff!"
But it's not her family's money that's made her who she is; it is what she's done. "I was a first crew, all-night waitress on the New Jersey Turnpike in, like, 1973 at the Vince Lombardi Rest Area," she says. She's tended bar at many places, and was once a cook at J.C. Dobbs (now Pontiac Grille).
The 2-year-old Sugar Mom's, the Old City tattoo artist/college-kid/grunge-drinker institution, was the first bar in the midst of the neighborhood's renaissance that made an instant and influential splash in the once-sleepy area as an intimate, almost romantic space to get shit-faced in.
Hughes hopes to make her new South Street space as integral to that neighborhood as Sugar Mom's has become.
"My businesses are always the same: cheap beer, cheap food, clean bathrooms, good quality. I'm looking to do that for my neighbors."
With Kathy Hughes playing Mom, love is all around. You're gonna make it after all.