The newest bar on West Beech Street got its first Newsday review in early October, as the summer crowds were leaving. It sits up a flight of stairs, and its staff say it was built for people who have had enough of the dance floor downstairs. Beacon is a martini and craft-cocktail lounge above Jetty Bar & Grill at 832 W. Beech St. Newsday wrote it up in a review updated October 2, 2026.
The timing makes sense once you look at the rest of the street. A West End business takes in most of its money when the beach is full, and it survives on how it handles November through March. Beacon was designed with those months in mind. It also follows a playbook that two of its neighbors have already shown can work.
The Door Around the Corner From Jetty
Beacon took over a space that used to host private parties above Jetty. The entrance isn't on the main Beech Street frontage. It's tucked around the corner from the nightclub, and you reach the bar through a corridor lined with murals and then a staircase. According to Newsday, a light is supposed to shine when the upstairs bar is open. Andi Berlin, who wrote the review, said she didn't notice it on her visit.
Alexandra Howley runs the drinks program. Newsday calls her a fixture of the Long Beach bar community. She joined Jetty's ownership team of John Rugolsky, Chris Fiumara, John Gallagher and Darren Siff. She has been direct about who the room is for. She told Newsday the 30-plus crowd "isn't necessarily very well represented on the West End of Long Beach."
"We wanted to give something that feels a little more like an immersive experience, and caters to people who are over the sticky floors and the booming DJ. It's a 30 and up lounge, focusing on craft cocktails and martinis. A martini bar, I would say." Alexandra Howley, speaking to Newsday
Newsday described the crowd as looking a lot like Jetty's regulars, only a little older. So the same owners, in the same building, have opened a second room for the customers their first room was slowly losing.
How the Martini Bar Works
The menu has 14 cocktails. Newsday describes most of them as sweet, simple and easy to drink, with a few stronger options such as the Light Lunch, made with roasted peanut-infused bourbon, blackberry, raspberry and Angostura, for $17. The main draw is a section called the Dirty's, where you build your own martini step by step:
- Base: vodka, gin, or vodka fat-washed with olive oil
- Brine: olive, pepperoncini, or half and half
- Dirtiness: four levels, from "clean," with just a hint of brine, up to "filthy"
- Olive: four types, three of them stuffed with cheese
- Finish: cracked black pepper, drops of chili oil, a lemon expression, or a pickled pepper
Newsday's server recommended half olive brine and half pepperoncini brine. The reviewer ordered a filthy pepperoncini martini with chili oil and a goat cheese olive for $18.
The kitchen menu is short and mixes bistro classics with bar food. It includes diver scallops with fondant potatoes for $39 and "tartar dippers" for $23, which are a cylinder of avocado and yellowtail tartare served with crispy rice logs for scooping.
Here are the hours Newsday printed in early October. They're new and could change:
| Days | Kitchen | Bar |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday | 5–9 p.m. | Until around 11 p.m. |
| Friday and Saturday | 5–10 p.m. | Until 2 a.m. |
The schedule tells you something. Beacon opens five nights a week, Wednesday through Sunday, and the kitchen closes by 9 or 10. That's a bar planned around people going out for dinner and a drink, which is also the kind of business that can keep going after the beach crowd leaves.
Half the Business, Five Months a Year
The Cabana has been at 1034 West Beech Street for two decades, so it's a good guide to the West End's slow season. Bob and Tracey Johnson own it. He has tended bar his whole life, and she worked as a waitress and is a fourth-generation Long Beach resident. The restaurant marked its 20th anniversary on July 26, 2025, with live music and a party open to the public. The Long Beach Herald covered the celebration on August 1, 2025.
In that story, Bob Johnson gave the number that defines the West End's year. He said November through March are hard months, with business falling about 50 percent because of colder weather and the holidays. He has also seen the restaurant through Hurricane Sandy and the Covid pandemic. When he explained how a place lasts 20 years on Beech Street, he talked about timing:
"You have to take the time to learn the people. Understand the cycle, learn whom your customers are, be present."
He also credited the Cabana's long-standing ties to the Long Beach Polar Bears, Long Beach Catholic School, the Michelle O'Neill volleyball tournament and the Michael Diamond Charitable Foundation. Those are connections that keep paying off when there are no tourists, and the Polar Bears hold their event in the coldest part of the year.
This explains Beacon's timing. If a West End business loses about half its customers from November through March, a room that is still new in October goes straight into the hardest stretch of the year. The test is whether locals in their 30s and up will come back on a Thursday in February.
The Room That Was Built for January
Howley didn't come to this idea fresh. Before Beacon, she ran the bar at Felicia, a small-plates bistro at 26 E. Park Ave., about a mile and a half east. Felicia Nicholas, a first-time owner, opened it in July 2024. Newsday's first review, published August 20, 2024, mentioned "Ali Howley" shaking drinks at the bar while guests waited for tables.
Nicholas spent 15 years in the business before Felicia and worked her way up to managing Chadwick's American Chop House in Rockville Centre. She is a Long Beach resident who has eaten out in the slow season herself, and she said she designed the dining room for it:
"When it's quiet and cold out in January and March, I want people to have somewhere comfortable they can walk into. That's how I like to go out to eat. I like to try things. It helps the conversation with the people you're with."
That's the same idea as Beacon, set a year and a half earlier on Park Avenue. Felicia is a moody, low-lit room with a short wine list, cocktails, and plates meant for sharing. Beacon is a low-lit lounge with a martini menu and a small kitchen. The bartender who worked inside the first one is now running the second one in the West End, with a target crowd she has named outright.
1048 West Beech, Twice in One Year
A few doors west of the Cabana, one storefront shows how quickly a West Beech concept can change when its customers don't match the plan.
The storefront at 1048 W. Beech St. was La Focacceria, according to Greater Long Island. The focaccia-focused eatery opened in July 2025, and a month later Patch reported that the sit-down business the owner expected hadn't developed and that most orders were takeout.
By July 2026, the space had become Buddies Frozen Yogurt. It is run by Michael Waldman, a longtime mechanic, and his business partner Judah Spector. It has nine self-serve flavors and a topping bar that includes fresh cinnamon buns, brownie bites and pieces of cheesecake. Greater Long Island reported the opening on August 3, 2026. Waldman said he wanted people to stay rather than take their dessert and leave. "'Buddies' is the perfect name because we wanted to open a place where people can meet their friends and hang out," he said. "Not just pick something up and leave." Sunday through Friday, the shop is listed as open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Frozen yogurt is about as summer-dependent as a West Beech business can get, and its first real test is the coming winter. Taken together, the 1048 storefront and the room above Jetty show the same pattern. Over the past year, the newest businesses on this stretch have been pitched as places to stay a while, and the operators who talk most specifically about the cold months are the ones who have been around the longest.
The Rest of the Sit-Down Street
Beacon joins a West Beech corridor that already has several established sit-down rooms. Newsday's 2025 Long Beach coverage highlighted these:
- Lost & Found, 951 W. Beech St., a chef-owned bistro, and its sister restaurant Lost at Sea, 888 W. Beech St., a seafood spot with cocktails. Newsday called the pair central to Long Beach dining.
- Grotta di Fuoco, 960 W. Beech St., which serves wood-fired pizza and pasta in what Newsday called an industrial-chic basement dining room.
- The Merrow, 916 W. Beech St., a coastal cocktail bar with a full kitchen, organic wines and craft cocktails, open since April 2023.
- Moneyline, 906 W. Beech St., a sports bar with flat-screen TVs that took over the former Ugly Duckling space.
None of these listings say which places keep full hours every week of the winter, and hours on this street often change with the season. It's worth calling or checking a restaurant's own page before a January dinner. The broader point holds either way. Beacon isn't the first quieter room on West Beech. It's the first one run by a nightclub's own owners, upstairs from the nightclub, and it is still new as the street heads into the months when the Cabana's owner says business falls by half.
When a new room opens on your street, it changes how the whole block feels in February. If you're a West End homeowner and want to know how that kind of everyday texture shows up when buyers walk through your house, Robyn Goldowski is glad to talk it through over coffee, or over a martini with half pepperoncini brine. Get your instant home valuation and start that conversation.
