Paper Moon Scott's Addition ((install)) May 2026

The Jasper captures that exact feeling. The bartenders wear vests. The cocktails have names like “The Confidence Man” and “The Orphan’s Benefit.” The music is often old blues or jazz. You half expect a dusty Ford Model A to be parked outside. For anyone who has seen the film, walking into The Jasper feels like walking into the movie’s speakeasy. Richmond is a city that loves its stories. Once a few people mistakenly called The Jasper “that Paper Moon place” on social media or in conversation, the name took on a life of its own. Food bloggers would get comments asking, “Where’s Paper Moon?” Newcomers would ask for it by name.

No owner ever tried to correct it too hard—a little mystery is good for business. So the phantom bar persisted. If you were to hear a Richmonder tell the story of the Paper Moon, it might go like this: “Back in the late 2010s, before Scott’s Addition had all the cideries and the axe-throwing places, there was this one bar that felt different. It was tucked in an old dairy loading dock on Leigh Street. No sign out front, just a painted crescent moon on the brick. paper moon scott's addition

People said you could go there to hide out, to make a deal, to fall in love, or to break one off. It wasn’t on any map. You just had to know someone who knew the password. And then one day, like a ghost, it was gone. The space became a regular cocktail bar called The Jasper. Nice place. But it’s not the same.” That’s the fiction. The truth is tamer: a clever bar with a moon logo, a classic film, and a neighborhood full of romantic ruin. But the fiction is why people still ask about the “Paper Moon” today. Go to The Jasper (3117 W. Leigh St., Richmond, VA 23230). Order an Old Fashioned. Sit in the back booth. Watch the black-and-white movie playing silently on the little TV above the bar. And when someone asks where you are, smile and say, “Paper Moon.” The Jasper captures that exact feeling

Crucially, their logo is a hanging above a mountain range. If you glance at it on a sign or a menu, your brain might easily supply the word “Paper” in front of “Moon.” 3. The Film’s Aesthetic = The Bar’s Vibe Paper Moon (1973) stars a young Tatum O’Neal and Ryan O’Neal as a con man and a orphan girl selling Bibles door-to-door in 1930s Kansas. The film is shot in shimmering black-and-white. It’s a story of makeshift families, beautiful lies, and finding poetry in poverty. You half expect a dusty Ford Model A to be parked outside

They called it Paper Moon, after the old movie. Inside, it was all shadows and bourbon. The bartender—a guy they called ‘Moses’—wouldn’t give you a menu. He’d just ask, ‘What’s your trouble?’ and then make you a drink to fix it.