As “outsiders” have flocked to Bridgeport, either as a destination or a place to live, there’s a tension between the new and old. But when longtime Bridgeport resident January Overton took over the beloved local dive bar Sheehan’s, she found a formula that made the sometimes bitter confluence of past and present go down easy. The new bar, Electric Funeral, is welcoming to everyone — so long as they don’t mind a bit of morbidity with a twist of tiki. 

“I’ve lived [in Bridgeport] my whole life,” Overton says. “I have witnessed firsthand how some people from here are unwelcoming to outsiders. We wanted to be the polar opposite of that.” 

Overton, a fourth-generation resident of Bridgeport, says she believes she beat out several other bidders for Sheehan’s — located across the street from the newly renovated Ramova Theatre and Ramova Diner — in a pocket listing (where buyers are sourced through private connections versus a public listing), in part because of her deep roots within the community. 

“The sale came from knowing the family,” Overton says. “I think they really wanted somebody from the South Side, somebody from the neighborhood, somebody who they felt would be good to their patrons, and be able to keep the place going.”

The 40-plus-year-old Sheehan’s, which required patrons get buzzed in the door, became Electric Funeral, named after a Black Sabbath song and outfitted in Satanic and macabre memorabilia. Overton co-owns the bar and Jackalope, a nearby coffee shop that opened in 2012, with her husband John Almonte. The couple combined their affection for horror and the occult (a double-headed animatronic goat is displayed over the entrance) with fun, fruity tiki cocktails. 

Beer and spirits are also available, but Overton says the cocktail program really reflects her and Almonte’s personalities. Served in skull-shaped glasses, “My Cold Dead Heart,” mixes Jackalope cold brew with caramel vodka and coffee liqueur for a modern (and less sugary) take on an Irish Coffee. “The Last Responder,” a spicy pineapple and ginger margarita in a tajin-rimmed glass, is the bar’s most popular drink. However, “The Resurrection Mary,” a habanero-spiked Bloody Mary dished up with a four-ounce sidecar of beer in a skull mug, gives the spicy marg a run for its money. 

“Me and John are tiki-philes,” Overton explains. “We will take vacations and say ‘What’s the tiki bar nearby?’ We have over 300 tiki mugs. In the last 10 years we’ve realized that a lot of the tiki stuff is cultural appropriation. We’ve worked to get away from caricature tiki and lean into the idea of escapism — fun mugwear, fun glasses, fun garnishes.”

Colonial nostalgia is nowhere to be found in Electric Funeral. Instead, there’s an abundance of goth and gore embedded in the cocktails via cartoonish elements: skull-shaped ice, a gummy eyeball floating in a red frozen margarita, and a cobra-shaped glass holding a bright green beverage. It all creates a light-hearted welcoming environment that the couple describes as “a haunted funeral.”

The cocktail menu hasn’t changed since the bar opened in April 2024, in part because Overton wanted to give people time to discover it. The approach made for an “if you know, you know,” speakeasy reputation that harkens to the bar’s history. Come November, drinks will rotate out every quarter. 

Overton says the theme has taken on a life of its own. Not only do they cater to locals who loved Sheehan’s and drinkers in search of innovative cocktails, Electric Funeral has also become a meeting destination for funeral directors, thanks to the way the bar nods to the topic of death.

“People sometimes put off having good times because they’re like, ‘Oh, I got this responsibility,’ ‘I gotta do this and that, I can’t go out,” Overton says. “My whole connection with death is: We’re all gonna die one day, and none of this matters so you might as well go out and have a good time.”

That’s not to say that Electric Funeral is just for those comfortable with the macabre. Overton is betting on it being a place for Bridgeporters and outsiders, as well as for rockers and beyond.

“You don’t need to know rock, you don’t need to know Black Sabbath,” she says. “I love seeing the metal heads sing every word to [a] Lady Gaga [song]. People are coming in for a good time and a good cocktail. So even if you’re somebody who only listens to Taylor Swift, this can be your spot, too.”