When Jupiter’s Pizza and Billiards opened its doors on November 14, 1997, Downtown Champaign was a remarkably different place. Along with Gypsy, and the already established Blind Pig (as a venue), you could start to see a glimpse of what was to come. Carlos, Marco, and Tifani — CMT Ventures as it would become — scraped pennies together and built out the bar almost entirely from nothing.
See?
And there’s Carlos, pouring a beer:
And then here are the three owners. Tifani literally looks unchanged to the day:
Tonight, you can stop in and celebrate two decades of business with them. The place is largely unchanged. The pizza, which is always solid, tastes the same. The bar is the same. There’s video poker now instead of an old CD jukebox (which was awesome and expertly curated by Michelle Brotherton and Lyle Hodges), but that’s just a function of economic viability.
Congratulations to CMT and all of the people who have tended bar, bussed tables, cooked pies, on a long run, and to many more years indeed!