10/19/2026
When Tom Barnes helped build Coconuts — a tropical-themed nightclub in Pittsburgh’s Strip District — he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
Barnes would arrive around 7 a.m. and stay late into the night, spreading sand and moving coconut trees alongside his longtime business partner and best friend, Tom Jayson.
“He did everything with me,” Jayson, of the North Side said. “He was my right hand and my left hand.”
That work ethic would help Barnes build a decades-long career in the nightclub industry, eventually becoming vice president and director of operations for a nightclub chain with locations from New York to Florida.
Barnes, of Greenfield, died from heart failure on Sept. 22. He was 71.
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