This story is part of Illinois Student Newsroom’s series: Champaign’s Honorary Streets: the Stories Behind the Signs.
CHAMPAIGN – Brandon Hardway, a beloved community member and manager of Pour Bros. Taproom, was fatally shot on February 8, 2024. Last August, the segment of North Chestnut Street in downtown Champaign was designated Brandon Hardway Drive.
Brandon’s widow, Erin Hardway, said she pursued the honorary street designation through the city of Champaign to keep her husband’s memory alive and highlight the differences he made in the community.
She said she wanted the honorary street to be as close to Pour Bros. as possible and settled on North Chestnut Street because the street in front of the bar had already been designated as Honorary Chris Decker Drive in memory of Brandon’s friend Chris Decker, who died in April 2025.
“I get really emotional thinking about it,” she said. “Not because I’m sad, I just really miss him. I have his gravesite and I have his ashes, but it’s just another place where I can feel close to him and feel like he’s there with me.”
Born and raised in Champaign, Brandon became the face of Pour Bros. “Everybody knew Brandon when you walked in because he was such an outgoing person,” she said. “Pour Bros. and Brandon just went together; if you thought of one, you thought of the other.”
Brandon’s generosity extended beyond the patrons of Pour Bros.
One of Brandon’s close friends, Kevin Richards, said he met Brandon after moving to Champaign in 2018. They bonded over their mutual love of baseball. Richards was with Brandon when he was shot.
Richards said Brandon was the first person he told when he and his wife began the process of divorcing after ten years of marriage. Richards said he had nowhere to go and was depressed, and that Brandon took him in, saving his life.
Richards wrote one of the letters in support of the honorary street name designation. “Brandon was just this ray of light that could just change the way your day went and could make you feel better about yourself and about being alive,” he said.
The man who was charged with shooting Brandon was committed to a state mental health facility after pleading not guilty to homicide on grounds of insanity. In both Erin’s and Richard’s letters to the city, they discussed the need for gun safety and mental health care.
“Since his shooting and his death, I have been a big advocate for gun safety and for mental health,” Erin said. “In a small way, I hope that it can remind people that Brandon’s death could have been prevented if the owner of the gun had locked the gun away and gotten quality mental health care.”
For his celebration of life, Erin began a “Love Like Brandon” campaign. She made bracelets with that message and gave them out to community members.
“That stuck with me because he was a person who loved real big,” Richards said. “He didn’t take any injustice; no racism, sexism, or anything like that.”
The honorary street sign and the bracelets are just two ways the community has marked Brandon’s legacy. Erin said that hundreds of community members came to pay their respects at his March 2024 memorial service. And, in June 2024, Pour Bros. hosted the “Brandon Hardway Memorial Beer and Spirits Festival.”
“He was a fixture within the community, like one of those local celebrities that everyone knows,” Richards said. “He had this uncanny way of being able to connect with everybody.”
Brandon was known for being a New York Yankees fan, usually sporting a Yankees baseball cap and Yankees sneakers along with his ever-present Yankees tattoos. Erin said it was a few months after she and Brandon began dating that she finally saw him without his cap.
Erin and Brandon became a couple during COVID, when their dates would consist of walking together for long periods of time. Erin said it was during this time that she learned his heart.
“He loves you hard; if you’re one of his people, you were in his life forever. He was funny, outgoing, and he made friends everywhere; he touched lives I didn’t even know about,” she said.