Design Your Perfect Bar

In what would it specialize?
What kind of clientele would it attract?

Cover bands?
On-site brewery?
Burgers and nachos?
Thursday night $5 all-you-can-drink Coors Light?

 

Outstanding thread topic, as I have been putting work into my own home bar the last few months.

I'm quite attracted to a vintage feel, almost a pre-Prohibition feel. I would have a lot of sports memorabilia up celebrating the city - my bar would be in a city, but it would not be a trendy "gastropub." But the sports memorabilia, as at home, would have to contribute to a certain, vintage feel. I don't want it to feel like a 14-year-old's bedroom. Variety matters in decor, as well. So there would be a lot of vintage blues, country, and rock photos and memorabilia also hanging in places.

I'd probably cater to whiskey connessieurs, and try to earn a reputation as such. It's the most interesting spirit, to me, and there are already so many beer snob bars out there. (Not that I can't appreciate a well-made beer.)

Hard wood floors. Brick-paneled walls. Dim lighting. An after-work bar for yuppies who don't like to hang out with other yuppies. Perhaps a darker, smaller version of "Cheers."

Terrific juke box selection is also a must. If you want to play the Stones or the Who, that'll be on there. But so will Muddy and Son House and Howlin'.

 

Since it would be my bar and not one I would be visiting I would want something that would be easy to run but made a lot of money. So an emphasis on mixed drinks and slutty women.

 

Octave, as you began this thread, I would very much enjoy hearing about your perfect bar. A man of your taste surely has some tremendous ideas.

 

I am a man of simple taste.
Home bar is my next project.
My father-in-law has the best I've ever seen.
I lack the necessary capital to explore the real thing.
I don't necessarily require flair as far as food and drink.
A good bar does many things well - but it must do one thing extraordinarily well.
And the thing it does miserably is more than enough to kill the entire experience.
Such as crappy cover bands.
The conversation is the real music of a bar.

 

Ice. Single large pure ball of ice for straight drinks. Shaved ice for mixed drinks.

Raw oysters and clams. Peanuts and pretzels

 

Waitresses in short plaid skirts and tartan knee socks, with bright red bows under the caps.

 

The bar I want to own would be small. Maybe 50 seats in the whole place, with 10 or so at the bar itself. Dark wood in a vaguely Irish pub sort of way. No smoking inside. But we've got a courtyard out back for that. Also, maybe a couple of tables on the sidewalk when it's nice.

There'd be one TV over the bar and that's it. Most of the time, the sound would be turned off.

I like the new Internet connected jukeboxes, but I hate how some bars block out certain artists. By gosh, if my patrons want to a trifecta of Sinatra, Hank Williams and the Black Watch's pipe and drums then so be it. But the volume will be kept low enough that it's easy to have a conversation over it.

We'd serve beer and hard liquor. Want a frozen strawberry margarita? Sorry, how about a Guinness? Burgers and sandwiches too. In the winter, chili or a stew. If you want to order takeout from a place down the street, that's fine. We've got their menus right here. Just be sure to ask if anybody else wants to place an order too.

Drink discounts for members of the media and cops.

Obviously, I'd have to be independently wealthy to own such a place. Because it'd never make much money.

 

Inky why the discount for cops? Always intrigued by this. They make good salaries.

 

As an old bar owner once explained to me, you give them a discount and it keeps they'll show up. Which means the riff-raff will shy away from the place since cops hang out there. He didn't have a written policy on cop discounts, but he gave them the regulars' discount when they came in.

Also, too, I know a lot of cops around here. They don't make more than the journalists.

 

That makes sense. A small price to pay to keep the riff raff out.

 

I'd want cops in the joint for the same reasons I'd want members of the media there:

To hear their stories.