I was reading a Bill Bryson book and he was complaining about modern style, specifically how he was always slightly irritated when hotel bars decorated with a few books than called themselves “The Library”.
It got me thinking a little about drinking spots with more interesting features. Things like bowling alleys, mechanical bulls or singalongs are not exactly commonplace - but are hardly unheard of. What are the more interesting (or if you prefer, irritating) bar or pub or tavern features that you have seen?
FWIW, I know a cool bar that was once briefly a genuine embassy and retains its dignified air.
I always thought it would be cool to have an indoor bar with beach volleyball courts and plenty of sand, mimicking the waterfront somehow. It’s probably been done, but I’ve never seen it. It would be popular in winter!
In New Orleans I’ve spent time drinking in The Dungeon, which has an S&M theme. In fact, a bouncer threw me out once.
I was dancing with my gf’s friend, who we were vacationing with. She is a classically trained dancer. On the dance floor she was doing kicks over my head, and she’s pretty tiny. People cheered, but the bouncer called it dangerous.
There used to be a bar in South Bend, IN that had a narrow little free throw court set up to shoot free throws. It was a regulation time and backboard and was a few feet longer than the free throw line. Didn’t cost anything to borrow the ball, it was just over on the side of the eating area, with a net separating you.
There was a local place called the Cadillac Club. It was a nightclub, with live bands and recorded music at other times. But the interesting thing about it was that the front end of a 1959 Cadillac extended out of the back wall and onto the stage. Bright red, with gleaming chrome and working headlights, and polished often.
I only heard about the Cadillac at the Cadillac Club from local friends, as the club closed before I moved here. But the building was still there, unoccupied. A few years after I arrived, it was announced that the old Cadillac Club would be reopening as a sports bar. It would still have occasional bands, comedians, and whatnot; but its main focus was to be a sports bar.
And indeed it was. Satellite dishes all over the roof, and inside, at least 48 TV sets showing sports. But it’s a big place, and we explored it on opening night–there was an air hockey table, a pub shuffleboard table, some pinball games. There’s the washrooms–always good to know–and there’s the stage, for when bands come in. Wait, what?
The Cadillac still extended out of the wall, onto the stage! A few years later, I got to know the owner, and I asked him why the Cadillac was there. Apparently, so many people remembered the Cadillac so fondly, that he figured it was worth keeping. Besides, it may bring in people who otherwise might not come to a sports bar.
The Cadillac stayed there for five years, until the sports bar renovated.
The Safehouse spy themed bar/restaurant in Milwaukee has been around since the 60s. There is no formal or signed entry to the place. To gain entry there is an unremarkable door in an alleyway with a plaque marked “International Exports Ltd.”. Going through the door leads to a tiny room/office with a receptionist at a desk who asks how they may help you. If you know the password they will grant you access to a hidden passageway to the place. If not, well, they will find a way for you to prove your worthiness to get inside.
Decades ago, there was a very nicely appointed bar/restaurant on a small, uncontrolled airfield. It was accessed by those in the know via a random door in the back of one hangar. No signs, ads, or information about its existence except word of mouth. I don’t know if it still exists, but I showed it to a few other pilots many years ago. I have no idea whether it was “legal” (i.e. licenses, health dept.) but I never saw gambling or any other activity beyond food and drink while there.
I was going to mention the Safe House, too. It was still owned by the founder (who was a fraternity brother of my father’s) until a few years ago, when he sold it to the Marcus Corporation; they opened a satellite location in downtown Chicago a few years ago. It has the same method for entry (with, thankfully, the same password ).
One of my favorite bars, when I was in school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1980s, was a speakeasy-styled bar called The Barber’s Closet, in the basement of the Hotel Washington. It, too, had a hidden entrance – there was an actual, working barber shop, and to enter the bar, you had to pull on the razor strop on the wall, which pulled open the hidden door. Alas, the Hotel Washington (which was home to several cool bars) burned down in 1996, and the Barber’s Closet is gone.
There’s been a couple of pubs with a stock exchange theme and the prices vary according to demand. The prices would update like a stock ticker. I know of one in D.C. and one in London, not sure if they survived Covid.
I grew up outside Milwaukee, and we’d often go “into the city” on weekend nights. We’d always come up with some odd reason to tell our friends or dates as to why we had to stop to pick up something at International Exports Ltd. (I never saw a receptionist, just an antique time clock with a lever and a sign “Visitors Please Punch In”. It was fun trying to convince a newbie friend to pull the lever).
Part of the fun was that, after the bookcase opened, and you went down a long pitch black tunnel, you came out into a '30s-styled bar where everyone had been watching you on closed-circuit TVs. There was usually applause…
…except for one time, when we all watched a random drunk stumble in to the very tiny office, lean on the lever, do a comic double-take and head down the tunnel. Dozens of heads swiveled to the entrance, which never slid open. A manager opened it and reported no one was in the tunnel. We all watched them replay the tape, but no clue where that guy went… I need to raise a toast to his memory.
I once went to a place in Toronto, that was in a former bank building. It still had the bank vault, which was the VIP area. Of course I never got into the vault, but you could see it, and it did seem kind of cool.
"A former K-mart store retooled by local entrepreneur Karl Magid, the 75,000-square-foot club – named after a 1920s honkytonk song – defied widespread predictions of its early demise and drew fans from as far away as Windsor, Buffalo and Ottawa.
It was absolutely huge, with a 300 foot long bar (The world’s longest bar, according to Guinness World Records) just inside the doors. Went there once with a group from my residence at the University of Guelph when I was in first year. Oddly enough, never went there when I was a grad student at Waterloo a few years later.
But pretty damn big. You could have a few hundred people there drinking and dancing and it still felt empty.
In St Martin in the Quartier d’Orleans, there is a small family owned and operated restaurant called Yvette’s . We knew Yvette when she was still alive, and have stayed friends with her children, grandkids, etc.
One night we were there lingering over coffee, as the last diners of the evening. We’d finished a bottle of wine with our meal. The owner asked if we’d like to come sit at the bar for an after dinner drink. We’d never seen a bar. The restaurant is really just a “family room” that has tables in it.
We followed him through a small door, walking into his home, where there was a modest bar with four chairs. We sat and shared a few stories over amaretto.
I get my hair cut in a basement salon, just one woman who inherited it from her grandmother, and I noticed on the wall she had an article on the Hotel Washington. Turns out that her grandmother ran the Barber’s Closet, her parents owned the hotel, and she was the kid that you’d see sitting and doing her homework in a barber’s chair.
Most interesting I can think of was the bar in the south bank of London that had a hostel attached. And just a few days ago I thought I had completed my categorization of the various places to stay when I remembered it:
Hotel, looks like a hotel and has services.
Resort: can looks like a motel or hotel from the outside, has services but they are often in a different building.
Motel: drive up, no food service.
Inn: looks like a motel and is not centrally located but does have a restaurant.
Flophouse/hostel: centrally located but no parking, and no services.
I don’t know what to call a place with a bar and a place to stay in the middle of a city but that doesn’t look like a traditional hotel.
Oh, another one I forgot that was ubiquitous in college towns is something like a Soap and Suds, combining a bar with a laundromat. Not sure if they’re still a thinking with modern dorms having new washer/driers and there’s no more wink wink nod nod towards under 21 drinking
There was a chain of those (whose name escapes me at the moment), which opened up a location in Madison while I was in grad school there. At least for that location, they had two significant issues with drawing a college crowd:
It was several miles off campus
At least initially, they couldn’t get a liquor license, so the few times that I did my wash there, the “bar” was only serving soft drinks
There’s a bar in my neighborhood that has a full-sized bocce court. Indoors, not out back.
I’ve only been there once, I think. Not really my crowd. But if you’re twenty-something, or thirty-something and still think you’re twenty-something, and have a high tolerance for crowds and noise, it looks like it would be fun.
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