Probably parts of the Bay area; there are (or were) a lot of VSLI designers coming out of India and Pakistan. It makes for a pretty good variety of cuisines. Yum.
Stranger
[hijack]Do not take the California bar on a lark. Pierce your septum, learn conversational Cajun, or recreate the world’s masterpieces in macaroni. All of those will be easier and more fulfilling than taking the bar in CA when you don’t intend to practice in this jurisdiction. Take the bar in an easy state (there are about 45 easy ones), then waive in where ever you end up.[/hijack]
[QUOTE=Nonsuch<snip>
[ul]
A copper bar top.
[li]No goddamn TVs!! Watch your stupid ballgames at home.[/li][li]An extensive collection of single-malts. All scotches would be served neat unless specifically requested otherwise.[/li][li]Guinness on draft, with bartenders properly trained in drawing a pint of Guinness.[/li][li]A women’s bathroom with 2x as many stalls as the men’s. Gals, I’m on your side here. Besides, it’s good for business; women waiting in line at the bathroom are not buying booze.[/li][li]Real dartboards (not electronic).[/li][li]Free popcorn all night![/li][li]An Imported Beer club. Try all 100 of my imported beers and get a free t-shirt! You know you want to.[/li][/ul]
<snip>
[/QUOTE]
I especially like the extra stalls - most women take forever in the bathroom anyway, at a bar, triply so.
I am so incredibly down with the Imported Beer Club, you have no idea.
I suck at darts, but no problems just watching.
In my 20’s I played on dart teams two nights a week. The league was set up like a football schedule, we played each team twice. Half the games were at home, half at each of the other bars.
This was steel tiped darts on a proper cork board, using chalk to keep score.
Our home bar is/was a brewpub that made their own. Along with 38 taps down the wall where they traded with other microbreweries a couple of few kegs at a time. Every time you go in there you have no idea what’s new or different and you may never see or hear of that excellent some time beer again. They give sample glasses of a sip or two of anything you asked before you buy a pint
Problem was visiting teams always bitched about how expensive everything was. They wanted the local mass produced swill on tap in a pitcher dirt cheap. Sorry out of luck.
I had my own mug with my name painted in gold along the bottom.
There is a free popcorn machine always crackling and burlap bags full of peanuts always there.
No jukebox, canned soundtrack to override the muted TV’s with whatever local sports program is on the few TV’s.
No pool table.
The food is pretty good and also sloppy. Booze alone doesn’t pay the bills. Need the dinner crowd to make money.
Thursday’s in October they have an Oom Pa Pa German band come in and play. Not a fan of that, but packed people in.
I’d use that model but add six pool tables in a side room. Take another side room and put in a giant TV with rows and rows of theater seats to watch games. Add tall tables and chairs with backgammon and chess or checkerboards built in. Lot’s of dartboards and sponsor as many teams as I could. And sponsor softball teams, or whoever would put trophies on the wall.
Damn, I’m sorry I got older and can’t stay out half the night and hang out there as much any more. Getting up obscenely early to go to work and having all my playmates get married and having kids isn’t the same.
One more thing.
I know where I’d put the place after I win the lottery. (It would help if I played.)
There is a one time landfill that they are trying to develop. I’d call my joint **Goob’s toxic dump. ** with half buried 55 gallon drums in the parking lot. Of course I’d need a room with a bed to sleep in there. For the few years it would take before my liver crawled out of my body to die unattached to the host it was attached to.
The name is Eleanor Rigby’s. (If necessary I’ll find a welfare mother of nine in a trailer park in Duck Squat, Ontario who’s willing to sell me the rights to use her name.)
There would be an XM radio at each table that customers could set where they want but otherwise no canned or live music. It would be a “conversation bar”= there would be a library of conversation starter books on one wall and a “single’s section” where those not in conversations can join one.
The interior would be eclectic but there would definitely be a gilded elevator cage somewhere as well as a sedan chair and an elephant saddle. The place is wireless of course, and has the best and highest paying trivia games in town.
Waiters and waitresses dress in Egyptian slave attire.
There would be, can’t think why, a wax statue of old lady who sits in the window by a jar of cold cream. She has several outfits and her attire is keyed to the theme of the night, ranging from English matron to Goth to punk, etc…
Take an abandoned church, put in a multi-level queer discotheque/sauna complex called AhhMen. Piss off everybody.
Seriously, there would be several rooms, each with a different style of music – at least one of which would be disco/new wave/dance-pop every night. Regular karaoke and drag shows. (The best night of dancing I ever had was the Ciel Mon Mardi they used to have every week at Sky; at 1 AM the dancing would break off for a fabulous drag show by the incomparable Mado Lamotte and guests.)
There would be chill-out rooms with sofas, sufficiently insulated so that one could actually hear oneself think or someone else come on to one.
There would either be no smoking so you didn’t have to inhale everyone else’s boucane while you were trying to dance or get a hole burnt in your leather coat by some sphincter wielding a lit cigarette on the floor.
A selection of bouncers would be distributed evenly throughout the club; there would be a fairly interventionist policy on obnoxious behaviour. Zero tolerance for anything involving drugs, especially crystal meth. Big baskets full of condoms everywhere.
Shit, that was me.
Okay, here’s what I’d do:
I’d start with most of Nonsuch’s criteria, sans the beer club (although it is a great way to keep stock rotated if you inventory a lot of different beers, so then again…)
We’d have Guinness, Bass, Newcastle, Chimay, Hoegaarten on tap. I’d have Sprecher beers on tap, too, if I’m in the Wisconsin/N. Illinois area; otherwise, I’ll just become a distributor for them. Pub Ale, Black Bavarian, Special Amber, and their Scotch Ale are mandatory. If you want “Lite” beer or Miller products, you’ll get longnecks, as I’m not going to waste taps and counterspace on that stuff.
The center backshelf is all Irish whisky, from the simple to the sublime. We’d have a good selection of Scotch and bourbon, too, and the usual collection of stuff, all served neat, in a snifter unless otherwise specified. I won’t turn away anybody who wants a hipster cocktail or an exotic, but I might instruct my bartenders to look at them funny when someone orders an “Appletini”. No shooters. I don’t need that kind of crowd in my place. I’d have a decent wine cellar, and if I decided to do food I’d offer a simple menu–two or three different entrees and simple sandwiches, plus soup and salad–which would rotate on different days. I’d probably just rather stick to bar snacks and maybe desserts to catch the after-dinner crowd.
Oh, and we have Irish coffee. Not must coffee with Irish Mist and a little whisky; real, damned, Irish coffee, with sugar and fresh whipped cream. It’s a lot of work, but it would be the signiture drink.
The decor: I’d model it after Paddy’s (those in the Milwaukee area will know what I mean), with a long bar in the main room, a few booths in a corner, and wooden tables in a slighly crowded setup. I’d prefer it to be a sort of rambling place with several rooms or a basement that I could open up when it gets busy. There’d be a snug with a fireplace in one corner, and some games (chess, backgammon, Scrabble…complete with Irish gaelic dictionary 
) and mechanical puzzles to play with. The room would be dim but not too dark to see, and we have to have a couple of “love nests” for the dating crowd, complete with candles and a limited amount of seclusion.
A beer garden would be great, if possible.
Although I’m generally opposed to television, I might make one night a week movie night, with a screen projected on one wall.
Yeah, it’s impractical as hell…but a man can dream, can’t he?
Stranger
[hijack]Sorry Campion, it’s a done deal. I know Bar blah blah blah but the rest of my family my age is all in medicine and it seems a damn sight easier than everything they do. Besides, I have a gift for standardised tests. And I signed up for Bar/Bri. Also, I am going to practice there for at least a year. Besides, my motto is if 45% of the idiots in California can pass it, then I’m planning on being among those 45%. Also, everyone says don’t pick your career out of a hat and I sort of did that as well (well glass bowl, anyway)[/hijaack]
Rick’s American Cafe in Casablanca, only in a tropical, Spanish-speaking country. Since I have been cast out of Panama, I will settle for central Mexico.
Just thought of this WWII ditty:
Parties make the world go round
world go round, world go round
Parties make the world go round
Let’s have a party
Now we’re going to tear down the bar in the Officers’ Club
Boo!
We’re going to build us a new bar!
Hurray!
It’s only going to be one foot wide
Boo!
But it’s going to be a mile long!
Hurray!
There’s going to be no bartenders at our bar
Boo!
There’s only going to be barmaids!
Hurray!
Our barmaids will wear long dresses
Boo!
Made out of cellophane!
Hurray!
You can’t take our barmaids to your bunks
Boo!
They take you to their bunks!
Hurray!
You can’t sleep with our barmaids
Boo!
They don’t let you sleep!
Hurray!
Soda’s going to be 10 bucks a glass
Boo!
Whiskey, free!
Hurray!
Only one for each pilot
Boo!
Served in buckets!
Hurray!
We’re going to throw all the beer in the river
Boo!
And then we’ll all go swimming!
Hurray!
Now no girls are allowed in the USO hall
Boo!
With their clothes on!
Hurray!
There’ll be no loving on the dance floor
Boo!
And no dancing on the loving floor!
Hurray!
Parties make the world go round
world go round, world go round
Parties make the world go round
Let’s have a party
Save a stool for me. You just described my dream bar.
Sounds good. I’d drop in.
My bar would be called the 1939 Room. It would have one of those Art Deco bars with the multi-colored lighting effects you occasionally see in New York, but the rest of the place would be painted various shades of blue. There would be some neon, not too hokey, and a green illuminated clock such as commonly seen in the '40s era. Decor would be drawn from memorabilia of the two 1939 World’s Fairs and anything else that dealt with the year in question – calendars, sheet musics, movie stills, what have you. We would have a good-sized stage for live music (jazz and swing mostly), a dance floor for the jitterbug specialists, and a jukebox filled with actual 78s. Beverages would include up to ten microbrews on tap as well as a roster of classic aficionado cocktails, concocted by a credentialed mixologist. It would be a great place to hang.
I’ve always wanted to open a microbrewery (talk about heavy initial investment!!)
and have myself as an assistant (I’d definitely hire a very talented head brewer though).
I’d consider good guest taps, probably from other brewpubs, but to answer the question, I would have my own damn light beer and not bring in bottles!!
As for a name and beer names and tap logos, well, that’s yet to be determined 
There will be an atlas, a world almanac, a pocket encyclopedia, the Guinness Book of World Records, and one each of the Big Book of Baseball, Football, Hockey, and the Olympics* behind the bar. Also dice cups and cribbage boards.
*name of the book completely made up but you know what I mean.
My bar would be called The Whipping Post and it’d be a real hole in the wall with wood floors, not that you’d see the floors because they’d be all covered in peanut shells.
There’d have to be plenty of seating, a good flow and an attentive staff. And the music would be low enough that you could hear yourself talk…if you kinda shout a little.
Been there. Done that.
My first husband & I bought an old motel just east of East Bumf*** We remodeled. We wired. We cleaned. We put up BIG signs. We hired a band.
Then we opened. Then we had the biggest dmn bar fight imaginable. I was in the kitchen, when I heard my husband say “Take it outside!” I turned to look, and saw something from an old western movie.
The next thing I know, I’m covered with (somebody else’s) blood, and being pushed out the back to to go call for help.
We found out later the whole thing was planned, including blocking the doors and phone. The people who did it lived across the street.
We didn’t stay in the bar business long.
All of you with dreams of narrow specialty bars, fall into the same trap my husband did then. This is not your rec room. You can’t just allow your friends in, excluding those that don’t live up to your expectations.
If you don’t carry what a customer drinks, he won’t change his drink, he’ll go spend his money somewhere that does serve what he wants.
Shhhh … we’re pretending …
There is a small candy shop with phone booths in the back. You go into the phone booth and dial a special number and a secret door opens and lets you into my speakeasy.
Once in, the place is a perfect dive - right out of an old Bogart film - with a piano player and torch song singer. Every table has a telephone so you can call over to another table. Waiters wear white coats and the bartender is from an Eastern European country.
Smoking is not only allowed, it is mandatory. If you don’t like smoke, go to Starbucks.