Coolest features of a Bar

empacher

Hi Folks.

At the moment I'm refurbishing a Bar I work in. I've being trying to find things to make the Bar unique and unusual in most aspects.

What I'm looking for is any Unusual, Cool, Wacky furnishings for a Bar. It can be any part, from the Furniture, Signs, Roof, The Bar itself, Toilets e.t.c

I've being trawling through pages on Google but alot are completely wacky. But any more would be appreciated.

Things I found on Google get as crazy as the floor being made from plexiglass and there being sharks underneath.


Cheers

Arawn

Do your own ****ing job or pay me my consultant fee

endacl

empacher wrote: »

Hi Folks.

At the moment I'm refurbishing a Bar I work in. I've being trying to find things to make the Bar unique and unusual in most aspects.

What I'm looking for is any Unusual, Cool, Wacky furnishings for a Bar. It can be any part, from the Furniture, Signs, Roof, The Bar itself, Toilets e.t.c

I've being trawling through pages on Google but alot are completely wacky. But any more would be appreciated.

Things I found on Google get as crazy as the floor being made from plexiglass and there being sharks underneath.


Cheers

Cheap pint. That would tick the unique and unusual boxes.

Tombi!

Here are some mad ideas: toilets that are actually clean.

endacl

Brutal Deluxe wrote: »

Here are some mad ideas: toilets that are actually clean.

That's just one mad idea.

Reamer Fanny

Pulling your own pint is pretty cool

Bipolar Joe

Not having to wait half an hour for a pint while you serve loud assholes and chicks with their tits hanging out.

Ruudi_Mentari

All the different liquor bottles on display. Fell like takin my pistol out, pew pew

im invisible

Music that you can have a conversation over,
pool table, maybe a dartboard in a corner where people won't be passing between you and it,
take the seats away from around the bar on busy weekend nights

endacl

im invisible wrote: »

Music that you can have a conversation over,
pool table, maybe a dartboard in a corner where people won't be passing between you and it,
take the seats away from around the bar on busy weekend nights

And self-stirring mugs!

Music4life

Get a jukebox and set it up like them Dive bars in the united states.

GiftofGab

There's a bar in Melbourne which is done up like an apartment. So it's like going to a house party. There's people playing giant jenga, chess and different board games. There's a bed that you can lie in. Nice sofa's. Fish tanks. A phone box. Book shelves. A clothes rack that you can swap clothes i.e. if you take an item of clothing you put another one of yours on the rack. There's an old school tv set. BBQ set. It's a pretty cool bar. It feels like you're chilling in somebody's sitting room.

There's another bar here where the bottom floor is done up like a science lab, middle floor like a hospital and top floor like a gym.

GiftofGab

GiftofGab wrote: »

There's a bar in Melbourne which is done up like an apartment. So it's like going to a house party. There's people playing giant jenga, chess and different board games. There's a bed that you can lie in. Nice sofa's. Fish tanks. A phone box. Book shelves. A clothes rack that you can swap clothes i.e. if you take an item of clothing you put another one of yours on the rack. There's an old school tv set. BBQ set. It's a pretty cool bar. It feels like you're chilling in somebody's sitting room.

There's another bar here where the bottom floor is done up like a science lab, middle floor like a hospital and top floor like a gym.

Where are these bars

lintdrummer

A place i know used to have the front half of an old vw beatle mounted on the wall inside. Looked like it has crashed through the wall. Back half of old scooters, complete with back wheel, make nice bar stools.

GiftofGab

Hailee Low Granule wrote: »

Where are these bars

29th Apartment in St. Kilda and Croft Institute in China town. Both in Melbourne.

im invisible

The ice machine

Sofiztikated

Ensure you get the basics right.

No stupid corners, that will never be clean.
Toilets that are possible to clean, and keep clean.
Proper hand dryers, not those things that wheeze at you like an athsmatic smoker.
Ensure the bar is functional for the staff, as well as the patrons.
Non slip mats/bounce mats behind the bar.
Wash areas that aren't 15 fúcking miles out of the way, and washers that clean that glasses, preferably with a cold rinse, so the glass is cooler coming out of the machine.

Now for furnishings. Are you just looking for a collection of random crap? Or have you a theme in mind?

I'm guessing random crap in the interest of making it "quirky." If it's "quirky" for the sake of it, remember, shít will get poked, prodded, have drink spilled on it, broken, photo's taken, etc. Is it replacable?

Ideas - Furniture made from recycled materials, car/bike parts, scrap metals, old bricks/wooden sleepers. A massive fúcking tree in the bar, with a tunnel hollowed out through it. Hammocks instead of benches. Upsidedown TV. Miniature elephants roaming wild inside. Peacocks. A red pool table. A jacuzzi. Unisex toilets. Sensory depreviation area. A 12 ft stapler. Light fixtures made out of bone. A touch sensitive dance floor. Teeshirt cannons. Proper fúcking CCTV. Human sized hamster balls. Human sized hamsters.

Testament1

GiftofGab wrote: »

There's a bar in Melbourne which is done up like an apartment. So it's like going to a house party. There's people playing giant jenga, chess and different board games. There's a bed that you can lie in. Nice sofa's. Fish tanks. A phone box. Book shelves. A clothes rack that you can swap clothes i.e. if you take an item of clothing you put another one of yours on the rack. There's an old school tv set. BBQ set. It's a pretty cool bar. It feels like you're chilling in somebody's sitting room.

There's another bar here where the bottom floor is done up like a science lab, middle floor like a hospital and top floor like a gym.

Those bars sound awesome! Gonna have to pop in for a look whenever I get around to visiting Melbourne. Wonder if theres anything like them in Sydney?

empacher wrote: »

Things I found on Google get as crazy as the floor being made from plexiglass and there being sharks underneath.

I would fly back to Ireland just to drink at your bar if you did this!

hardCopy

Brutal Deluxe wrote: »

Here are some mad ideas: toilets that are actually clean.

And toilets that aren't freezing, when will publicans stop building freezing cold jacks with no radiator and the window left permanently open?

Lingua Franca

1. Nail a bicycle and a couple of buckets to the ceiling.
2. Call it an Irish bar.
3. ??????
4. Profit!

Sofiztikated

hardCopy wrote: »

And toilets that aren't freezing, when will publicans stop building freezing cold jacks with no radiator and the window left permanently open?

And a seemingly common inability to have hot water plumbed into the taps. Ah, the blue tap, that will be cold. Ah the red tap, that will be colder.

im invisible

im invisible wrote: »

The ice machine

or maybe the toilets.

.red.

ensure your bouncers/door men arent a bunch of arse-h0les who stop people for the craic of it. make sure you tell them they are there to stop scumbags, not groups of 3 males or more.

gobnaitolunacy

GiftofGab wrote: »

There's a bar in Melbourne which is done up like an apartment. So it's like going to a house party. There's people playing giant jenga, chess and different board games. There's a bed that you can lie in. Nice sofa's. Fish tanks. A phone box. Book shelves. A clothes rack that you can swap clothes i.e. if you take an item of clothing you put another one of yours on the rack. There's an old school tv set. BBQ set. It's a pretty cool bar. It feels like you're chilling in somebody's sitting room.

There's another bar here where the bottom floor is done up like a science lab, middle floor like a hospital and top floor like a gym.

If such a bar was over here, people would just steal all the cool stuff or write/gob/puke all over them.

This is why we can't have nice things.

squod

OP. Listen up. This is very important.


Mirrors on the floor. The burds will love it, the blokes will love it even more. Some local night club built a glass bridge over the dance floor. Fantastic!

elefant

Dogs playing cards

Plazaman

+1 on the whole design the place so it can be easily cleaned and kept that way. I cringe when I see carpets in a pub, they have no earthly business there.

Is this a local bar or a nightclub type place? If a local bar you'll need to decide in advance is it (a) a chatty bar with low music so people can talk (b) a sports bar, then you'll need at least 3 TV's that can be tuned to different channels at the same time (i.e. 2 or 3 satellite boxes) (c) music bar, then a stage with proper lighting is a must and if you have your own sound system, it'll be easier and cheaper to hire musicians/bands.

Of course if you have the where-with-all and the skills, your bar can be all of the above but you'll have to carefully choreograph all or it'll fall apart horribly and the chatty people won't come because of the tellys or the sports people won't come because the game isn't on and there a band in the corner or the music people want to watch the band but the TV's are on behind them and theres too many people talking etc etc.

Invoice for consultancy fee in the post.

Sergeant

Things or people who are described as quirky usually end up being anything but.

Mentioned before, but clean toilets.

faceman

Some brilliant suggestions.

Keeping it at a simplistic level. Don't tell your staff to be friendly, just hire friendly staff.

Oh and stock more than just the standard Guinness/Heineken/Carlsberg drafts. There are far nicer beers out there.

Everything else is secondary!

iDave

Why do bars need to be 'cool', 'funky' and 'trendy' these days.
Some of us still like traditional bars.

TPD

Get a load of old small crap CRT tvs and have them all lying on top of each other, some on their side, playing looping videos of nuclear bombs and stuff.

Also, have a microbrewery going in the back and sell your own beer.

Chocoholic84

Have to say I love the Leopardstown Inn - it has a revolving bar, which I find really cool!

Dravokivich

Pinball machine, Pint, for anyone that beats the top score.

Trend Setter in Training

A snug with an open fire, good stout and good finger / bar food.

Once you get people in they won't want to leave.

BraziliaNZ

You don't want to isolate anyone so you can't make it too "quirky" or only certain people will go to the bar. Where is this place? I mean if you opened a hipster dive bar in Roscommon that only sells organic IPAs you're hardly going to do any business.
Suss out the clientèle you'll most likely get, and take it from there.

empacher

its in Galway already part of a nightclub, but as a second secluded room with its own street entrance. I'm tasked with changing it so that it can be opened from 6pm before the nightclub does.


thanks everyone for the suggestions. Just gauging what appeals to people.

bnt

Some of those things above sound lovely, but if this bar's going to be in an urban area, there are going to be limits on floor space. It's all about filling the floor space with paying punters: any space taken up by booths or a pinball machine is space that won't be occupied by a person holding a glass.

Me, I wish more bars kept the music low and had decent acoustics. The top bar in the Guinness Storehouse is a classic example of how not to do it. (Or was - I was there once over 5 years ago.) It has a low metal roof that reflects sound straight back down at the customers. The result is that fewer than 50 people can create a noise level hazardous to health, since they're all shouting to try to be heard over everyone else. And that's before they turn up the "music". Half an hour in such a place, I just want to find a hole and crawl in to it. Going out for a drink shouldn't be like going to a rock concert.

Feisar

Don't know if it got mentioned but good quality drinks sound as funk bartenders is all you need.

SEPT 23 1989

Lap dancing and bands playing behind chicken wire

Buford Tannen

Putting a urinal along along the bar or a bar along the urinal will save valuable drinking time.

GiftofGab

Put a bowl of water with a full lemon in it at the bar. If punters can balance a coin (any coin) on the lemon with it dropping they get a free shot. If the coin drops to the end of bowl the barman keeps all the money at the end of the night as a tip. Sounds easy it aint.

gobnaitolunacy

iDave wrote: »

Why do bars need to be 'cool', 'funky' and 'trendy' these days.
Some of us still like traditional bars.

Very hard to find an untouched traditional bar...the trend in the 70s was rip all the old features out and replace with formica and carpet...bloody carpet everywhere.
Then came the 90's and all the plaster got chipped off to exposed stone walls and all sorts of old rubbish was hung up on display.

finbarrk

empacher wrote: »

Hi Folks.

At the moment I'm refurbishing a Bar I work in. I've being trying to find things to make the Bar unique and unusual in most aspects.

What I'm looking for is any Unusual, Cool, Wacky furnishings for a Bar. It can be any part, from the Furniture, Signs, Roof, The Bar itself, Toilets e.t.c

I've being trawling through pages on Google but alot are completely wacky. But any more would be appreciated.

Things I found on Google get as crazy as the floor being made from plexiglass and there being sharks underneath.


Cheers

This wouldn't be the best place to come for serious advice.

kaimera

coolest you say?

Orim

By the sounds of it, I wouldn't go too funky. It's presumably not somewhere people will be all night. It's waiting for the night club and I'd say that's the way your boss wants it.

Decorate it nice and simple, keep the music relatively low and get a rake of books in. Get down to the local charity shop and you'll a get a good boxful for a score or so. Now they might get ruined but they're cheap and if you get a good, diverse selection then poeple can flick through them while waiting for people. Go for collections of short stories or anything else that can be fully read in same chunks.

connollys

No TV

CardBordWindow

A 50% discount for boards.ie members is always an attractive feature!

Rhys Essien

I was in an Irish bar in Rotterdam a few years back that had an indoor golf putting green.Good craic with a few pints.

Lil' Smiler

really comfy couches, like you're in your own sitting room

Multivitamin The 7th

Get a pinball machine.

hardCopy

gobnaitolunacy wrote: »

If such a bar was over here, people would just steal all the cool stuff or write/gob/puke all over them.

This is why we can't have nice things.

The Black Sheep on Capel St has jenga and board games, they're pretty popular too. If it works in the north inner city it'll work anywhere. You just can't let gougers in.