Dromedary Bar

A bartender who'd spent years behind a busy Manhattan bar wanted his own neighborhood spot. He found a corner space in Bushwick, a former catering hall with the windows boarded up and the whole place in rough shape. His contractor brought us in to design it, and we started where we always start, by asking what story the space should tell.

Designing Around a Last-Minute Tiki Pivot

The owner was up for getting weird, so we built the design around a story: an urban jungle that had been there forever, but also its own animal. We installed tin ceilings and had a custom artist distress them until a weathered industrial bar took shape.

Then, with the finishes going up, the concept took a turn. It was a tiki bar. Rather than scrap the work, we folded that in and designed a concrete jungle tiki bar. Old propellers went up on the ceiling as improvised palm trees, and the wood overhead read like a trellis.

Solving It On-Site, Not on Paper

The building came with open Certificate of Occupancy issues and no hood for the kitchen, and we found solutions to all of it.

The bar we laid out in the room with the owner, who'd worked behind one for years and knew his service by feel, not by dimension. He'd shift a run six inches so the refrigerator was behind him when he turned, and we weighed every move against ADA clearance and the seats he needed. The whole layout was a choreography between bar service and customer experience.

Building a Bar to Age Instead of Wear Out

Budget ran through every decision. Opening a bar meant walk-in boxes, refrigeration, and a full kitchen, so the character had to come without spending on it. Every material was picked to age well and hand-applied to look like it'd been there forever. A chip or a crack a few years in wouldn't take anything away. It just added a patina.

The Result: A Corner Bar Its Regulars Bought to Keep Open

The finished bar gave the owner a room people wanted to stay in, with a stage for open mics, a lounge to settle into, and a bar where everything he needed was within reach. The finishes were made to wear, which is exactly what a busy bar does to a room.

It became a neighborhood staple and an LGBTQ haven for the better part of a decade. When the owner stepped away, regulars bought the bar from him so it could keep going. A generic build-out doesn't earn that.