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Surrealist's Bar

 Yes, the room *is* spinning on you.
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Picture a funhouse inside a bar. The shape of the room itself would be completely disorienting--almost rectilinear, but not quite. The floor would be a tile, checkered pattern, but would be wavy. The lower halves of mannequins could be stuck, trunk-first, to the walls. Pictures on the walls would flip every half-hour or so to the picture at the next booth. Chandeliers would hang at slightly odd angles. A few would move around the ceiling or swing, very very slowly; perhaps a few inches every half-hour or so.

The bar itself would be designed so as to create an optical illusion of perspective; towards one end, all of the 'horizontal' surfaces would meet together in a point.

At random places in the walls, the paint would vaguely resemble people's faces, and key points, like the eyes, would change color every so often.

As the night progresses, the waitresses could change outfits and makeup a few times, slowly 'morphing' into giant insects by closing time.

The trickiest part will be to get the entire room to slowly spin. I imagine it could be designed like the revolving restaurant on top of the Hyatt, with a stationary center core with the entry / exit.

The practical benefit of the surrealist's bar is that the sheer weirdness of the place would encourage people to emerge more sober than they normally do.

—RayfordSteele, Jun 30 2002

possibly what the Boy Wonder was looking for <g> http://www.halfbake...20D_92Isorientation
[po, Jun 30 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

C. Bobby's Owl Tree http://www.sfstation.com/bars/cbobbys/
For you 'night owls.' Also ranked as the "Best Place to be Paranoid" at some other SF site. [polartomato, Jul 02 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]

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       The HalfBakery is developing a sense of humor. When I searched for 'surreal bar' it returned [destro]'s 'Cereal Bar' idea.
—phoenix, Jun 30 2002
   

       // The trickiest part will be to get the entire room to slowly spin. //   

       No need: project a backdrop onto fake windows and maybe have the floor shake ever so slightly now and then.   

       I think giving the illusion of the whole bar rocking from side to side very slowly -- like a large ship in a slow swell -- might be more surreal than a slow spin.   

       Plus you could show subtly odd occurences in the fake windows: Elvis walking past pushing a shopping cart, an alien spacecraft flying overhead with nobody noticing it, skyscrapers slowly leaning to Tower Of Pisa angles, nude taxi drivers, a bus with square wheels and a U-Haul trailer, leaves falling up into trees, a second sun...
—JKew, Jun 30 2002
   

       [UnaBubba] Maybe the SillyBot has taken over.   

       [po] Exactly so, FourCatsMad Girl. To the Custard Cave!
—phoenix, Jun 30 2002
   

       Ah ha! I thought I'd come across something similar here before; just couldn't find it.
—RayfordSteele, Jul 01 2002
   

       If you are really lucky, the more booze you have and the more drunk you become, these strange effects will be less noticeable - your imbalanced walking is almost perfectly countered by the swaying room.   

       Or perhaps you would just become, like me, very scared.   

       Either way I think the Surrealists Bar would encourage more drink. I know I would.
—Jinbish, Jul 01 2002
   

       In a pub the other day, I overheard a very drunk man explaining to the barman why he should be allowed to have another drink. His argument ran (translated from slur), "I'm having that menopause thing, next thing you know it'll be men with antlers..." I would very much like to have a Surrealist's Room in bars where staff can house gibbering alkies in relative safety.
—calum, Jul 01 2002
   

       Sounds like the sort of place where the barman keeps telling you that "You are Number Six" and the doorman is a huge white bouncing rubber ball ....   

       I would go there ....
—8th of 7, Jul 02 2002
   

       Isn't that place called C Bobby's Owl Tree? It's real, I think. Let me find a link. Lest this idea sink.
—polartomato, Jul 02 2002
   

       If there were more bars like this, people would stop using drugs... or at least have an alternative to their socially-unaccepted, expensive habit.
—Pericles, Feb 22 2003
   

       pericles: Hallucinogens aren't that expensive. that being the only class of drugs that would give be like this bar. though they are socially-unaccepted. I would think that expanding ones mind to be a good thing. i'm often wrong.
—notme, Feb 22 2003
   

       so is there any link between the pictures and manequins? You mention tiles. What about having some dinner tables and chairs in a swimming pool. I mean- possibly drained of water. Although an underwater, formal dinner exhibition tank could work quite well, with the right actors... What would the outside look like? Where would it be?!?!?
—itsmeee, Jun 18 2003
   

       I once heard a story of two "friends" who played a joke on one mentally-ill individual: They pasted photos of him all over his office in odd places: On the hands of the clock, in the bottom of his desk drawer, on the doorknob, etc... It might have been funny, were it not for the fact that the mentally-ill individual thought he was relapsing into hallucinations, and, despairing, killed himself.   

       Sorry to dump that keg of icewater all over your parade, but I figured it was relevant.
—TerranFury, Feb 11 2004
   

       [Terran], with friends like that...
—k_sra, Feb 11 2004
   

       There's an 'EarthQuake' restaurant north of Barcelona. Gets a good tourist crowd. Not sure if you end up wearing your dinner. Would your bar have peanut bowls full of pink and blue placebos?
—disny, Feb 11 2004
   

       I'd LOVE to see the expanded business plan for this one!!   

       Problem with a bar that discourages drinking, smoking and similar vices is, well: it's a BAR!!   

       HOW will it make money and maintain all these outfits for (broke) waitstaff, pay the muralist(s), hydro to turn the room…   

       Sorry to rain on your 'neat' idea but, the primary focus of a business is to make money by fulfilling a need or creating one and not to shoot itself in the foot by abandoning the core deliverables of its industry for art and whimsy.
—NeMo, Mar 06 2004
   

       Dude this is the *half*-bakery, not Business Weekly. Most ideas here wouldn't make for good business plans, that's not the point of the site.
—RayfordSteele, Mar 06 2004
   

       You forgot to mention the barstools that slowly change height... Oh, right, in a Bar, that is a given.
—ye_river_xiv, Nov 08 2011
   


 

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