Coming Soon: BRKLYN
2015 was another banner year for new bars in Adelaide, with big openings like Pink Moon Saloon, Mississippi Moon, NOLA, Peter Rabbit, Oscar Nine, Fat Controller, Gondola Gondola’s Bia Om Bar, Vinyl, Bar Torino, BadDog and The Pearl all adding to our city’s frankly ridiculous drinks scene.
But just in case you thought we couldn’t possibly cram any more new establishments into the CBD, 2016 is already off to a flying start with our first new venue announcement for the year, BRKLYN.
The latest in a new generation of East End establishments, BRKLYN will take over the site of online radio station and venue Soundpond which was put up for sale last year. Located a few doors down from other beloved venues like Sugar and Distill, the team behind BRKLYN are keeping their cards close to their chest, but they’ve told ripitup.com.au we should expect more than a straight-up bar operation.
Working with designer Matiya Marovich of Sans-Arc studios (Pink Moon Saloon, NOLA Adelaide, Gondola Gondola), BRKLYN’s fitout will pay homage to the streets of the Big Apple in some intriguing and quite literal ways. Along with a bar, the venue is set to house a few other separate but complementary endeavours operating by day. One of these is Soundpond itself, which will return in a new form as one cog in the larger venue.
“It’s still going to have a huge musical focus, because I come from a musical background,” BRKLYN co-owner Rashaad Chénia says. “With Soundpond coming along we thought it would be a good way to actually use the space with a lot of other features to get people interacting with the music.”
BRKLYN’s currently under construction home overlooking Rundle Street
Aside from the influence of that concrete jungle where dreams are made of, the BRKLYN team also draw inspiration from across the Atlantic. “I used to live in London, I was born there and have lived in Adelaide for nine years or so,” Chénia says, with his business partner also working in the London bar scene. The rise of multi-use spaces in the UK proved influential when they shifted their attention back home.
“Particularly in places like Shoreditch where there’s a big culture around music, hip hop and that kind of indie scene there’s definitely things springing up,” they say. “You’ll see cafés with retail and coffee shops with hairdressers, so [we’re] definitely aiming for that multi-functional space.”
Working to a vague March opening date, the bar is already promising a focus on craft beer and cocktails, but beyond that we’ll have to wait and see.