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(Image: The Woods)
Capitol Hill’s Christmas Dive Bar isn’t going year round but pop-up bar experiences are, indeed, the new way of doing business at 11th Ave’s The Woods.
The club’s owners say they are jumping into pop-ups full time with the opening of The Mystic Motel, a new Wes Anderson-worthy temporary theme for the space riffing on the grown-up spring breaks of Palm Springs and adventures in the desert.
“This latest pop-up is another export of something we love – the deserts surrounding Palm Springs, which we try to visit as often as we can,” Joey Burgess said in the announcement of the new project that debuted over the weekend. “We riffed on photos we’d taken over the years of crazy things we’ve seen as we’ve explored down there, and we really wanted to bring something that was just absurd and completely unexpected to the Hill.”
CHS visited the Christmas Dive Bar here over the holidays as Burgess and Murf Hall experimented with transforming The Woods into a seasonally themed pop-up experience. At the time, they said they were treating the fun as a one-off experiment but the owners of Pike/Pine businesses including The Woods, Queer/Bar, The Cuff, Oddfellows, Elliott Bay Book Company, and Big Little News say the experience convinced them to give a focus on pop-ups a go at the 11th Ave club.
Hall says the new focus has also brought with it a new attention to craft and detail.
(Image: The Mystic Motel)
“The Mystic Motel has been so much fun to create and so very different than what we did at CDB, which was mostly off-the-shelf elements. With this pop-up, we had a lot of late nights crafting and creating some of the elements you’ll see in the space, like the indoor campfires and desert scenes,” Hall said.
The Woods folks say special cocktails will include the Cactus Cooler and Sedona Sunrise as the main floor of the new Mystic Motel experience features a center courtyard with faux cacti, campfires, and “critters that call the sand home.”
No desert experience would be complete without the sounds and glow of a handmade faux campfire and blanket-covered bench seating. Colored lights evoke the painted colors of desert sunsets and cozy conversations with friends. In the mezzanine, guests will be transported through a start portal and into the Starlight Lounge, where they will be in awe as constellations, nebulas, and whole galaxies swirl overhead.
“Expect to see and hear all the sights and sounds of the desert as the scent of palo santo wafts in the air,” Hall said in the announcement.
Expect the Mystic Motel to be open through the summer until the next theme is announced.
The Mystic Motel is open Wednesdays through Sundays at 1512 11th Ave. Learn more at themysticmotel.com.