Raleigh dive bar’s new look is an oasis with a ‘hella fast’ slide. But there are rules
When Kim Hammer turned the old Raleigh bar The Office Tavern into the Johnson Street Yacht Club, she set out to create the dive bar of her dreams. That meant a jukebox stocked with only female artists and a corner table built as an exact replica of the one on the boat in the movie “Jaws.”
Now, it also means a slide.
When the Johnson Street Yacht Club unveils its new rooftop bar this week, it will also break the champagne on a bright blue slide, a first for Raleigh’s bustling Glenwood South nightlife scene.
“The best part of a dive bar is it can be anything you want,” Hammer said. “When we came into this space it reminded me so much of an old divey boardwalk bar. Where it’s really dark and when you walk outside it takes a minute to adjust your eyes to the sunlight. I had this idea that it would be fun to be able to get downstairs by slide.”
Located at 710 W. Johnson Street in Raleigh, the Yacht Club opened in October 2019. But by March of the next year it was shut down for months by the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Slide research’
The bar used some of the COVID downtime to plan and build a rooftop and conduct some “slide research,” Hammer said. That included visiting playgrounds and trying out the latest in slide technology.
“We found out that the twisty slides don’t really work when you’re taller than five feet,” Hammer said.
The slide at the Yacht Club is a steep drop to the left, fast enough that you’ll get a tickle in you stomach but quick enough that the light is soon at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps it will be a thrill or a bit of nostalgia. Maybe it will be faster than just taking the stairs.
“It’s fast enough that it gets your heart rate up a little bit,” Hammer said.
As with most things in adulthood, there are rules to the slide. You can’t take drinks down the slide with you. You can’t climb up the slide. There will be a sign next to the slide warning that it is “hella fast.”
A Glenwood oasis
The newly built rooftop deck more than doubles the Yacht Club’s size, laid out with colorful metal chairs and tables and soon pool deck chairs. There’s now a second bar, plus the addition of frose and slushie machines. Soon it will have a vintage seesaw to add to the playground vibe. Downstairs, there are a new pair of hammock swings.
Inside, the Yacht Club, as Hammer said most folks refer to it, kept many of the Office Tavern artifacts. It’s still dark and cavernous, mostly lit by neon and the bright lamp over the one pool table.
Hammer said the new bar is a very specific vision that includes a little bit of everything. If nothing else, though, it’s now the bar with the slide out front.
“We don’t want to do it unless it doesn’t already exist,” Hammer said. “We don’t have to have a big sign for people to find us. We’re that bar with the slide and we take that with stride. ... We want to be a little bit of an oasis (on Glenwood).”
New and exciting
Hammer’s 2020 was difficult, even by bar owner standards. Her downtown retail shop Raleigh Provisions closed, Yacht Club was dormant for months and her first bar, Bittersweet, operated at a fraction of its usual sales.
The slide, she said, fulfills a dream that predated the pandemic, but comes at a time when perhaps there’s hope in something bright and new.
“It’s a wonderful feeling, being a bar that survived,” Hammer said. “I think we all feel lucky to be able to do this and now add something new and exciting.”
Bittersweet was built around dessert and cocktails, believing, she said, that a love of cakes and s’mores doesn’t end at adulthood.
The dive bar expansion is the same, Hammer said, combining “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” with a sun-baked boardwalk bar and a darkened dive.
“As a kid who grew up watching Pee-wee’s Playhouse, I wanted to make things for adults that for some reason we stopped doing,” Hammer said. “You don’t get to do these things anymore, so we wanted to give you a place where you get to do it.”
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 11:08 AM.
