Finally, Bushwick has a watering hole with personal USB ports and outlets built right into the bar, so your iPhone won’t die while you’re ‘gramming the awesome back patio.
The bearded, burly man responsible for this? Travis Boettcher, a software engineer who sold his shares in Facebook and teamed up with Sean Knudeson, a veteran bartender who’s done turns at The Richardson and DBA. Last week they opened Left Hand Path (because it wouldn’t be a Bushwick bar without a reference to the occult).
Knudeson took some design cues from Club 21 and The Sandy Hut, in his native Portland. “On the West Coast,” he told B+B, “a lot of my favorite bars were these dive bars that were opened in the ’60s as nice-at-the-time cocktail bars — almost Mad Men cocktail bars — and over time they just got shabby and run down.”
Not that this place is trying to be a faux dive. “There’s one thing in Brooklyn people have a nose for, and that’s authenticity,” said Knudeson. “When you go that [faux dive] route it rings a little hollow.”
And so, to give the place its own personality, there’s an A-frame ceiling, lamps that designer Brady Dollerhide fashioned using enamel pieces that resemble Solo cups, and, serving as the beer menu, an impressive crosscut of a 113-year-old Spruce tree from Washington state.
Much like The Narrows, where Knudeson also bartended, there’s a back room and an outdoor patio that’s open till 11 p.m. on weekdays and till midnight on Fridays and Saturday. The bar itself is open from 2 p.m. to 4 a.m. daily, with a menu of soups and sandwiches coming soon.
Left Hand Path, 89 Wyckoff Ave., bet. Hart and Suydam Sts.; Bushwick