In Sheep’s Clothing, an all-day listening bar in Los Angeles.
Photographer: Jersey WalzHi-Fi Cocktail Bars Aren’t Just for Tokyo Anymore
A new breed of bar aims to please your ears as much as your taste buds.
Walk into Bar Shiru, a cocktail lounge that opened three months ago in uptown Oakland, Calif., and the first thing you notice is the back wall, where about 1,000 vinyl records are lined on shelves 15 feet high. Most of them are jazz: Giants such as Miles Davis face outward alongside current stars like Kamasi Washington. A few albums from hip-hop and R&B artists, ranging from A Tribe Called Quest to Prince to Aretha Franklin, round out the mix.
After ordering one of the bar’s signature highballs and finding a seat in the middle of the room, your attention will likely turn to the pair of Line Magnetic 812 speakers at the foot of this display. Their brass hardware, coarse-weave fabric screens, and top-mounted horns come off as relics from the 1950s. Nearby, the vacuum tubes of two LM-805IA amplifiers glow on either side of the DJ booth. But they’re not here as a piece of expensive design nostalgia: This old-school, high-tech equipment renders beats and blue notes in the bilevel room with a you-are-there clarity.