After closing last month following nearly 10 years of business in Southwest Detroit, Mutiny Tiki Bar plans to reopen in another part of the city — but owner Dave Kwiatkowski isn’t ready to say exactly where just yet.
“Mutiny will be reopening this fall in a different location,” Kwiatkowski tells Metro Times. “We should be open by October.”
In the meantime, Kwiatkowski says his Detroit Optimist Society hospitality group is at work on a new concept for the space at 4654 Vernor Hwy. — a gay bar they are calling El Trombone.
It will be the Detroit Optimist Society’s tenth business. In addition to Mutiny Tiki Bar and El Trombone, the group also operates Sugar House, Wright & Company, Bad Luck Bar, Honest John’s, Grandma Bob’s, Last Chance Saloon, Time Will Tell, and Third Street Bar in Detroit, as well as Finger’s Crossed in Northport in northern Michigan.
Kwiatkowski says the idea for El Trombone came from Luka Backus, who has worked as a bartender at the Detroit Optimist Society’s Sugar House and Bad Luck Bar.
Backus says he has long wanted to open a gay bar in the city.
“I feel like the queer community in Detroit is very underground, and it has been for a long time,” he says, adding that his vision is for “a really nice, local gay bar for anyone to feel comfortable, for anyone in the queer community to feel like they can come here and just feel connected.”
Backus says he plans to serve many of the same classic cocktails you can get at the Detroit Optimist Society’s other bars, but with some more approachable offerings like canned beers and seltzers.
“If you want to make gay people happy, you have to have your seltzers,” he says.
The two envision El Trombone hosting DJ nights, drag shows, karaoke, and other programming. “I love bartending, but I think right now more than anything, I like curating events and hosting things,” Backus says. For the past three years at Third Street Bar, he has hosted Railed, which he describes as a “March Madness”-style competition where bartenders are tasked with making drinks out of limited ingredients.
Construction of El Trombone is underway.
Backus says the interior design will have “a hyperpop, leather daddy vibe” with “bright, punchy colors, but also this dark, hot masculine aesthetic,” while Kwiatkowski describes the vision as “very ’70s, ’80s … with lots of orange, black, and mahogany.”
“Lately, I’ve really enjoyed these more hospitable dives, where people want to come every night and they’re just obsessed with the bartenders, the people that go there, the comfort, the openness,” Backus says. “For me, I wanted it to feel like a hub, like a community spot.”
The two expect El Trombone to open by early May.
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