Equipment Room

Equipment Room is a hi-fi vinyl listening bar underneath Hotel Magdalena on Music Lane, just off South Congress, and it is modelled on the mid-century Tokyo kissa — rooms built around a record collection and a sound system, where the music is the reason you are there and conversation is kept at a level that does not compete with it. The collection runs to around 1,200 records, played through custom Klipsch Heritage speakers, with SIVGA headphones at select listening stations for anyone who wants to disappear into a record entirely.

The cocktail menu was built by Robert Björn Taylor, previously of Péché, Otoko and Emmer & Rye, and is split into an A-Side of classics and a B-Side of original riffs. Cocktails are eighteen dollars; mocktails are twelve and available on request rather than as a separate named list. Food runs to caramel puffed cheese corn, tomato toast and karaage.

The format is the reason it belongs on this site. A listening bar solves the specific problem of not drinking better than almost any other kind of venue, because it supplies the thing alcohol is usually recruited to supply — a reason to be there, and a structure for the evening. The room runs at roughly 65 to 70 decibels: quiet enough to talk, loud enough that nobody expects constant talking. There is no round-buying, no bar to stand at, and no lull that a drink is needed to fill.

Bunkhouse, the group behind Hotel Magdalena, has form for rooms with this much specificity, and the intimacy is real — reservations through Resy are recommended rather than optional, because the space is small.

Open Monday to Thursday from 5pm to midnight, Friday from 5pm and Saturday from 2pm until 2am, closed Sunday. Ask the bartender what they can build zero-proof; the mocktails are made to the same standard as the A-Side, they just are not printed.