Flyover Chic

“Hey,” I was told, “there’s a great new bar in town—ya gotta go check it out.” The source, a well-known political player whose observations always come heavily seasoned with interlocking, multisyllabic profanities, chuckled perversely. “It’s the Red, White and Fucking Blue Bar.”

“The Red White and Blue Bar?” I queried. “What is it? Some kind of patriotic, VFW kind of deal?”

“No, you stupid bitch,” he said affectionately. “That’s its fucking name: the Red, White and Fucking Blue Bar. At the Chambers.”
Not only has real estate tycoon Ralph Burnet built an artsy boutique hotel on the corner of Ninth and Hennepin, he’s installed a bar on the fifth-floor rooftop terrace.

You can perhaps understand why it took some time for the news to sink in. Because most news outlets have rules censoring the granddaddy of four-letter words (including when Dick Cheney uses it), there hasn’t been much mention of the bar’s name in media reports extolling the virtues of the Chambers’ art, architecture, Jean-Georges food, and overall fabulousness. Even hotel staff get slightly nervous when the name comes up.

“Uh, we prefer to call it the ‘rooftop lounge,’ ” said one. But on a cocktail-hour field trip to the Twin Cities’ new conclave of chic, the bar’s real name was on full display, in eponymous colored neon on the wall facing the entrance: “Red, White and Fucking Blue.” The signage is actually a 2004 artwork by Tracey Emin, one of many pieces from Burnet’s Young British Artists collection installed throughout the hotel.

Emin’s art aside, there is nothing remotely red, white, or fucking blue about the RW&FB Bar, unless you count the gigantic red Powerball that hovers on a billboard near the outdoor terrace like some rumpled mope without a VIP pass. Red, white, and fucking blue bars are warm, rambunctious joints, bastions of elbow-rubbing diversity like Nye’s, Grumpy’s, or O’Gara’s—places where patrons have to get real drunk and noisy before an eyebrow is raised.

There’s no room for that sort of lowbrow nonsense at the RW&FB Bar. The stark white, wall-to-wall-windowed room—with its stunning views, low-slung postmodern couches, and glittering, pristine bar lit by dangling, glowing rods—is as coolly beautiful as a supermodel, and just as remote. The stylish presentation carries over to the staff. Our server, who said her last job had been “slinging beers at guys” across the street at the truly red, white, and fucking bluish MacKenzie, now discussed the wine list using well-accented French. Her backless black dress (one of several items designed in New York expressly for the Chambers staff) offered a peek at a low-riding tattoo as she slinked through the room, serving drinks using the straight-backed, slightly-bent-knee technique favored by Playboy bunnies and other servers whose wardrobes make bending from the waist impossible under current laws governing public decency.
“It’s very coastal,” a member of our party commented, and he was right. The place felt like one of the super-sleek hotels in Los Angeles or New York (the Standard or the Hudson, for example), where anyone exhibiting any kind of red, white, or fucking blue attitude would be seated in Siberia, if at all. Translated locally, that means come on down to the RW&FB Bar, but if you’re thinking about dressing up in your favorite reindeer sweater or embroidered sweatshirt, think again.

Are Minnesotans ready to move into this kind of hipoisie hotel hyperspace? It would seem that for a certain demographic—older men, trophy girlfriends, and well-tended women of a certain age—the answer is yes. The paint had barely dried on the Chambers’ “open” sign when Burnet announced his plans to turn the Foshay Tower into the Twin Cities’ first W Hotel. But if you’re looking to hang with the truly arty and hip, they’re probably still where they’ve always been—tossing back cheap cocktails at Psycho Suzi’s.