SOMERVILLE, N.J. (AP) - Phil DiGiulio and his wife, Anne, were living in New York City for 10 years when, two kids later and one more on the way, an 850-square-foot apartment just wasn’t cutting it.
So, in 2014, they packed up and moved to the suburban haven of Millburn, on the border of Maplewood - a story familiar to many young New York City professionals turned New Jersey parents.
DiGiulio was commuting by train in 2015 when he heard John Garbarino of Maplewood talking about his startup, an app called WhoWeUse.
A few months later, DiGiuluio visited Garbarino and was blown away by what he saw. Garbarino had transformed his 400-square-foot garage, which features cathedral-like ceilings and dark wood details, into The GarBar.
Featuring a 14-foot oak bar Garbarino built himself, The GarBar includes an antique bar mirror a friend found in Massachusetts, antique signage, including a Guinness sign hanging outside, a wood-burning fireplace and miscellaneous items contributed by guests. The décor was inspired by the Spring Lounge, a New York City dive bar and the hangout where Garbarino met his wife. He cites the Spring Lounge as an example of the type of iconic bar that is rapidly disappearing.
With its own website, the GarBar is no joke, but it started modestly. Garbarino’s wife had a birthday coming up, and he wanted to throw her an Oktoberfest-themed party. He decided to use the garage as a tent, since all it needed was some upgraded electrical work and floor repairs.
Once that was done, “it was off to the races,” says Garbarino.
He added a TV, wine fridge and some lawn chairs, and built the bar. The endeavor continued to snowball as people brought over bar-worthy knickknacks to complete the experience. “People would come over and say ’Oh my God, where am I? I feel like I just walked into a pub in the East Village,’ ” says Garbarino.
The feeling wasn’t lost on DiGiulio, who had a carport attached to the garage behind his house that seemed too narrow to house a car. “The minute you enter his bar, you get the urge to do something in your space, too, so the seed was planted.”
Last fall, DiGiulio’s Barport was born. It includes a painted sign created by DiGiulio’s daughter, Penn, who was 7 years old when she made it last year. With modern gray and white tones, the concrete L-shaped bar housed under the carport’s roof includes a custom wooden bench, greenery and bamboo.
“The bar was initially built to feed my own interests, but it’s become a lot more than that - it’s a place of refuge after a long day,” says DiGiulio, who often works in the space. “I’ll come home, and the kids will be eating ice cream out there and we will have dinner there at night - it’s like being on vacation. It’s not just a bar, and that’s oftentimes the last thing it is.”
Joe Melvin, a news editor for Union Bank of Switzerland, lives across the street from Garbarino. A year and a half ago, he constructed his own bar, which he dubbed Sloppy Joe’s. At the time, neither knew of the other’s garage bar.
With some internet research and Instagram inspiration, Melvin created a homey, dive-themed bar that includes neon lights, a fake brick wall and a wall of Polaroids showing guests who’ve been to Sloppy Joe’s three times. There’s also lots of nostalgic memorabilia, including old Star Wars toys, soccer shirts, tickets and beer coasters from around the world given to him by friends. “People give me things and say, ’This will look great in your bar,’ and you know that means ’It won’t look great in the house,’ ” laughs Melvin.
Melvin hails from Hoboken, a two-square-mile city packed to the brim with bars. After living there for six years, he and his wife took their two kids under 5 years old and, like Garbarino and DiGiulio, headed to the ’burbs,’ “but after I put my kids to bed at 7:30 p.m., I don’t want my night to be over,” he says. “A lot of people living in suburban areas don’t have the capacity to hang out in a bar - they have their kids inside, and they’re not trying to have an all-night rager. It’s very low key - you can go out there in your shorts and flip flops.”
No, sorry, you can’t stop by and see these garage bars, so these photos will have to do - they’re private entertaining spaces for friends and family, no different in theory from a bar in the basement or a liquor cabinet in the pool cabana. But, they started as much less - just some garages filled with junk.
In a town like Maplewood, where many of the homes were built long ago, the garages are much too small for the contemporary family’s SUV, and instead, they become graveyards for the forgotten junk of yesteryear. That certainly wasn’t what Garbarino wanted for his garage. He says he doesn’t feel the need to “stock up on every tool,” is not apt to DIY around the house (unless it comes to constructing a garage bar), and pays someone to mow his lawn. “I looked at what I had in there and it wasn’t stuff I used often, and I just thought if I throw some things out, I could have space in there,” he says.
With a 70-foot driveway, Melvin, too, wasn’t really using his garage, except to store his lawnmower and the kids’ bikes.
To Garbarino, DiGiulio and Melvin, their bars represent a grown-up version of the city life they once lived - one that’s a stone’s throw from their bedrooms.
“A lot of people living in Maplewood are coming from the city and are used to a certain level of access,” says Garbarino, who moved from New York City in 2008 and completed his bar in 2011. “If you only have four or five places to go and someone says, ’I built a bar in my garage,’ that sounds like a better option, and it can be much more social.”
Garbarino says many who come to the GarBar end up walking out with a few new friends, since “How do you know John?” and “How did you find this?” are easy icebreakers and aren’t words usually spoken to a random person at a public bar.
It’s also a great place for group entertainment. The SOMa Tech Collective, which Garbarino created to bring industry workers in the area together, has frequent mixers at the bar, making for a cost-effective (no restaurant rental necessary) and intriguing (who doesn’t want to see someone’s garage bar?) way to get tech professionals together.
“People were getting jobs from my garage,” Garbarino says.
And about once every month or two, the Maplewood Chamber of Commerce, local charities and schools have hosted events with 20 to 100 people in the space (and in front of the garage).
Since Garbarino does not sell any alcohol and the Chamber provides its own to its members, Garbarino said that from a liability standpoint, hosting the events is “no different from any other homeowner hosting a local event, fundraiser, etc. for friends and neighbors.”
“For my tech events (for) my neighbors, if people ask for a beer I will serve them one (if they are over 21), but I never charge because it’s not a business,” Garbarino continued.
In towns like Maplewood, which has a limited number of liquor licenses despite a population of 25,000 people, it can add to the options. “For someone to have the opportunity to open a good space wasn’t happening, so I thought this would be a fun experience in my backyard,” Garbarino said.
Despite the amount of garage bars popping up in the area and the publicity that now surrounds them, Maplewood Police Detective Sergeant said that no complaints from neighbors or other citizens concerning the bars have been reported, at least from the past few months, nor has he heard any negative reports about them.
At the end of the day, it is still just a garage. “You have to be smart about it with our taxes going up in our town,” said Garbarino. “It’s not insulated, so if you were to remove everything inside it, it would be a garage. Some people have insulated theirs and gotten rid of the garage doors and if you do that, you run the risk of having your taxes increased.”
Online: https://njersy.co/2lGNlXH
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Information from: Courier News (Bridgewater, N.J.) , http://www.mycentraljersey.com
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