Paint on the windows proclaims “Alvis Live” comes to the Pinehurst on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday each week, a confusing sentence that turns out to mean that Alvis, the owner, plays three shows a week on what suffices for the bar’s stage inside. One can only imagine the musical selection entailed, though overheard at the bar was the direct quote, “It’s kind of Elvis and also kind of not.” The bar’s main entrance sits next to a second doorway that looks like its door has long since been removed, a portal to a staircase that apparently leads to a room that can be rented out above the bar (see Yelp for some choice words about the cleanliness of said room).
Walking into the Pinehurst Inn feels like walking through some kind of portal in time, the short, muraled hallway giving way to a sprawling, almost cavernous interior space that by nature of the lighting looks like it might just go on forever. The stimuli kicks in immediately, a CD-era jukebox just inside with what looks like some kind of mirrored duct tape proclaiming that the machine is still in use (five plays for a dollar). The space is very, very “red” for lack of a better term. The lights, the flooring, the paint, the carpet, the decorations, entering the bar feels like somehow walking into the folds of a velvet couch.
Checkerboard flooring gives way to red diamond pattern carpet gives way to a dance floor gives way to plush red booths and that’s not even counting the actual bar area itself. Said booths line the space before it transitions into a darkened corner in the distance that houses what looks to be the remains of a secondary bar. Broken chairs, a defunct piano and, for some reason, a functioning Jr. Pac Man machine make up the land of misfit dive bar toys in the back of the space.
