If you’re dying for a drink, there’s only one place to get it: At the new bar and music venue in a former coffin shop in East Williamsburg.
Owners Heather and Jeff Rush are about to open the Pine Box Rock Shop on Grattan Street — and the site’s macabre past is definitely part of this bar’s present.
“The ramp behind the bar is where they used to roll the caskets down,” said Heather Rush, before adding, “Ooooooooooh!”
Jeff Rush insists that any ghosts that may have been staying at the factory have since departed. Right after he and his wife bought the space, they stayed in a tent overnight and they didn’t hear anything.
“It’s not haunted,” said Rush. “Or if it is, they didn’t bother us.”
For a place that used to be a casket factory, it sure doesn’t smell like death — but there is a modern funereal feel, thanks to all the wood on the walls.
But don’t think somber thoughts — the wood isn’t from old coffins, but packing crates.
“Our architect wanted to do this finished rustic thing and we wanted to do something that was cheap,” said Heather Rush. “We discovered that shipping pallets are free, you just have to go to the junk yard and pick them up.”
The result is a charming, homey do-it-yourself ambiance — like an unfinished schooner. Perhaps the bar’s oddest fixtures are its icebox and two sinks, which the Rushes collected from a closing auction at Studio B, a troubled Greenpoint club that finally closed last year.
“They sold everything,” said Heather Rush. “Even the Red Bull promotional tables, which I think are actually free.”
The Rushes hope the day their own music dies is a long ways off. Not that they’d have to search very far to find a coffin.
Pine Box Rock Shop (12 Grattan St. at Bogart Street in Williamsburg, no phone). For info, www.pineboxrockshop.com.
