Two years and three weeks ago I was a lost soul wandering the alleys of downtown Las Vegas. Well, I wasn’t exactly “lost” in the spiritual sense. Instead, I had no way of knowing where to find the entrance of a club that had just opened near the corner of Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard. The tucked-away speakeasy was called the Downtown Cocktail Room, and I was to meet its owner, Michael Cornthwaite, a sort of downtown renaissance man whose business was part of the burgeoning Fremont East entertainment district.
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In a scene that would be repeated hundreds of times for similarly misguided patrons, I walked to the entrance and froze. I pushed on the darkened glass, making it murky with my palms. I looked around. I think I knocked. I checked for a trap door. Then I made my way around back, to the alley, toward what I thought was the back of the club. There were some garbage cans strewn about, some general spilth to observe. I was really adrift. I didn’t know whether to return to the front of the club or shed my tie and start dealing mescaline.
Cornthwaite fetched me, calling out, “Hey!” and leading me back into the club. He then showed me the vaunted silver door at the left of the club entrance, which looks only like a big silver slab and not an entryway. “That’s probably going to happen a lot,” I said, prophetically. It has. That door is the club’s signature design affect.
Cornthwaite’s business formally celebrates its second anniversary tonight with a host of DJs and an indoor-outdoor patio party. It should be a swingin’ good time at a club that appeals to just enough locals and downtown-favoring patrons to stay afloat. From its opening days, the Downtown Cocktail Room has been something of an insider’s club catering to the savvy, smart and would-be- smart Las Vegans who can’t stomach the strobes and drone of Strip nightclubs. “It’s got a vibe,” Cornthwaite likes to say, knowing that the vibe of his hideaway is sort of difficult to describe. It’s cozy, friendly, and a good place to find off-duty (and in some cases, on-duty) journalists. “We have had tremendous support writers, right from the beginning,” Cornthwaite says. “Ever since we open, 99.9 percent of the coverage we’ve gotten has been positive.” The club has been given free, laudatory pub from Imbibe, Food & Wine (for its best bars in America issue) and even Women’s Wear Daily. It’s hard to knock DCR, an acronym that quickly took hold in part because LV Weekly nightlife writer Xania Woodman started referring to the club as such.
A veteran of Vegas club management, Cornthwaite says he’s lucky the economy hasn’t totally torpedoed the club. One reason is that DCR is dependably “referral-based,” and the club’s clientele has gone viral in passing information to friends and family even if they aren’t Las Vegas locals. “I’m sort of surprised at the number of out-of-towners we get,” Cornthwaite says. “They don’t want to see the craziness. A lot of locals are kind of proud of the (Fremont East) area. They are demonstrating to their friends that we have real places, just like every other city.”
Cornthwaite says his objective over the next few months is to “set downtown on fire and bring back a great happy hour. I want to bring back a legit, fun, energetic, upbeat happy hour.” He has a model – the popular happy hour at the now-shuttered Mad Dogs & Englishmen. For the downtown bar scene, that qualifies as a noble goal.
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