Get Hammered and Screwed

The Hardware Bar comes to Wilkes-Barre

Lisa Sokolowski

The Hardware Bar isn't a nightclub, it's an experience. If you're the introvert "leaning against the wall with arms folded with a beer bottle in the armpit ... that's going to warm the beer up, and who wants to drink that?" owner Ron Kamionka said. "We get them and bring them in. That's what we strive for."

The Wilkes-Barre Hardware Bar (12 S. Main St., where Club Mardi Gras was) opens March 13. Its target audience is a 23-year-old female who spends two days' worth of salary on entertainment. The idea is to engage her, to make her forget that she's slaving at a job she could quite possibly hate for a wage she probably doesn't think is enough.

But this isn't the place for her to get all dolled up in a short skirt in the middle of winter ... unless she wants to, of course.

"It's not about see and be seen," Kamionka said. "We want people to be a part of the fun. You don't have to worry about being the hottest dressed girl or the guy with the best mack lines. The whole thing goes on around you, and you get swept up in it."

Yes, it's a bar. Yes, alcohol is served. But this bar is the entertainment business, not the "get you liquored up and go home with Mr. Last Call" business.

There will be a video screen behind the main bar, and every so often it will be lowered to play scenes from Jackass or the fight between Adam Sandler and Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore. The staff will perform choreographed dances to songs like "Cotton Eye Joe;" thongs get thrown out during "The Thong Song." It's to catch people off guard, Kamionka said, to give them "a full sensory overload."

And there will be celebrities.

For the VIP-only pre-grand opening bash on March 13, Vanilla Ice will perform. Ice, also known as Rob Van Winkle, will entertain the VIPs starting at 8 p.m. The bar opens to the public on March 14.

"This will be the sixth time we've had him," Kamionka said. "He's sold out every show. ... He does an hour show, and 50 minutes into it, he does 'Ice Ice Baby' and the place goes nuts."

The "Ninja Rap" singer isn't the only celeb-reality star who will be at the Hardware Bar this month. Fans of Poison's Bret Michaels' VH1 reality show Rock of Love will be happy to hear that Jes Rickleff, the winner of Season 1, will be in town on March 22. And just under a week later, on March 28, Coral Smith of The Real World fame will be here. And, according to Kamionka, they are all exactly the way they are on television.

After 10 minutes of talking to Rickleff, he fell in love with her, a la Bret Michael's style. When Smith was at another bar, she was the perfect host for the bitch-slapping contest.

But Kamionka might be a celebrity in his own right here in the 570. People are coming out of the woodwork (oh, yes, pun intended) to find his number and call him for tickets. See, the Wilkes-Barre Hardware Bar is a kind of homecoming. Kamionka grew up in Mountain Top and Nick Krupa, the bar's general manager, also lived in Mountain Top.

"I grew up in the Woodlands," Kamionka said. "You have to dress right and act right. It was all posing."

Not that he's anti-Woodlands, but he is both pro-competition and pro-nightlife. About 45 days after the Hardware Bar opens, he hopes to open Main Street Saloon, a very chill college bar, where beer pong and flip cup are some of the main attractions. Plans are to locate it to the left of the Hardware Bar, with a door in-between so patrons can easily travel from one to the other. Kamionka wants to have three places by the end of this year, five in two years.

"I want the competition to come in after me," he said. "I want people to bar hop."

What the Main Streeters will miss is the chance of seeing the barber's chair, which will be on the main bar at the Hardware Bar.

"The best story is an 80-year-old grandma who was at a bachelorette party did a shot in the barber's chair," Kamionka said.

At the other Hardware Bars (in Mechanicsburg, York, and Harrisburg), there are just-barely drinking age women next to old-enough-to-be-their-dads men.

"The 21-year-old is not pointing at a 50-year-old and laughing," Kamionka said. "It puts everybody on the same level."

So why hardware?, you might ask. It isn't because Kamionka has an affinity for Home Depot. Rather, the building he bought was a hardware store and had been for decades. So, why not just leave the hammers and wrenches and use them in catchy taglines ("Get hammered, nailed, and screwed all in one place!" the Web site reads).

The original Hardware Bar opened in Harrisburg on Thanksgiving Eve, arguably the biggest party night of the year. York opened on New Year's Eve, so why not open the Wilkes-Barre Hardware Bar on St. Patrick's Day weekend?

Lots of bars have a test run, but the Hardware Bar isn't like lots of bars.

To prep for the opening, the Wilkes-Barre staff has been putting in hours learning dances at the bar and will spend some time behind, on, and in front of the bar in Harrisburg.

The staff will be ready for the opening - and so will the inside of the building.

There are peg boards on both sides of the main bar with shelving and a rolling ladder. There are external shutters on one wall, part of the decor of course. But, for those who were in Club Mardi Gras, it won't be completely different. A crocodile, perched on top of a structure in the back of the bar, will remain.

It's not that the croc is nicknamed Bob Vila; it's that it's not worth it to be moved. It's like a 6-foot tall Buddha that sits in another of Kamionka's bars. Does it fit the theme? Not quite. But where exactly would he move an oversized Buddha to?

"This has been the easiest," said Kamionka. "For the first time, we won't have paint drying on the walls when people are walking in."