Photo by Torrey Bailey
Hive
Chorus Karaoke & Bar owner Scott Na opened Hive (4428 Convoy St.) in February, advertising its 13 private karaoke rooms, arcade space, craft cocktail menu and an anticipated nightclub area. But a few months after opening, Hive still is incomplete and lacking an identity.
The self-proclaimed “mega-restaurant” sits in a strip mall, as is par for the course in Kearny Mesa. Exposed brick frames a tall doorway that leads into the 8,000 square foot former Office Depot space. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stripe the walls of the open-format restaurant. It’s supposed to feel like a library, but arcade games and projection screens showing sports highlights disrupt the supposed theme.
The karaoke rooms don’t play into the design scheme either. Instead, each room is sponsored by a spirit brand, such as Cutwater, Tullamore Dew Whiskey or Buffalo Trace. And these brands have control over the decor.
“That’s the one thing that our bar manager is great at, getting the brands to work for us,” says bar co-manager Ram Unwin. “He knows the system and gets them contributing for some advertising space.”
The Fireball-sponsored room is painted red and features its trademark logo. The Cutwater room has blue and white walls, a laser-cut metal brand sign, plus a few pufferfish hanging from the ceiling. The advertising also seeps out of the karaoke rooms and into the main space, meaning that aside from the bookshelves, Edison light bulbs (go figure) and a small model ship in the middle of a room, much of the décor boasts brand names. A Buffalo Trace Whiskey statue perched on a table passes as ornamentation, as does an XXL white skull from El Jimador tequila. Free advertising also undermines the sliding bookshelves that lead to Hive’s adjacent speakeasy, Honeycomb. Instead of being stacked with books, empty liquor boxes line the shelves.
Honeycomb opened the first week of May, but recently had to close for improvements and will remain shuttered for an indeterminate amount of time. Aside from being a speakeasy, it has also been marketed as Convoy’s “Vegas-style nightclub,” equipped with a DJ booth and bottle service on the weekends.
“One thing that doesn’t exist in Convoy is real nightlife,” says Unwin. “It hasn’t existed here for a really long time, so we’re trying to be the spot for that.”
That statement rings true, but trying to be a speakeasy, luxury nightclub, multi-cultural restaurant, craft cocktail bar and karaoke destination stretches the venue too thin. This is Kearny Mesa, after all. Not Vegas.