Halloween Pop-Up Bar Nightmare Creeps Into Midtown Village

If you’ve firmly said goodbye to summer and are ready to start thinking about pumpkin pie and trick-or-treating, here’s some Halloween news. Teddy Sourias, the bar owner behind glittery Christmas pop-up Tinsel, is getting ready to debut Nightmare Before Tinsel, a Halloween-themed bar with a zombie wall, a room of 1,001 eyes, spider webs, and other creepy decor perfect for Instagram photo ops. It’s at 116 S. 12th Street, where Tinsel is also held. The address was a jewelry store for more than a century, so perhaps there are some old-timey diamond-clad ghosts inside.

Like at the over-the-top Tinsel, Sourias, who owns Blume, Tradesman’s, Bru Craft & Wurst, U-Bahn, and Finn McCool’s, plans to go all out for his Halloween pop-up. Nightmare Before Tinsel will be covered in themed decorations and serve themed cocktails, including one that’s a riff on candy corn, the best candy of all.

When you walk into Nightmare, there’s a 33-foot-long bar with seats for about a dozen, and another room beyond it where Sourias removed a staircase to make more space. Anne White of AGW Interiors, who did Tinsel and the pink-and-turquoise, flower-filled Blume, designed this one as well.

It opens early October, exact date to be revealed soon.

Kory Aversa

Haunt

Eater’s list of the most anticipated restaurants opening this fall included a quick mention of Haunt, a Halloween-themed pop-up bar set to take over the upstairs space at Pearl Tavern, the upcoming gastropub from Townsend owner Townsend Wentz. Here’s the full picture: Pearl Tavern opens in the former Irish Pub at 1123 Walnut Street (next to Wentz’s Spanish restaurant Oloroso) this month. Shortly after, starting Thursday, October 3, and running through Sunday, November 3, the second floor of the new bar and restaurant will open as a Halloween bar, complete with themed cocktails, slasher movie nights, pumpkin carving, costume contests, and a masquerade ball.

Wentz is working with Arts in the Industry, an organization that creates events for restaurant industry workers who are also artists — events like Wands and Whiskey.

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