Chiba Bar

It’s gone Chiba Bar, named for the capital of Chiba Prefecture in Japan, a setting in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. The bar is full cyberpunk, a dark place of blue and red lights plucked right out of Blade Runner.

There’s a mural of a cyborg against a grimy urban backdrop, courtesy of local muralist Douglas Rouse. Around the corner, mute TVs hooked into a diminutive Raspberry Pi computer show clips from ’50s sci-fi movies and ’90s anime. Bass-heavy electronic music pounds near the dance floor, but most of the bar is quiet enough for conversation.

It’s perfect for those who wish the corporate-owned, economically disparate, tech-saturated dystopian hellscape that is the 21st century had a better aesthetic sensibility. The menu is full sushi.

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