Heeeere’s Johnny! (With Your Cocktail)
Are you ready to be transported to an island oasis? Take one step into Red Rum, the new tiki bar in downtown Bellingham, and you’re greeted with bamboo huts, tiki torches, and no visible windows hinting at what the outside world holds. You can’t tell day from night, only that this may be paradise. Red Rum opened in mid-March under the ownership of Aaron Roeder, owner of Cap Hansen’s, and Andy Kawamoto. Currently, the bar is open from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m. (the kitchen is open until 11 p.m.), but plans are to expand its hours to include lunch as well. You may be wondering how this extravagant escape came to have such a macabre name, alluding to Stephen King’s “The Shining.” Roeder said as he and Kawamoto were developing the bar, more and more references to “The Shining” kept popping up, and they finally gave in. “It works, because Red Rum isn’t a tiki bar purist. We kind of blur the lines of being unorthodox and out of the box,” Roeder said. Drinks are expectedly outlandish, with classics like the Mai Tai, Zombie and Painkiller on the cocktail menu. So take a departure from reality, and try out this unusual addition to downtown Bellingham
Check out our entire Wine, Spirit, and Brew stories in our Dine section.
