One of downtown’s most popular new bars is celebrating its one-year anniversary in a big way.
Afterlife Bar, which is located at 44 E Court Street inside Court Street Plaza, has become as well-known for its events as it is for its unusual cocktails. It will debut a new menu alongside the block party bash it’s putting on this Saturday.
Tracy Liu founded Afterlife after growing displeased with a decade-plus of work at her corporate finance job. She often spent her time outside of work going to music festivals across the world and connecting with attendees, and wanted to recreate a similar experience inside of a community bar.
“Obviously, lots of people go to music festivals just to, like, do drugs and stuff. But for me, it was always about the environment, the people, the experience that the festivals created for people to come and be entertained,” she said. “And that’s what this bar draws inspiration from. We have no TVs. We don’t have much art here. Everything is kind of gray. And the reason for that is we want to emphasize a focus on human interaction.”
Given the crowds Afterlife has begun to draw on a regular basis, it seems like Liu has largely succeeded in that goal. On pretty much every night of the week, you can find a musician or a DJ inside the space from any genre — whether it be deep house, EDM, trap, R&B, jazz or Latin music — as patrons engage in lively conversation. Often, throughout the evening, bartenders will stop to hand out various trinkets around the bar that are similar to what you’d get from a gachapon machine.
“It’s part of our community building aspect that we invite people to use this space to share their passion, share all sorts of music. That’s what drives our events,” said lead bartender Geovanny Morales-Santos. “This has become a space where a lot of people that wouldn’t normally interact with each other come in, have a drink and strike up a conversation, or bond over the music, or the fact that we’re passing out random trinkets and then they compare them or see who can style them the best.”
Since the first year of the bar focused on community building and self exploration, the second looks to the opposite, because “once you start understanding the self, you start to look outward.”
“I started thinking about duality and yin and yang. Half of yourself, half of something else. From there, I started thinking, well, how do we emphasize duality in a cocktail? And how do we tie it back into the theme of ‘Afterlife?’ So I started thinking about what the opposite of classic cocktails might be and how to tie them together,” Liu said. “Because duality isn’t about choosing one side. It’s about what lies between them.”
Given that concept, it’s easy to see the throughline in each of the new cocktails on the ‘Duality’ menu. For example, the Hinagiku cocktail —which features tequila infused with charred Asian peppers, mandarin, pawpaw, kiwi water and a touch of lime juice — was born out of the idea of “what if the margarita was reborn in Japan.”
Other menu items play with familiar cocktails in similar ways. The Daiquiri-Tini mashes together two seemingly opposite classics, while the Earl Grey Vieux Carré pairs rye, cognac and vermouth with Benedictine, citrus and Earl Grey.
Then there’s the Strawmary, a “Bloody Mary on vacation” made with clarified strawberry-mango syrup. The Purple Sour puts another twist on a classic whiskey sour with ube condensed milk, lemon juice and cardamom-infused whiskey.
“Cincinnati is expanding, and a lot of people are starting to understand how unique cocktails can be, but there’s not a ton of places to have cocktails with a very international taste profile,” Liu said. “I’ve been to a lot of the world’s best cocktail bars and to bars in places like New York, Chicago, LA with these sorts of taste profiles. I don’t know if Cincinnati has the taste for this yet. So this menu is us taking a bit of a risk and incorporating a lot of international flavors to try to get people to explore, which is also a bit of a duality in my eyes.”
Alongside the new menu, Afterlife will shut down part of Court Street Plaza starting at noon this Saturday to celebrate its one-year anniversary with a block party. Several local businesses will be on site to keep the party going with various specials and promotions, including other businesses on Court Street and nearby shops like CinSei.
The event will feature attractions for all ages until 10 p.m., when the party moves inside and turns the music up until 2 a.m. Liu said she plans to repeat the block party every year, and hopes the event is eventually “as big as Asian Food Fest.”
“We want this place and everything we do to be a celebration of community and people that want to share their projects and passions,” Morales-Santos said.
For more information on Afterlife, including its monthly calendar of events, check out the bar’s official Instagram page.
