Cracking the Code
Your First Look Inside Barcode

Come next week, things will be different around here. Times are changing and the very fabric of this city will never be the same.

That's right: you'll have a new spot downtown for happy hour.

Introducing a sexy new spot for pizza, cocktails and late-night discussions of Fed policy (okay, maybe not that last one): Barcode, soft opening next week.

This is not the kind of place you're going to come for a quiet after-work scotch. Or a quiet anything. No, this is the kind of place, dotted with huge communal tables and even huge-er booths, where you'll break bread (and possibly other things) with a whole brood.

Your first experience here may be treating some colleagues to a lunch of brick-oven pizza and “oh, why not” cans of Moo Thunder Stout. (Tip: make your way to the end of the white marble bar, with two stools on the bartender's side of things).

But you'll be back at night with a madcap group in tow. (Let's call them the Ways and Means Committee.) Your conversation pieces: 10 flat-screens, a projection screen and colored LED lights blinking behind glass walls. Your small plates: meatball sliders and grilled calamari. Your cocktails: the Green Tea Mojito or maybe a Rose Kennedy (tequila, melon syrup and lime).

That girl loved to party.