Within the next few weeks, the Coppertank will be resurrected as America's Pub, a one-stop warehouse nightclub with four concepts rolled into one huge after-hours abstraction. America's Pub combines the best of dancing, theater, sports and food, boasts founder Brian Hagan. "Our theater is we have two charismatic entertainers, an MC and a DJ that perform, acting as glorified hosts," he says. And the food is inexpensive grub on afterburners. "Quick in, quick out," Hagan emphasizes.
America's Pub has hit Dallas at a particularly propitious time, what with all of the flag-waving fits and God blessings on America erupting on our bumpers and front lawns. Patriotic partying is now hipper than a yin-yang tattoo. To that end, America's Pub will have a huge dance floor, live music and more than 50 televisions sown all over the premises broadcasting more sporting events than a human can ingest without sprouting spud roots.
In the eight or so years Hagan has been operating America's Pubs, which now inhabit Kansas City, Missouri, St. Louis and Wichita, Kansas (coming soon to Cleveland), Hagan says he's discovered that the more TVs the merrier. The more short attention spans the merrier, too.
Also in Deep Ellum, Santiago Peña, the contractor and sculptor who crafted the interiors for Thai Tango, the defunct Dragonfly Restaurant and Bar, Star Canyon and AquaKnox restaurants, among others, is not content serving tacos to go from Santiago's Taco Loco Express on Main Street. So he's taking over a circa 1941 white, graffiti-blemished brick building across from Monica's Aca Y Alla to turn it into Santiago's Cantina Grille. The 200-seat restaurant, serving up a medley of Spanish tapas and Italian and American fare, will be equipped with two barbecue pits in the rear as well as patio and rooftop seating. "All the restaurants and stuff I built, they only do one thing," says Peña. "I always wanted to do something that does a little bit of all of it."
