Threesome Tollbooth is to bars what the surprise complimentary back massage is to nail salon manicures: intimate, a tad invasive, but apprehensively calming and weirdly unregrettable. While the coolness of second-wave speakeasies may have eroded along with the popularity of “planking” and thin-as-fuck eyebrows, Threesome Tollbooth’s owner, N.D. Austin—the same man who turned the Chelsea water tower into a speakeasy in 2013—is banking on the notion that extreme intimacy, to some, could be the next infinity scarf of bar culture.
What is Threesome Tollbooth, exactly? It’s a completely legal mixology experience designed for three people: you, a companion, and a bartender. It’s literally a loveseat, a micro bar, and a bartender, who is either Austin or one of his spooky cocktail-mixing compadres, both of whom I assume are completely aware of how ridiculously surreal their hush-hush hobbies are within a closet-sized space.
Though I am sworn to secrecy on the exact location of the Tollbooth (we weren’t even allowed to take pictures), it is tucked into the corner of two popular streets in what desperate real estate brokers affectionately refer to as East Williamsburg. The entrance is a large steel door covered in years of graffiti. Those who are lucky enough to reserve the Tollbooth in advance on their mysteriously-designed website won’t even know the location until the morning of their reservation, when it is delivered to them in a cryptic email:
