WILMINGTON — Tom Cruise’s character Brian Flanagan learned more than juggling liquor bottles and picking up women in the poorly reviewed, mega-successful eighties hit Cocktail.
His mentor in the movie, Doug Coughlin, was in the habit of telling Flanagan breezy one-liners that typically began with his self-coined ‘Coughlin’s Law.’
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“Coughlin’s Law: Never show surprise, never lose your cool,” he tells his young protege. Or, “Coughlin’s Law: Anything else is always something better.”
For two young bartenders in Raleigh, the movie represented everything great about their childhood — all the movies and pop culture icons that helped define the millennium’s last two decades.
“When we were bartenders, we used to joke, ‘Coughlin’s Law this or Coughlin’s Law that,’ Zack Medford said of himself and business partner Ben Yannessa. “And one day I said, ‘We should create a bar based around that, and celebrate everything we loved growing up. Back to the Future and Ghost Busters to Right Said Fred, R2-D2, and Johnny 5.’”
Inspired by Coughlin the bartender, the two created a fictional character as their “spiritual guide,” Randy Coglin, a man who embodied “practically everything that made the ’80s and ’90s so great,” according to Medford.
Now, six years after they opened Coglin’s Raleigh, Medford said its popularity persuaded them to bring the party to the coast.
Interior renovations on the spacious second floor of 206 Market Street, including a walled-in, roofless outdoor patio overlooking Market and 2nd Street, are being completed as they prepare to kick things off with a no-cover New Year’s Eve Sneak Peek launch party.
Wilmington’s newest bar and night club will then be open Fridays and Saturdays from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. Later in January, it will begin opening on Thursdays and Sundays, with specific hours to be determined, according to Medford.
A grand opening event is expected sometime in February.
‘Come dance the night away’
Medford and Yannessa had been scouting locations in Wilmington since they opened Coglin’s Raleigh. When their friends from City Limits Saloon backed out of a renovation of the 206 Market Street space and asked them to take over the project, the two former bartenders couldn’t pass it up.
“We jumped at the opportunity — picked up where they left off and started building a bar in there,” Medford said.
Cocktails will be served in Coglin’s Coolers, “those old-school jazzercise squirt bottles we used riding on our bikes bike in the day,” Medford said, and Coglin’s Fishbowls, “which are 64 ounces of pure bliss.”
Medford provided a sample of the cocktails menu:
- Raspberry Beret (homage to the singer Prince) – raspberry vodka, whipped cream vodka, ginger ale, and grenadine.
- Ginger Spice & Everything Nice (Spice Girls) – vanilla vodka, Captain Morgan rum, Ginger Ale.
- Capri Sun – blueberry citrus rum, blue curaçao, and lemonade.
- Kiss from a Rose (Seal) – gin, raspberry schnapps, and ginger beer.
- The Macarena – lime-infused tequila, lemonade, and cranberry.
- I’m Blue (Eiffel 65) – blueberry vodka, pineapple juice, and Sprite served on ice in a neon Coglin’s Cooler sports bottle.
With the water bottle cocktails, the dance floor, the neon strips on the back turquoise wall outlining drawings of ’90s icons like Madonna and R2-D2, Medford’s goal is simple.
“We want to make sure that we’re the best party in town,” he said.
But not just Fridays and Saturdays; Medford envisions a place where Wilmington residents can go for drinks and karaoke during the week or have a cookout on a warm Sunday afternoon.
And for those who need to party like its 1999, as Prince once sang, Coglin’s wide-open dance floor will give you plenty of room to do so.
“It’s a really fun place to come and party and dance the night away,” Medford said. “There’s never been any music better to dance to than what came out of the ’80s and ’90s. When you have Whitney Houston blastin’ through the system, the dance lights flashin’, you got Britney Spears posters on the wall, it’s a party.”
Coglin’s Wilmington is located on the second floor of 206 Market Street.
Mark Darrough can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 413-3815
