RBT Video Wakefield: Take a look inside the video shop that's hiding a speakeasy cocktail bar
If you remember the days of browsing the shelves at your local video shop, then a visit to one hidden West Yorkshire bar will take you right back.
Wakefield cocktail bar RBT Video bills itself as the world’s first VHS – very hidden speakeasy – in a nod to the nostalgic frontage that could leave the casual passer-by thinking they’ve stepped back into the 1980s. In fact, customers walking in to what appears to be a video shop will find themselves being invited into the bar hidden out back if they correctly guess the movie of the week.
Once inside, they can look forward to cocktails and New York style pizza by the slice while gazing at the one-of-a-kind art work that adorns the walls.
Owner Nathan Birkinshaw said the idea started to take shape thanks to a “silly, drunken conversation” during the coronavirus pandemic and old video tapes being unearthed while going through the loft. He said: "The concept itself is an 80s video shop with a dirty hidden secret, so you come in, you ask for the movie of the week – which you may have done 20 or 30 years ago at your local video shop – and then if you guess the video right, we open up a secret door and you’ve got a world of cocktails and good times.”
He said it’s not uncommon to see puzzled people walking back and forth past the window in Northgate as they wonder whether it’s a real video shop, adding: “You also get this wonderment, this amazement when the secret door opens up and they go through.”