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"Kickstarter has helped fund a lot of great ideas within the past few years, from an affordable 3D printer to the world\u2019s first fruit piano. On Thursday it will add a new success story to that list: a full-service bar.\nThe brainchild of self-proclaimed geeks David Zoltan and Mathew Wolff, Geek Bar Chicago is billed as a place where geeks, games and booze will all come together under one roof. The project has enjoyed enormous success on Kickstarter, raising its initial goal of $9,750 within the first day.\nSee also: Does the Future of the Space Industry Depend on Kickstarter?\nSince then, Geek Bar has raised well over $30,000, and its creators have decided to get ambitious. If the campaign reaches its final stretch goal of $70,000 by the time funding closes on Aug. 22, Wolff and Zoltan will buy a life-size replica of the Iron Throne, from HBO's Game of Thrones, to feature in their bar.\nClearly these two aren\u2019t afraid to show their inner (and outer) nerd.\n \nStill, $10,000 isn\u2019t much to start a whole bar, not to mention Kickstarter\u2019s ban on posting new businesses, so the founders came up with a mixed funding strategy. The money to actually launch Geek Bar came from traditional investors, who provided the several hundred thousand dollars necessary to get the bar off the ground.\nHowever, according to Wolff and Zoltan, investor money only got them as far as \u201Cfour walls, a bar and a kitchen.\u201D They want to build the rest of the bar \u2014 its charm, character and content \u2014 with help from the community.\n\u201CKickstarter was always a part of our overall strategy,\u201D Zoltan says. \u201CThe investors got us far enough so we can get into the space and at least have the bare bones of what we need. The Kickstarter is to geek the place out, to put up all the trappings and all the cool things that are going to make the geekdom of the geek bar.\"\nThe pair really wants the community to be invested in the bar's plans. \"That\u2019s a really important thing when you\u2019re [starting] a bar that\u2019s centered around a particular culture \u2014 that they have some ownership,\" Zoltan adds.\nCurrent plans, for which the two say they have raised more than enough money, will include long, custom-built tables with outlets for laptops and extra room for board games. The space\u2019s two bars will be themed, with one to resemble a mad scientist\u2019s lair and the other designed around cyberpunk epics such as Blade Runner and Serenity. \nImage: Geek Bar Chicago\nMenus will feature not only geek-centric food and drinks such as the Cthulutini (named after one of H.P. Lovecraft's fictional deities), but also a selection of board games that waiters bring to your table. Small touches add to the overall atmosphere, including servers in lab coats, action figures hidden in the chandeliers and TVs playing sci-fi movies instead of ESPN.\nThe question is, can it work?\nPart of the challenge in creating Geek Bar will be breaking the traditional view of geeks as awkward, isolated people who would rather sip root beer in a basement than ever set foot in a bar. It doesn\u2019t help when countless TV shows and movies depict geeks as a parade of helpless introverts. Even recent coverage of Geek Bar only grudgingly admits that geeks might actually want to leave the house on a Saturday night.\nAccording to Wolff and Zoltan, this couldn\u2019t be further from the truth. \nThere\u2019s a \u201Ctotally false image people seem to have of what a geek or nerd is,\u201D Wolff says. \u201CPeople seem to see them as entirely antisocial, socially awkward and just clumsy in any kind of social environment. Whereas honestly, D&amp;D is being played by groups of four, five or six very close friends from high school on through college. It\u2019s a very social thing that you share; it\u2019s not isolating.\"\nZoltan agrees with his business partner, emphasizing that skeptics have the geek demographic all wrong. \n\u201CGeeks want to be social,\u201D he says. \u201CIt\u2019s not a culture in which doing things on your own is prized or really desirable. They like to go out, they like to be with other people and share and be passionate about these things that they do. So I think that geek bar is a needed thing in that community. When you can throw a stone down any street in Chicago and hit a half a dozen sports bars and faux Irish bars, where are the bars for geeks? There\u2019s a huge hole in the community as far as places that cater to geeks.\u201D\nSee also: 23 Adorkable Wedding Rings for Geeks in Love\nCommunity is at the heart of this entire project. The goal of the Geek Bar is to build a space where people can gather and share the things that they love. After all, if a city can host hundreds of bars for people to gather over football and baseball games, why can\u2019t it have one for everyone who supports Star Trek and Marvel Comics?\n\u201CWe\u2019re talking about a culture of people here in the city that has never really had a good outlet,\u201D Wolff says. \u201CI mean, you stay at home and you play your games. You stay at home and you watch your shows. [When] you go to work, you talk about your passions with your coworkers. You invite your friends to some random bar or some random restaurant, and you talk about stuff, but there\u2019s no place actually inviting you to come in and share that passion with people who you don\u2019t already connect with.\u201D\nImage: Geek Bar Chicago\nStill, whether or not you can name of all the Doctors of Doctor Who, Zoltan and Wolff hope there\u2019ll be a place for you at their bar.\n\u201CWe\u2019re still going to have a great burger,\u201D Wolff says. \u201CIt\u2019s going to be a gastropub. All the stuff that we put around that concept won\u2019t change what\u2019s at the core, which will be food that just tastes delicious and that\u2019s very accessible. We want to have some fun with it, we want to inject some science, some fun playful notes to it, but at the end of the day you can come in and get a great burger and a craft beer.\n\u201CThe idea is, hopefully, you will get out of Geek Bar what you want.\u201D\nImage: Geek Bar Chicago"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/08/22/geek-bar/>