EASTHAMPTON — It’s the kind of problem all new business owners envy — being too popular.
That’s exactly what happened last month during the soft opening of Gigantic in December, a new cocktail bar along Easthampton’s popular Cottage Street. The bar was mobbed as three bartenders rushed to mix original cocktails with names like Box of Moonlight, Tragic Magic and Blonded Ice Cream Grasshopper.
“The spirit in here that night was really wonderful,” said James Stillwaggon, a Northampton resident who owns Gigantic.
Even when a patron stormed out of the bar that night complaining that, “If I wanted to go to a Brooklyn bar I would’ve stayed in New York,” Stillwaggon says he took it as a compliment.
However, “I’m not trying to import a New York bar here,” Stillwaggon said while sitting at the bar last Wednesday morning.
Gigantic is dimly lit with gas lamps and pendant-shaped ceiling lights that gleam off the bottles of rum, rye and gin stocked behind the bar. An assortment of liqueurs, garnishes and glasses of all shapes adorn the wooden counter. A stuffed, grey-haired fox named Big Red looks down with piercing eyes on patrons of the bar.
Gigantic is located at 78 Cottage St., in a building that formerly housed a bar called The Library. Stillwaggon and bar manager, Ned King, said they hope their cocktail bar will defy expectation.
“Often you can go to a cocktail bar and feel that you are pressured to be something, or like they’re trying to push something on you,” said King, the mixologist responsible for curating the bar’s spirits and crafting Gigantic’s original cocktails. “People have specific ideas of what they want, but it’s much easier to ask: what flavor do you want right now and are you allergic to anything?”
Currently, Stillwaggon, 43, is the interim department chair of the philosophy department at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, and he said his main field of research is psychoanalysis, although he also teaches courses in aesthetics, philosophy of culture, ethics, logic, philosophy of childhood and philosophy of education.
He moved to Northampton from Brooklyn in 2010, and he said opening a bar was always an idea he and friends would entertain but eventually abandon. Last year, that changed when Amy Florek sold The Library to Stillwaggon and a liquor license was transferred to him.
Now he commutes between both jobs.
“Working in ideas and words, there is always the draw to do something concrete to see if you can turn ideas into some sort of reality,” Stillwaggon said. “It’s not just a philosophical experiment, it’s more about being part of this community.”
Speaking from one of the bar’s cushioned bar stools, Stillwaggon casually referenced philosophers, writers and artists such as Hannah Arendt, Richard Brautigan, Rainer Maria Rilke and Marcel Duchamp when describing some of the inspiration he drew on to open his first bar.
He spoke about Arendt’s idea of space from her book, “The Human Condition,” when describing his vision for opening Gigantic.
“She talks about the performances and the recognition we look for in the public sphere and that takes an interesting shape when you think about a bar,” he said.
Anyone can have a beer or a drink at home, Stillwaggon said, so that’s not the only reason people come to the bar.
“It’s an opportunity for people to put their heels on and make a fancy night out of it,” Stillwaggon said.
On any given night, King, 27, shakes calvados, oloroso dry sherry and orgeat in preparation for a Box of Moonlight. He neatly drops Angostura into the concoction and mixes them with a cocktail straw, making the drops look like feathers.
He began making cocktails about four years ago, starting off at music festivals and recording studios — places he spends most of his time off as frontman for the local band LuxDeluxe.
“There is a lot of crossover between drinking and being a musician,” King said with a laugh.
Although he didn’t drink alcohol until well after he was 21 — and has only recently enjoyed drinking beer — King found the history of cocktail making to be fascinating.
“It was the uniqueness of all these different spirits, and that it’s such a huge part of American culture, that I started to get interested in the fundamentals and basic history of it,” King said. “Then I started to realize it tasted really good as well.”
His twist on a grasshopper cocktail, which has been around for 90 years, is a modern take inspired by Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Portland, Oregon.
Normally, a grasshopper “is not very good,” as King put it, and it was originally made with low-quality creme de menthe and creme de cacao.
“Pretty vile,” Stillwaggon added. “A grandma drink.”
But, there is vanilla ice cream and Fernet-Branca in King’s “creamy, minty desserty kind of drink.”
He recommends patrons make it the last drink of the night as its richness can overwhelm the flavors of subsequent drinks.
As for the name Gigantic, there are several reasons, according to Stillwaggon. For one, it’s a nod to the man that convinced him to open the bar: Benson Hyde of Provisions in Northampton. “He’s gigantic,” Stillwaggon said.
Another reason is he would play the Pixies album “Surfer Rosa” to his children on the way to preschool and the song “Gigantic” was one of their favorites.
But, perhaps the third reason he gave might be the truest.
“Even though it’s a small space, it’s a gigantic undertaking,” Stillwaggon said. Paraphrasing Rilke, he said, “An infinite number of things had to go right just for this moment to be possible.”
The cocktail bar also offers beer and wines, and is open daily with hours from 6 p.m. to midnight on most nights, with extended hours on Friday and Saturday.
Stillwaggon also said Gigantic is accepting proposals from local artists who are interested in showing and selling their work at the bar in the future. All of the art on display is for sale and proceeds go entirely to the artist.
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com