The bar is so new, people don't even know where they are.
"What's the name of the bar I'm in now?" shouts a guy at no one in particular.
"REDWOOD," I shout back, which he then duly shouts into his cell phone. "IT'S COOL," he adds.
It's midnight Saturday and the place is packed with drinkers as freshly minted as the bar itselfâthe kind of barely legal crowd that brings an impressive enthusiasm to the act of imbibing alcohol. (Overheard: "Oh yeah, we totally started with JĂ€ger shots!") Everyone here heard about the place from a friend, or heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend. ("Are you taking some sort of survey?" somebody asks me, then wishes me luck very sincerely. "I think it's perfect!" someone else offers. "Proto-Linda's," declares a third.) Everyone's having a grand old time.
Redwood's where a laundromat used to be on East Howell Street, at the end of that stretch of Belmont upon which those only halfway possessed of their faculties are wont to stand and stare into the sky and respond to unheard voices. It's a one-stop annex to the Pike/Pine bar scene, and the comparison to Linda's is fairly apt: Redwood's got Western-style dĂ©cor and cute bartenders and cans of beer. (Olympia and Manny's, which always sounds like "mayonnaise" when it's ordered, are on tap, and there's a full bar. And free peanuts.) The lighting, such as it is, comes from old-school Coleman-style lanterns retrofitted for electricity; the requisite vintage beer signs are outclassed by a monumental round Rainier platter. Framed bear and elk targets rendered on burlap hang on the wall. Two glowing plastic owls and one unglowing one watch over the bar, which possesses possibly the best bar top ever: highly lacquered wood with a row of underlit spent shotgun shells embedded all its length. If one faux vintage-cabin interior can feel grittier than another, Redwood is more so than Linda's, mostly due to the darkness, the peanut shells on the floor, and the fact that the pool table's jammed into a cornerâmany shots have to be taken with midget pool cues (AKA granny sticks).
Tuesday evening finds a more diverse crowd agewise, and the patrons appear less intent on becoming as drunk as humanly possible. For a moment there's an unintentional mashup of "All Right Now" by Free (on the jukebox) with Seu Jorge's version of Bowie's "Starman" (on another mysterious sound system). The bartender apologizes. I ask a guy sitting at the bar what he's reading, and he shows me the cover; it's a book about a JFK conspiracy theory. "I found it on the bus," he says.
People are running into other people they know; everyone's eating lots of peanuts. I briefly revive my survey. "I live right around the corner, and I didn't even know it was here until a friend told me," someone says. 
Redwood, 514 E Howell St, 329-1952.
