A lopsided heart-shaped window was the first thing I loved about this place

2026.8.15

A small heart-shaped window, showing itself quietly from outside the bar.
Some people stop because of that shape, and open the door saying the window caught their eye.
Every time someone says that, I feel a little shy, and somewhere underneath, glad.

But it isn’t decoration.
It was the shape of “this is what I love,” held out without hesitation by a 24-year-old.

I opened at 22, and moved to this place about two years later.
When I decided to build a new room, the first thing that came to me was that lopsided heart.

I’ve been drawn to the shape of a heart for as long as I can remember.
Not the symmetrical, well-ordered kind.
Something slightly crooked, a bit clumsy, and somehow dear for it — that’s the shape that moved me.

I drew a rough sketch and handed it to the carpenter, and we adjusted the angles and the curves again and again,
until that hand-drawn line was cut out of the wood as a window.
I still remember watching it happen, clearly.

Partway through, the contractor I’d hired disappeared,
and the site sat still for a while.

Even so, what I felt about this place somehow didn’t fade,
and once the next contractor came in, I was on site nearly every day,
passing on every small adjustment to the carpenter, one by one.

“I’d like this light moved, just slightly.”
“Could this angle be a little softer?”
“The curve of the heart needs to keep faces hidden from outside…”

And that is how the window came about.

It isn’t a finished, perfected shape. But it sat right with me.
The straightforward instinct I had back then is still alive in that corner of the room.

These days that window quietly holds up the air of the place.
It catches someone’s eye, and becomes their way in.

Looking back, that’s a very quiet thing to be proud of, and I am.

There are days when nothing turns into words.
But when I look at that window,
the shape of where all this began comes quietly back into my chest.

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I’ve written more about the thinking behind this, and about the other spaces here.
▶︎ Feature: the quiet philosophy built into a room