This Salt Lake bar is the first of its kind in the city. Here’s what sets it apart.

The best spot to soak in the vinyl vibes at The Green Room in downtown Salt Lake City is against a column on the right wall immediately after you walk inside. Directly across from the spot, two speakers pump music into the bar.

Standing against the column, you are forced to feel every swell of a song, vibrating through the floorboards, bouncing off the walls, surrounding you until you and the sonic waves are one. It’s where co-owner James Ramirez loves to experience music the most.

The Green Room, 17 E. 400 South, opened in September 2024, becoming Salt Lake City’s first hi-fi listening bar — a nod to the types of watering holes that started in the 1920s in Japan and spread across the globe.

Here, there is no aux cord. No TouchTunes. No Spotify playlist. If there’s music pulsing through the speakers, it’s because a bartender pulled a record from a sleeve, placed it on a turntable and set a needle in a vinyl groove. The sound system is entirely analog.

“I wanted a space in Salt Lake that had good music,” Ramirez said. “A bar where [music] wasn’t an afterthought, where the point was being able to hear cool music. Not just run-of-the-mill, top-40 stuff that you hear anywhere you go, but something that’s a little more eclectic, well-thought out and curated.”

All the records here — about 900 — come from Ramirez’s personal collection.

“There’s going to be a lot of stuff up here that is real niche that the average person won’t know,” Ramirez said, “but that’s kind of the point.”

The collection is well-rounded, full of everything from soul to funk, jazz to hip hop, latin to punk. You could pluck “Rockers,” a compilation of reggae artists; “You Forgot it in People” from Broken Social Scene; or the 1977 Ghana Afro-funk album “Make it Fast, Make it Slow.”

“I like to see people Shazamming in here,” Ramirez said, referring to the music-identification app.

Of course, there are some well-known classics, too, like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On.”

Behind the bar, Ramirez is a curator at work. He pulls records out of sleeves with careful precision. The needle lowers, the speakers twinge to life, and suddenly the bar is bumping.

The attention to detail is also reflected in the acoustics. The wall opposite the bar is soundproof, courtesy of design from co-owner Oliver Lewis. Instead of massive TVs, the wall behind the bar houses the vast record collection divided by genre, as well as two record players, a pair of huge speakers from 1987 and a rotary mixer.

“There’s no digital components, so you’re going to get that real old, warm sound from it,” Ramirez said. “Things on vinyl sound a little different.”

To set the ambiance, there’s even a small 1967 Sony television that plays black-and-white music videos — without interrupting the music on the turntable.

Record-shaped coasters float atop the green wooden bartop, and 18 green albums are displayed on floating shelves on a back wall.

The Green Room also has different themed music nights — every Tuesday is Jazz night, for example. “Nothing sounds better than jazz in here,” Ramirez said.

The bar partners with Utah record stores as well to let their staff come in and host some nights. On weekends, DJs take over The Green Room, but they’re limited to spinning vinyl on the turntables. That’s the only rule.

The Green Room is open Tuesday-Thursday from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Friday-Saturday from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Sunday from 7 p.m. to midnight.

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