Lifelong Tacomans quickly home in on the sign looming over the showroom. “New Frontier Lanes Restaurant” it reads, its wanly flickering neon harking to an era when sock hops and poodle skirts were all the rage.

It’s a striking slice of local lore that spent nearly four decades at 4702 Center St., until the New Frontier Lanes bowling alley closed in 2000.

“It was a Tacoma icon, for sure. And that’s why you get that reaction from people who come in and see that sign,” said Neil Harris, the 45-year-old Tacoma entrepreneur who opened the New Frontier Lounge, around the corner from the Tacoma Dome at 301 E. 25th St., in October.

The name of the new music venue was inspired by the sign, which Harris rescued from demolition, for a mere $300 back in 2000.

It and other odds and ends adorning the walls of the venue – rusty saws, a crumbly old map of Pierce County over the bar, an old Chevron Aviation Gasoline sign on one wall – are holdovers from before Harris thought he’d open a music venue.

Harris, a self-described pack rat, has owned the building for three years, only the last half of which has been dedicated to building and running a bar.

“I just need the building to basically put my stuff in. I really didn’t have a good idea what I was going to do with it,” Harris said.

“I hauled the sign around probably seven or eight years. And when I bought this building three years ago, it immediately went in there, along with the old signs and stuff you see in there. At a certain point, it’s just like, well, I need to just go ahead and fix this room up the way it should be. It just built itself really.”

The vintage kitsch and intimate atmosphere, the showroom’s capacity is only 78, add to what is becoming one of the city’s hippest music scenes.

“It’s very quaint, it’s cozy,” Emily Garza of Tacoma said during her first visit to the New Frontier. “It seems like it’s kind of a nice, hip crowd for Tacoma. It looks like a good mix of people.”

“It’s got a good atmosphere. It’s not too loud,” Beth Gould of Tacoma said on a night she dropped in with her roller derby team, the Marauding Mollys. “It definitely has potential.”

Harris had dreamed of opening a music venue for years, dating back to his days performing with popular Tacoma punk band, the Jolly Ranchers. He opened New Frontier with recently departed business partner, George Reed-Harmon, who plays guitar for the popular Tacoma group Mono in VCF.

Given their backgrounds and the intimacy of the club – which has less than a third of the capacity of popular Sixth Avenue hot spot Hell’s Kitchen – it was fitting that the New Frontier has focused on fledgling, indie-rock bands early on. The venue kicked off with the inaugural Squeak and Squawk Music Festival, a showcase of such homegrown talent as the Elephants, Don’t Tell Sophie and the melodic Seattle pop band the Kindness Kind. The event was held in conjunction with Tacoma’s Helm Gallery in October.

But Harris and Reed-Harmon have since parted ways because of differences in opinion on the club’s focus, Harris said. And Harris has consciously expanded the venue’s musical palette, gradually adding country rock (i.e. Tacoma’s Ten Miles of Bad Road), electronica (Eliot Lipp) and even a Tuesday-night jazz jam to the New Frontier lineup. “Really, I’m just kind of open to anything,” Harris said. “I really don’t wanna be pigeonholed into being just a hipster bar or an outlaw country bar or a cello bar. I want it to be accessible to everybody.”

In the coming months, Harris plans to renovate the venue’s upstairs ballroom and expand the New Frontier menu.

“We’re excited about getting a kitchen,” Harris said. “I’m leaning towards maybe a Mexican style – something simple but sort of interesting.”

Harris also owns the space at 1022 S. J St. that housed the popular Monsoon Room until recently, and said he plans to open a new bar there in early 2009.

“I would think we would hopefully be able to get something going over the next two or three months,” he said.

Ernest Jasmin: 253-274-7389

What: The New Frontier Lounge

Hours: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Where: 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma

Admission: varies by show

Information: 253-527-4020 or newfrontierlounge @gmail.com Coming up at the New Frontier

 • Jazz jam with the New Frontier All-Stars, 9 p.m. Tuesdays

 • Moonspinners, 9 p.m. Friday

 • A Room Called Remember, Alligators and Tex, 9 p.m. Saturday

 • Sons of the Widow James, 9 p.m. Jan. 16

 • Umber Sleeping, Bandolier and Canon Canyon, 9 p.m. Jan. 17

 • Damien Jurado, Goldfinch, 9 p.m. Jan. 23

 • The Cave Singers, 9 p.m. Jan. 24

 • Sweet Kiss Mama, Resdeus and A Leaf, 9 p.m. Feb. 27

 • Eliot Lipp, Michna and Nosaj Thing, 9 p.m. Feb. 28