CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When Spitfire Saloon owner Stosh Burgess decided to close his punk-rock dive bar, he felt that he needed to do something different. He felt stagnant, as if he was still stuck in the punk days of his adolescence.

It was time to mature...

Uh, nope. Burgess regressed from adolescence to childhood and turned the beloved dive hang out into his own circus sideshow -- one stocked with alcohol.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up to Funhouse. The just-opened bar -- 1539 West 117th Street, Cleveland - rolls out red-and-white striped walls, candy colors, optical-illusion art and arcade and table games.

"I decided I wanted to act like a kid all over again," says Burgess, waving his hand around the bar like a magician over a black hat. "I'm still trying to figure out what it all means."

For example, check out that slushie machine.

"You can have a slushie in a variety of flavors, with or without booze," he says, pointing to a row of bottles on the bar. "So far, vodka seems to work the best, but there's a lot of experimenting going on."

He pauses, appearing deep in thought, then adds: "We're also thinking of having candy garnishes."

Burgess has always operated on a whim and a hunch and a personal approach you rarely see in bars. He didn't troll the country looking for a cool concept to copy in Cleveland.

Rather, the concept for Funhouse came out of his imagination and childhood.

"The story behind the slushie machine is I had one and thought, 'You know, we could have slushies and let people pick their own booze to go with them.'"

The story behind the optical-art on the walls was to create a mind-bending milieu. He didn't consider its impact on patrons after a few drinks.

"It's a bit disorienting," he says, staring at a trippy pattern of contorted shapes over the bright blue booths.

The curved funhouse mirror on the other side of the popcorn machine might warp your mind.

"Whoa, check this out," says Burgess, contorting his body in front of the mirror, which he built. "I built this myself - it was a lot of fun building this place, it was like I was regressing back to when I was a kid."

Burgess opened the Spitfire in 2006, the same year that New York's legendary dive CBGB closed - an event that was lamented as the death of the old-school punk scene that Burgess loved. The opening of Spitfire offered a lifeline to punk rock fans and made for a seamless transition for Cleveland's cheap-beer-swilling punk scene.

Spitfire specialized in $1 beers, grunge-punk vibes and live bands playing in a cage in the back corner of the joint.

Funhouse, which opens 4 p.m. daily, will continue doing cheap daily drink deals, but will no longer host live music.

"There weren't many places doing live music when we opened Spitfire, so we wanted to do something for the music scene," says Burgess. "But now you have so many places and it was time to do something unique."

He doesn't plan on bringing in performing clowns, either.

"That might be a bit scary," he says. "I'm not trying to create some juggalo bar --- I just want a fun place that's bright and clean."

The Funhouse is bright, no doubt. It's also cleaner - you can tell before walking in.

"I scraped all the stickers off the front door," says Burgess, as he walks past a picture of an old-timey magician on the wall. "Oh yeah, that guy up there is like our mascot."

He even promises to make all of "life's problems disappear" once you enter the Funhouse.

We'll have to see about that, bartender. First, gimme a slushie. Make it strawberry - and don't get chintzy with the vodka.

For more info, go to funhousecleveland.com.