I'm tempted to label Deuce — the newest, reddest of spots along Liberties Walk — and its participants as one more part of Devil Bart Blatstein's master plan for that sixth borough of hell, Northern Liberties. Sensei Design head Owen Kamihira and Laura Vernola, one-time marketing director for Delilah's men's club, may have been pulled into a Bartman web of evil, but I'll be damned: It works.

As the welcoming cornerstone of the Walk's Building One, Deuce is unlike anything NoLibs has witnessed; a notion that hasn't been missed by the locals, according to owner Vernola and designer Kamihira.

"So many people were nervous that this would be an Old City bar," says Vernola. "I've lived in Old City and did that scene when I was younger. That's not what I wanted."

"'This is too cool for Northern Liberties,' I've heard," says Kamihira of Deuce's sleekness, which contrasts with NoLibs' notably disheveled, threadbare artisan ease.

"It's not North Third," says Kamihira, "but the neighborhood's architecture is changing — modular stuff, log cabins on Lawrence Street, renovated factories. You can't pigeonhole it."

Architecture, says Kamihira, is limited in Liberties Walk due to its pre-fab modular frames. The designer is more renowned for more elaborate spaces; he put the Buddha in Buddakan, the red velvet in L'Ange Bleu and the roundedness in Red Square. Though Vernola had a Vegas-y theme in mind for Deuce, both the owner and designer decided theirs wouldn't be a glitzy, glittering palace. Instead it's a neighborhood bar and foodery with a twist (courtesy head chef Scott Schroeder, of Jones, Brasserie Perrier and ¡Pasion! fame).

"But a sexy one, a really comfortable place with an emotional vibe," says general manager Kelly Townsend, an equestrian/journalist/single-malt enthusiast who came to Philadelphia not so very long ago.

Deuce — 2,200 square feet, 10 foot ceilings — is neither overdone nor too swanky. It is, like Townsend says, warm and emotional.

Despite the heavy red light emanating from Leo Razzi's red crown-in-cube sconces and Floss Italian acrylic dome lighting, Deuce is muted.

A dark cork floor. Chocolate brown ceilings. Black leathery banquettes. Slick onyx-paneled columns topping off a laminated walnut bar. Twisted black iron railing (also by Leo Razzi). Vargas-ish silhouettes due soon in its windows.

"I wanted the neighborhood's artists and tattoo types to be wowed, but I also wanted its older couples to eat and listen to Sinatra," says Vernola.

Then there are the walls.

Their coloring brings Deuce down — a burnt apple, deep burgundy tone that lines everything not covered in one of the 10 sets of opera doors; Amber Lynn Thompson's heat-transfer photo canvases of the Rat Pack and cigarette packs; John David's brown-tone paintings of dancers, drummers and face-forward doyennes. Or Kamihira's thick black panels of vinyl, mirror and lacquer that run from the front (its bar, its columns) to the back room's lounge seating. This is Deuce's focal point: a dimly glowing back bar of mirror boxes and red squares whose theme continues along the left with Razzi's red cubes and the wooden squares that hold Lynn's transfers.

With Deuce, the ornate is more in the feeling than the seeing. "That's a really important point: It's supposed to be a comfortable, inviting bar. The eye candy is secondary. Yet, it's there," says Vernola. Subtle-like. Because the devil is in the details, even when the details are cute-as-pie, like a doggie menu courtesy of Walk neighbor Chic Petique, or Razzi's wrought-iron outdoor automatic pet waterer — a corkscrewy, spring-and-claw-filled piece supposedly designed with Vernola's curlicue hair in mind.

"That's not me," she laughs. "I'm much cuter."

This is neither Kamihira nor Vernola's last project for Blatstein.

"When I first moved to Philly from New Mexico, I thought people were fucking crazy talking up this neighborhood," says Vernola. "I thought you'd get killed or raped. Now? I'm its spokesperson. I totally believe in Bart's vision."

The Kool Aid. She has been drunk.

Deuce, 1040 N. Second St., 215-413-3822.