Tagged: bars

REVIEW: El Tropico @ Old Blue Last, 26/08/2011

I have to be careful when writing this post. Old Blue Last is Vice’s pub, and as you’ll see on the right my blog is part (albeit a tiny, insignificant one) of Vice’s Blogging Network. So I’m now faced with the balance of writing a post that carefully balances cynicism and apathy with the fact that I did actually have a fairly enjoyable evening.  Too far in either direction and they’ll probably get the coffee boy to write a snarky post about me on their website, where everyone will agree that I’m incredibly annoying and should pretty much never go outside again.

It’s important to note that before I went to OBL I went to Cargo (no sign of Bongo Bob this week), where I drank a lot of tequila, so everything I say should be taken with a pinch of salt. And a slice of lemon. I also went to a bar that was running a night called Cher, which turned out to be a gay night (should have guessed from the name?), and another that resembled a velvety boudoir but was full of ageing skinheads. But that’s not so relevant.

The music is pretty diverse, ranging from groovy house to Rihanna, who (if I’m to believe her lyrics) wants to be ‘taken in the night’ like a common thief snatching a handbag and  relishes the idea of being the only female survivor in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Weird. It’s all fairly danceable, but is barely audible anyway once one of the organisers hands out multi-coloured whistles to the crowd. Imagine one drunk person with a whistle. Multiply that by fifty. It was as pleasant as you imagine.

What made the night really enjoyable was the people. Take Steve the organiser, for example, who was MCing for his birthday with a naivety and sense of enthusiasm that I presume means he doesn’t have to do it so often that it’s crushed his spirit. Or the girl who didn’t hesitate to tell me that one of my classic moves, which involves shaking imaginary dice above my head, looked like I was ‘wanking off Hagrid’. There was also a couple comprised of a guy who looked like Louis Theroux and a bootylicious black girl krumping at him (not ‘with’, definitely ‘at’), but I don’t think there’s a way of putting how funny that was into words.

A downside to the night is that the staff refused to sell me the stuffed armadillo behind the bar, and were unable to direct me to an all night taxidermist where I could purchase one of my own.  I’m willing to overlook this, and might even go again.

REVIEW: Cargo & Callooh Callay, 22/07/2011

Callooh Callay (stock photos- useful when your camera sucks.)

I toyed with a number of headlines for this article, including Stuart Bradley and the Unknown EMI Artist, but all of them sounded as much like rejected Harry Potter titles as the above example.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty much the best I can do, as the event I’m reviewing was several weeks ago and I wasn’t even meant to be there – I got in by claiming to be a tech reviewer for a national newspaper who was writing an article on social dynamics within the electronic music scene.  An elaborate story to construct sober, let alone after a heavy evening of after-work drinks, I credit being able to blag entry to the gravitas of this lie.

The above paragraph is a pretty good introduction to my life – a relatively new addition to London, I am a serial blagger and a have a passion for music and writing.  On nights out I tend to do first and think later, which usually (I hope…) makes for an entertaining read.  By the time I get to Cargo, I’ve been hanging out in the VIP area of Callooh Callay for several hours.  I don’t mean the bit through the wardrobe, there’s another bit you need a key to get into.  I didn’t, and still don’t, have a key, and I’m not sure if I’m even supposed to be talking about it or everybody already knows about it. Oh well.  The cocktails at CC that night are named after girls and accompanied by a caption that describes both the girls and the drinks, which is undeniably a pretty cool touch.

People on drugs at Cargo (another stock photo...)

Anyway, Cargo.  I’d only been once before, with a friend and a minor league celebrity who insisted that we film a ‘music video’ on her iPhone.  On playing it back the next day, we were dismayed to find that we looked like extras from Requiem for a Dream.  Free entry before 10pm – that’s always a good sign.  Another good sign is that there were enough good looking women to ensure that a very drunk, very ‘play the numbers and you’re bound to have success’ friend was able to disappear for about an hour before we found him attempting to chat up two eastern European girls and very messily eating a burger from the BBQ outside.  I got a burger too…it was actually pretty amazing.  Satiated with meat, I switched back to cider after blagging my way into…uhh, someone’s EMI launch party.  Much to my dismay, he was playing drum and bass.  I know, like it was 2005 and everything.  I didn’t have much time to mope though, because the VIPs (oh, and me) got turfed out at 1am.

What makes Shoreditch nightlife really interesting is the characters you meet while you’re out.  An example that springs to mind is the middle-aged programmer type we met who was wearing red jeans, a red Hawaiian shirt and an Indiana Jones hat.  After introducing himself as Bongo Bob, we asked him why he was dressed like that.  ‘Because I feel like it, man’ he replied.  Respect.  Now I’m writing for Made in Shoreditch and I might get press passes to lots more things like this, I dread to think of the rabbit holes I’m going to find myself waking up in.

The Try-fecta.

The confusion strikes me a few moments after the snappy Russian promo girl hands me the flyer – I’m sure she said ‘free entry’, but the flyer I’m holding indicates ‘exclusive £3 entry for our friends’.  Is it possible she was standing on the corner yelling ‘three entry’?  We step into Grace Bar and no-one seems to expect any money to change hands, so we grab a couple of drinks.  I’m wearing an American Apparel hoodie and a Gap dress shirt, just about acceptable given that this was an unexpected night out (we’ve just dined at Ed’s Easy Diner which, incidentally, was pretty good, and decided to take a wrong turn into Bat Country).  There are a lot of Barcelona fans around, some of whom are intently scrutinising every slo-mo replay of the trophy ceremony on a large screen at one end of the bar, while others are performing a dance routine that looks surprisingly well choreographed given the amount  of empty glasses on their table.  While finishing our second drink we play ‘guess what decade’, which involves watching how someone dances and analysing their technique to figure out what decade they were born in (lots of arm motion = 70s, swaying = 80s, shoulder bouncing = 90s, techno fingers = 00s), then we head down to the club in the basement.

A fairly terrifying experience, in the space of five minutes we brush shoulders with a man who looks like Andre the Giant (and is gurning spectacularly), a diminutive Akon lookalike wearing a zoot suit and a very tired looking older lady wearing a bright pink sash that reads ‘mother of the bride’.  It’s as she sits down with what looks like a cup of tea that we decide to leave.

The Yard - it's definitely NOT a boy girl thing.

You would think that the sentence ‘I saw a load of really extravagant cross dressers go in here when I was out with my parents’ would function as a warning, but because we’re a couple of drinks down I decide it’s a great idea to head to The Yard.  As we walk through the dark entrance corridor, which is lit with a number of a rainbow coloured fluorescent tubes Sarah whispers in my ear ‘I think this is a gay bar.’  The naked statue of Zeus around the corner gives this statement a bit more credibility.

A gay bar it may be, but the music is the best we’ve encountered so far; pulsing techno mixed with the occasional dance remix of a show tune (I would say ‘trust me, it works’ but we aren’t exactly sober by this point).  It takes a lot to make me uncomfortable, but a picture of a naked Abercrombie model-esque guy above the urinal will just about do it.  We finish up our drinks (two pints of Gaymers, the irony is not lost on me) and then it’s onward and upward.  Oh, and a young man named Andrew asks ‘what brings us to The Yard?’ while he’s hitting on me.  ’Oh, you know, just here for the crack.’  ’Oh, me too! I love the crack!’ he replies.  I’ll bet he does.

Having been to a ‘hen night bar’ and a gay bar, we decide we’ll visit the Ice Bar and try to make it a trifecta.  However, they want us to buy tickets for an hour and a half from now.  We’re just not ready for that kind of commitment.  We come home and watch It’s a Boy/Girl Thing on BBC3 or something, which frankly seems like an infinitely better choice.