Welcome to the new year Deadsplinteratti! I’m hopefully optimistic that it will be better than 2020.
What’s the craziest or most interesting themed bar you’ve ever been to or heard about? Many years ago, when I was in LA, a friend talked me into going to a bar called Hemingway’s Lounge. It was on Hollywood Blvd. and yes, it was dedicated to Ernest Hemingway. I remember we had a hard time finding it. The bar itself was kind of cozy and had comfy couches with the walls lined with books. There were a lot of typewriters around that had some of his more famous quotes typed on pieces of paper. At the time I was into mojitos – so I had one they called “The Old Man and The Sea”. It was fine for a novelty bar, a bit pricey, though and little too hipster for me – it would’ve been cooler if some of the famous six toed cats had been hanging around. It closed a couple of years ago, I think.
And, supposedly it had a secret door that let you into the Roxbury.
As always, thanks for your support of Deadsplinter and here’s to 2021, my friends!
I tend to do music venues or really fine restaurants (I would rather go out fancy every few months than go out fast food regularly). A local restaurant was purchased last year and refurbished into fine French cuisine with superior waitstaff and beautiful royal blue and silver 1920s decor with huge blown up black and white photographs of old film stars. It is the kind of place where the soup comes out with, for example, seafood in an empty bowl, followed by a server who pours the accompanying broth over it. In this case the food is as good as the atmosphere. I hope that they survive the pandemic.
Otherwise, I like a dive bar or music venue. There is a music place called the Barbary in Philly that is reminiscent of a college frat party with sticky floors, cheap beer, and emerging bands.
I prefer dive bars too Ellicoo. In Wilmington, we also had dive bar called the Barbary Coast that was exactly like the Barbary in Philly. Must be the name.
That would be the Bovine Sex Club.
It was were all the alternative bands would play while weird horror movies and porn would be playing on the TV screens instead of the Leafs (which were a bit of both in the late 90s.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_Sex_Club
Used to go there every so often with a group of friends to drink and listen to local bands. Never a meet market type of place. Not the place to wear Chinos and a golf shirt (someone I knew dressed up like that once and I got asked several times if he was a cop.)
The Bovine Sex Club sounds intriguing. That’s pretty funny about the golf shirt and chinos being seen as cop wear.
I have 2 that come to mind. I’m not a fancy drinker, and my preferred hard liquor is rum.
1. Barrachina in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico was super fun to get a meal and a few pina coladas at. They claim to be the restaurant it was invented at, and god damn do they make a good one. Also it was so neat with a courtyard and tropical feel and midwestern me is a sucker for that sort of thing.
2. Black Duck rum bar in New Orleans. That bar was sooo cool because I think they had like over 100 kinds of rum. I didn’t even know there were that many kinds of rum. I was in NOLA for a conference a few years back and it was near the hotel, and I was the only person in my party who wanted to go. Fast forward like 4 hours, I’d had a rum flight (who knew that was a thing????) with 6 yr aged rums from the Caribbean (fuck if I remember now what they were) and several other drinks. Some guys in their 50s on a work trip decided I was good luck for their sports team and kept me from getting thirsty. And even more astonishingly, they genuinely weren’t creepers, like we were talking about their wives and kids and horses the one dude owned. So I stagger the 20 feet back to the hotel and wander into the hotel bar where the rest of my party had been drinking all night and was like “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS MISSED OUT!” and we drank some more. Ahh, the joys of drunk coworkers.
The Pina Colada’s at Barrachina’s are so good! I don’t even like Pina Coladas as a rule.
@hannibal 100% agreed! They’re usually my last choice for a fruity drink because I’m not super fond of coconut but fuck me I could have drank theirs all damn day!
Could, and did!
Back when I drank rum drinks – the Black Duck would’ve been my dream. Glad the guys weren’t creepers.
This place called Wings in Edinburgh that has 75 different styles of chicken wings. You order them 3 at a time.
I don’t really go to theme bars. There was a place in Pittsburgh that was intentionally like the Korova Milkbar from A Clockwork Orange. It was down the street from the club the punk bands played at in the 80’s. The drink there were too expensive so between sets everybody would run down the street to this little dive bar for 50 cent drafts. It was full of old alcoholics and we’d buy them beers, they’d alternate between offering us blessings and cursing us out. Good times.
I was going to chime in that there was a tiny dive in the East Village in NYC called Korova Milk Bar, also after A Clockwork Orange. Though a bit heavy-handed in execution, it was a fun visit and memorably boasted a drink called the Frozen Embryo.
My favorite shot in college was called a Bloody Brain. Pour a shot of Strawberry Bullet, with a couple drops of grenadine, and then trickle some Bailey’s into it. The Bailey’s curdles, so it’s a little chunky going down.
That sounds pretty cool actually.
That was supposed to be unintentionally!
My personal favorite bar was the engineering pub at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. Clark Hall was renowned for only three things: cheap beer/booze and head rests at the urinals which makes sense as over consumption of one lead to the other and a Friday Afternoon “Happy Hours” known as Ritual which didn’t help my attendance of Friday Afternoon classes/labs.
It’s small, worn wooden floors and furniture, with sticky floors and no AC. Smells like stale beer and vomit. I loved it.
Back in my yout, at one point the main entertainment was the Tetris video game.
Too many wasted nights there with friends, but I am glad to say I only puked once. Spent the end of many nights keeping friends heads out of toilets after mass consumption of booze.
I once went to a bar in LA that was like the interior of a first class cabin/lounge in an airliner from the 1950s. It was uncanny. The upholstery was vintage and you were seated in little groupings, like you would have been when planes had lounges. On the walls there were porthole windows with vintage shades and behind each one there was some kind of optical illusion where you looked down at a different city circa the 50s. The New York one had an aerial view showing the Pan Am building under construction; that’s the big skyscraper that looms over Grand Central. It was completely fabulous but it looks like it’s long gone–I can’t even find online a mention that it ever existed, let alone a review of it. Does anyone else remember this? If I ever opened a bar this is what I would do.
I think back in the day, I did hear about it. Can’t remember the name, though. Seems like a pretty cool idea.
Do you live in LA? I used to go about every six months for vacation and stay with friends. I can’t remember how I pulled this off because I had a full-time job with pretty generous vacation time but it didn’t pay very well. One of them was incredibly “scene-y” (he works in the film industry), and he always knew where to go, and the places were hot for like six months and then you’d never go there again. Is it still like that? I remember one time an industry group and I (not in the industry) were at dinner and it was decided that we had to go to a Chinese restaurant in LA’s Chinatown. “Why? We just ate,” I naively asked. “Because everyone’s going to be at the bar and it’s fun.” So we drove for like 90 minutes (we were in Santa Monica, at another plucked-from-nowhere trendy-for-no-reason spot) and the bar indeed was packed, we could barely squeeze in. Meanwhile half the booths were empty. The staff and the mostly Asian restaurant patrons seemed to be mystified. “Why don’t we take over a couple of the booths? Maybe they’d just let us have drinks–” My companions stared at me in horror, as if I had proposed forgoing a trip to the men’s room and defecating on the floor in front of them.
A very weird place, LA. SNL’s “Stefon” really should have been talking about LA, not NYC. At around the same time I was young enough and energetic enough to go to all the NYC equivalents, but they were kind of known and they had a longer shelf life.
I lived in LA back in the 90’s – then I moved to Wilmington, NC and would go back and forth between the two for years. I live in Atlanta, now. I’m in the film business and lately have to go to LA about once a year(not this year luckily).
I never really hung out with super “hollywood” types. Occasionally, I would get sucked into a group from the crew going somewhere trendy – hence going to the Hemingway Lounge. I hate crowds with a passion – so I’m cool not going out at all or just over to people’s houses for dinner. I love to hike – but if too many people are on a trail – I won’t go there again. I liked LA for the outdoor experiences, not the nightlife. I didn’t have any problem leaving it for NC.
One really cool thing that happened one night – I went to dinner with some crew people after work and Jeff Goldblum was playing piano – I think it was Musso and Franks – but I might be misremembering – it was around 2002. It was amazing. Other than that – I get what you mean about LA people. Too much postering.