Tag Archives: bars

Shut out at the Little Café Near Home

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You know there’s not a lot happening in your life when not being able to go to one of your favorite spots is noteworthy. This evening I bundled up and made the short walk through light rain. There’s a definite chill in the air now that’s been missing so far this winter, and I was underbundled, but not too badly. I almost didn’t even walk into the LIttle Café; just a glance in the window showed almost all the tables to be packed full. There is one table in the corner not visible from the street, however, and I considered the possibility that the group gathered around the other tables might be scaring people away from that one.

The table was taken, of course, and once more I was adrift. I suspect this will become more and more common; even as the available seating in the café decreases (as opposed to the “club” downstairs which isn’t open yet), the popularity of the place is steadily on the rise. It’s not surprising; the place has a good atmosphere and people know each other there. It’s the sort of place that invites hanging out.

It’s like California — it’s a great place to be; I just wish not so many other people agreed with me.

Thanks!

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

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Upon arrival back home I dropped off my stuff and turned on the heat in my apartment, but tired as I was I wasn’t interested in huddling under blankets as the temperature slowly crept up to the livable range. I turned and headed back out.

My return to the Little Café was was not quite how I imagined it would be. I expected apathy, really, perhaps someone asking why I hadn’t been around in a couple of weeks (I had been rehearsing “I was in Ireland” in Czech — then as I approached I wished I had figured out “I just flew in from Ireland and boy are my arms tired!”) but then I expected to plug in my travel-depleted laptop and get some work done. I had just finished reading a pretty good book on the plane and that always turns my thoughts to my own words.

I walked in the place and a bunch of the younger regulars were there, taking up all the seats near the plug. I smiled and said hello to the ones I recognized, and one of the girls in the group, one I have perhaps spoken with once before, called out Džerý! (rhymes with Jerry!). She is a pretty girl, short especially by czech standards, with a quirky mouth. And young. She was having a little fun with me, but not in any mean-spirited way, and I played along with the histrionic greeting as well as I could without knowing her name.

More often than not, the kids are here now, smoking and drinking and still dizzy with life. I expect that to them I am a mildly comic figure, so serious as I sit alone, wrapped in words and (they suppose) Deep Thoughts. I am the gray cloud in the corner of their cheery little café. Of course they find me funny. I am occasionally a punch line, and some of them are starting to realize that I know when they are talking about me. They glance my way, confirming my suspicion, and we share a little half-smile, sharing a small joke of our own, even as the other wonders just how much I know.

As I left the same girl (who had paid me no notice when passing my table on the way to the bathroom), once again acted as group spokesperson and bid me grandiloquent if somewhat ponderous farewell. I responded in kind, tacked on a bit of extremely informal czech, and was on my way.

It was late when I got there, and when I left the place at closing time I was faced with going home to a still-cold apartment or rolling down the hill to find another place. I chose downhill, but I had no illusions of getting any more work done. I wound up at the Herna By The Station, enjoying Gambrinus with a couple of the regulars, talking (in English) about this and that. By the time I got home, it didn’t matter what temperature the apartment was, I was too tired to notice.

Thanks!

Eddie Rockets

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If ever there were an antithesis of an Irish pub, this is it. Yet for reasons purely logistical here I sit, surrounded by chrome and red and white vinyl, brightly lit by halogens and fluorescents, listing to calculatedly cheery music. The tea has an odd taste to it; I may be forced to switch to Coca Cola (beer only served with a substantial meal, and it looks like the only beer is something modeled on American Swill Beer).

All right, Johnny Cash just came on, so there’s one redeeming facet of this place.

Thanks!

Wm. Byrne’s Pub (accomodations available)

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It was a pleasant time in Kilkenny, a touristy place but gracefully so, picturesque and friendly. When we got off the bus we had no idea where to stay, and none of us had bothered to check what time it would be when we got there. It wasn’t terribly late, but it was late enough to make finding a place to stay a bit worrisome after our adventures in Sligo (rhymes with “closed”). We gatihered up our luggage and started the tromp toward the center of town.

We hadn’t gone far when we saw a sign for a B&B. They were full, but they directed us across the street to William Byrne’s Pub. Soon we were installed in a room and free to explore the city at night. After a nice dinner at a Pub (established in 12-something-something by a woman who was married four times, opened an inn or three, then was accused of witchcraft and force to flee for her life — her staff and associates didn’t fare so well and met demises so grisly it’s hard to imagine anyone remotely civilized condoning them), we returned to our “home pub”, set up laptops, and I composed a couple of the previous episodes. (Things are getting a bit asynchronous here; sorry about that.)

Somewhere around closing time the bartender struck up conversation with fuego and me. We talked about movies, Web sites, music, and life in general. It turned out we were talking to Wm. himself, head honcho and owner of the establishment.

The next morning, or should I say later that same morning, we were a bit sluggish as we staggered down the stairs into the pub for breakfast. There was Billy, looking quite a bit more chipper than I felt. Breakfast was among the best I’d had on the trip, the full Irish deal for me (less mushrooms), while the others chose different items off the menu (one advantage I hadn’t considered to staying at a B&B connected to a restaurant is that the options for breakfast are much more varied).

That day we didn’t get a whole lot of sightseeing done, and what we did consisted mainly of wandering around the town aimlessly. I did manage to do a bit of writing, and a bit of napping. That night we finished up at Billy’s again, but although I stayed up working longer than the others, it was almost a reasonable time when I went upstairs to crash.

This morning we were up a little bit before Billy, who rushed down the stairs to open the pub for us. He explained that he had been on the Internet into the wee hours, playing with an internet jukebox type of site. The Internet — an intoxicating thing! We poked around town a bit longer and with more purpose, left Billy with a copy of Pirates and a bottle of Becherovka, and on we went to Cork.

Thanks!

The Pump House

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It was a bit warmer today, but the sun is just a memory now and the wind blowing down the narrow streets carries a chill that goes deep. It cannot reach me here, however. I am in The Pump House, a fine pub in Kilkenny in the southern reaches of Ireland. To my left a small fire flickers warmly in the fireplace, on my right is a glass of Smithwicks (rhymes with Phythics), foam clinging in rings to the side of the glass, measuring my progress sip by sip. Were there usable electricity here, it would be perfect.

Thanks!

The Oldest Bar in the World

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Last night found the three of us in Athlone, roughly in the center of Ireland. Although we found ourselves about as far from an ocean as you can get on this island, it is still a place with a long maritime tradition. The river Shannon (let me say right now that for no reason whatsoever I find the phrase ‘River Shannon’ to be poetry of the deepest and most moving sort) passes through here, or perhaps more accurately this town is here because it was one of the places land travelers could get across the river.

They would not be crossing today. The river is running high and swiftly; there is flooding downstream. I imagine that the powers that be are trying to allow the runoff from the recent storms to reach the sea with the least overall damage, and things are right on the edge here. Just downstream from town things are looking lakelike, with trees poking up here and there.

Now, of course, there are bridges and all that sort of thing up and down the river, so the rushing waters, while not helpful, can no longer strand travelers for weeks while they wait for the waters to subside. Naturally, those stranded travelers would have wanted to have a nip in the local pub while they waited for the water to calm. Where we sit now, while not in the actual building, is documentably the same pub that travelers cooled their heels in starting around 900 A.D. Yeah, you read that right, and I didn’t leave any digits out.

I was talking to a regular there, Jeffrey (Geoffrey?), whose father was a regular there, and whose father’s father was a regular there, and who’s father’s father’s father… It is possible that some ancient ancestor of Jeffrey sat on the first barstool 1107 years ago, and had a pint of something that we would judge today to be truly awful, but at the time was just the thing.

Compared to that place, that institution, I’m nothing. I’m just a spark, a flash, here and gone. The bar has outlasted all its patrons, the people who lit up the place when they arrived, the people who were greeted gladly by name, the people who mattered to those around them. They are all gone now, and forgotten. You and I, in this noisy-fast world, we don’t stand a chance.

Thanks!

New Year’s Eve, Galway-style

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The blustery, cold weather continued through the day on New Year’s Eve, the atmosphere itself a participant in the festivities. When we left the haven of the café, our plan was to go to one of the more popular pubs with live music, to establish a beachhead early before the crowds started to gather.

I’m not sure of the definition of early required to pull this off, but mid-afternoon wasn’t it. The place was packed, the music was already going, and the chances of sitting within the next few hours was next to zero. On to the next place. And the next. There were two sorts of pubs in that area: ones that were overflowing with humanity and ones that would not be having music that night. A couple of smaller, local pubs were inviting, but we’re in Ireland, dammit, and we wanted music. Our quest continued.

We ventured back to the square and up a different road, into a less pedestrian-friendly but consequently less crowded neighborhood. We tried a couple of places, then a bartender in one told us that the next pub up the road would probably have live music. The place was not crowded, rugby was on the projection screen, and the bartender confirmed that there would in fact be live music. While fuego and MaK took our excess electronic gear back to the hotel for safety, I settled in and scratched out a few passages in my notebook. The bartender was a personable guy; he had lived in New York for a while and so when I mentioned that I was from San Diego he asked if I was a Chargers fan and what I thought of their chances this year. I didn’t mention that the fate of that team rests almost entirely in my hands.

Eventually the others returned and we relaxed and tried to figure out the nuances of rugby by watching the games. It was a good way to spend some time after fuego’s birthday celebrations the night before. More people arrived, and after a while two girls and an older man started setting up their instruments. The band, at a guess a father and his two daughters. Before long they began to play, exhibiting not a shred of joy as they executed the songs. The first time the girls broke a smile was when one of them had a hard time with the words to a song. They loosened up a bit as the gig progressed, but they never stopped giving the impression they wished they were somewhere else. Still, it was music, Irish music by Irish people, and the pub was pleasant enough.

The band wrapped up at 9 pm, leaving us once more with the choice of crowds with music or comfort with none. We began to tromp around once more, heading back to a place we knew that was a bit off the main drag but would have music. We went in and I was surprised that the place was less crowded than it had been on previous visits. We easily found a place to sit and ordered drinks. Then the band started.

They were horrible.

Soon we were on the street once more, the wind throwing the light rain at is from random directions, and we followed a similar course, wandering through the streets, asking the police where they thought the best place to go was on New Year’s Eve. The King’s Head, the cops agreed, but the party there was spilling far out on into the pedestrian mall and I knew at a glance that that would not be the place for me. We wandered some more, my companions produced a bottle of Becherovka, fuego scored plastic cups from one of the clubs, and it slowly became clear that we would be celebrating the new year outside.

We made our way to a more sheltered street where there were other revelers under the awnings of the bars. fuego frightened some of the locals with his exuberance — one Irishman, in particular, responded with the typical passive-aggressive “I’m backing away from you slowly, but not without judging you first” attitude when my brother asked him why no one had fireworks. Of course, that just added fuel to the fuego and he spent the next few minutes explaining to the guy why fireworks were a good idea. I spent the time talking to a girl that was in the group with them, enjoying the contrast in style of the two main characters in the little drama.

Midnight came, midnight went, the year was new, the bottle spent. We made our way back to our B&B, to peaceful slumber.

Thanks!

Grumpy Tummy

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We’re in Galway, now, and we will be for a couple of days. The car has been returned to the Budget People, so moving is now a bit more of a hassle. That’s OK with me; the time spent in motion and looking for a place to stay each day is time that could be put to better use.

Unfortunately, last night I was unable truly appreciate this. We sat at the King’s Head, but halfway through my Guinness I started feeling queasy. After the second one I was decidedly ill. I thought eating would help, but that was not the case at all. fuego and MaK gushed over their Irish stew, while I stared listlessly at my potato soup. We repaired to the bar half of the establishment and listened to a local jam session for a while. “I feel all right as long as I don’t eat or drink any alcohol,” I said, to which both fuego and MaK responded by trying to get me to drink traditional czech medicinal alcoholic beverages.

This morning I am fine. As I told fuego, my stomach just needed to reboot. Onward we go, into the teeth of light rain driven by occasionally fierce wind, searching for that dark, warm haven that such weather caused a people to embrace. Truly this is the weather that gave birth to the pub.

While you’re at it, drop by fuego’s place and wish him a happy birthday!

Thanks!

Café Mania

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I am back in my corner at the Little Café Near Home, my steaming mug of tea close at hand. I am perched significantly higher than I was before; the Chairs of Death are gone, made up for with a rearrangement of the booth seats, which have been given stilts to accommodate now-taller tables. Some floor space was lost to the stairs; where there used to be six small tables now there are five. The tables are taller than they used to be, however, so the reduced seating is made up for by accommodating more standing. I have not ventured into the mysterious downstairs yet, but since the toilets are down there, it’s only a matter of time.

Overall, the place feels a little less café-like, and a little more bar-like. It will be more difficult to drag tables together to suit whatever conversational groups emerge. Perhaps new taller chairs simply haven’t arrived yet. The biggest losers might the canine regulars — sitting way up here, I can no longer reach down and idly scritch a dog noggin while pondering the next paragraph. As I type this the owner’s jack russell terrier is trying to figure out what to do about the situation.

A question for the philosophers among you: If a little café changes owners, then changes its name (not really sure what it was before, but it wasn’t that), gradually turns over all the employees, changes the beers on tap, and is then remodeled, is it the same little café?

Thus the world races on; the only constant is change. I sit, perched up high, rotated ninety degrees, and I know I must adapt or be left behind.

Thanks!

Suddenly the Internet is hard to come by

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Since the flood my Internet connection has been flaky on the good days. Today was not a good day. I’m not sure the problem is flood-releated; there was a bad period a month ago as well. Still, the flood couldn’t have helped. (One confirmed casualty was the splitter to allow the phone and the modem to share the line. Perhaps that is related to the current troubles.) Happily the Little Café Near Home recently added WiFi (pronounced in this neck of the woods as wee-fee). I gathered up my gear and headed out through a light rain.

Before I even got there I knew that I was heading for a disappointment. As I approached up the sidewalk the first thing I noticed was that the security grill was closed over the big window. The next thing I noticed was the sound of a jackhammer coming from inside. Renovations are under way. That’s cool, but not really convenient for me tonight. The bowling alley’s out – they are hosting a private party tonight. Their network has been sporadic lately as well; I think one guy is playing with the security settings but isn’t telling anyone else what he’s up to. On top of all that, I had pizza to go from the bowling alley last night, and as much as I like those guys, there is a limit.

I’m at U Kormidla right now, where I just had a very nice chicken dish that was not at all what I expected. Upstairs there’s a party of some sort going on; things are festive and they just relocated the plasma TV. Looks like there’s going to be a show. The downstairs is packed, and I’m feeling a little of that American guilt over sitting at the table sipping another tea while people are turned away because there’s no space.

On a marginally related note, on Saturday I’ve been invited to join a family for a meal. It’s the mother of one of the regulars at Little Café Near Home (for a while I though he was setting me up with her, but fortunately that doesn’t appear to be the case). The only catch is that I have no way to contact them. I hadn’t worried about it, I knew that even if I didn’t run into Martin that there were plenty of other Little Café regulars who would have his number. That was on my to-do list for today. That leaves the question, where does a Little Café regular go, when there’s no Little Café? That will be my quest for the rest of the night.

Thanks!

Monday Night at the Budvar Bar.

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I wasn’t paying attention to the calendar when I happened in here tonight. I’m at the Budvar Bar (actually the name is U Kmotra, not to be confused with some big tourist trap that is actually called Budvar Bar), the bar closest to home and also a place to get a plateful of cheap, if not inspired, food. The tea costs more here than at Little Café Near Home, but the food swayed me.

Incidentally, word on the street is that the Little Café Near Home is going to get larger. What’s cool is that the plan is to grow vertically downward. Beverages are always tastier when consumed subterranealy. This probably means tripling the size of the Little Café — there would be no point in spending so much on construction just to increase the capacity from twenty (when packed to the gills) to forty. If the Little Café has fifteen tables, rather than the current six, will it still be the Little Café?

Tonight I’m at the Budvar Bar, however, and I”m feeling bloated and slow-witted after a filling meal. It is crowded tonight. I am at the table directly under the television, as there is a game on and I don’t want to take up a seat that someone interested in the game might want. The place began to fill up quickly soon after I arrived, the tables filling first on the sides facing the television. Tonight’s match is Prague Sparta (rhymes with New York Yankees) vs. Kladno (rhyme pending) in a grass-kick-hockey (rhymes with soccer or football, depending where you live) match. This game has had relatively few cases of grown men lying on the grass pretending to be hurt (apparently an integral part of this sport), so it hasn’t been too painful to have it flashing in my peripheral vision, demanding my attention.

Directly behind me is the table where the guys play cards. The man with no nose is among them, and after this much time I must assume that he is not getting a new nose, and that he is content to wear a rectangle of gauze affixed to his face with a big X of tape forever. The guy with no larynx was here earlier, sitting at the table I prefer when things aren’t crowded. Also departed are the men who like to do shots with the matronly waitress, who may or may not be related to the owner.

(One of the Spartans just had made contact with a defender, and had the sense to make a crisp pass upfield before the agony of the violence done to him was too much and he collapsed to the turf in agony.)

All these things are going on around me, and that’s just the normal vibe for this place. No distraction at all. What is distracting me is the tattoo of the leaping tiger that the waitress who recently came on is sporting. Could it be that she’s a fan of the Liberec Bily Tigri, my favorite ice hockey (rhymes with real sport) team? She’s very pretty, so the idea is enticing.

There’s also the matter of where the tattoo is. It is a large piece, right between her shoulder blades and extending down her slender back. At times it is partially concealed by her long, blonde hair. Her nose crinkles when she smiles; I think she is secretly laughing at my resolute determination to look at her eyes rather than her breasts. She has very pretty eyes.

Thanks!

Vinárna Jana

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There is an awkward time in the day for a restaurant to have customers. During the slow times in the afternoon the staff counts on not having customers so they can do the preparation work for the evening. When I worked in a pizzeria, it was the time we cooked up the sausage, made the dough, baked the rolls, or whatever else required doing. When a customer came in, someone would have to put down what they were doing and prepare a meal. That’s not to say that customers weren’t welcome, in fact some of our favorite regulars came in during those hours and we would chat with them once we got back to our prep tasks.

I get the feeling they like being disrupted here less than at other places. Then again, they’re czech, and in fact I might have caught them in an especially good mood but they would never let a customer see that.

Vinárna Jana is fairly close to my house, right next to the post office, but most times I pass this way the place is closed. I think that’s because it’s just a bit off my regular track, and I get over this way mainly when everything else is closed as well. The restaurant is divided between a vinárna (wine bar) and a pivnice, which translates literally as “beer place”. (As with the mythical many names of snow, it seems like the czechs have a lot of diffferent ways to say ‘bar’.) I think the two are connected, at any rate.

When I first stepped inside and looked around my reaction was favorable. There is lots of dark wood, floral cloths on the tables, and only a faint smell of tobacco. I took the smallest table in the place — I don’t like to take more than I need, even though I am the only customer. This is not a place where I will be facing communications challenges; I will not be confronted with more than “Yes?” “One more?” and “You’re welcome.”

I just took a break to shovel down some very tasty chicken in a blue cheese sauce. The place is dark on this gloomy afternoon and they are doing nothing about it. Suits me fine. The radio is on a station that plays Glen Campbell and his associates from America and domestically raised. The song playing now is in Czech, occasionally punctuated with a “Goodbye Joe”, while the backup singers are straight out of ’70’s classics like “Big John”.

It’s a good place. My meal out of the way I am no longer disruptive to the workflow of the kitchen — in fact, I believe I was overconcerned before, as they are all sitting around now, enjoying an afternoon meal. The sound of czechs singing to banjo music is pleasant, and there’s still plenty of time on the laptop battery. I think I’ll be here a while.

Thanks!

A Nation Comes Together

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The TV is not on here at the Little Café Near Home very often, but sometimes there is an event that draws people here to watch as a group. the most obvious example of this is for major sporting events, but there are other programs that draw in the crowds as well. One of those shows is on right now. I’d consider going somewhere else, but any other place with a TV will have the same show on.

What is this event that draws the nation together? I’ve mentioned it before, but the current season of Česko hleda Superstar is getting down to the finals. The good news is that means the contestants who really, really, suck have all been eliminated. Now we have a homogeneous batch of people who fit the formula. They all sound pretty much the same, craftsmen rather than artists, singing safe tunes written by other people. One of these will be labeled ‘Superstar’, a large fish in a small pond, and will then try to turn that into a career, just like the other winners of the other Superstar contests all over the world.

I’m not sure you can pin all the blame for the superstar formula on the U.S., but as the worlds largest producer of pop clones I think it’s fair to guess that the recipe for the McPopstar was perfected there.

As I was watching the show (I have no resistance to the box of moving lights) I started to wonder: what’s so damn special about singing that these guys are the superstars, while artists in other disciplines toil in relative obscurity? Technology is part of the answer, certainly; electricity has made it possible for there to be a music industry. People are listening to music all the time, where for most other art forms they have to dedicate time to appreciating it. Technology has changed both the product and the distribution.

A hundred years ago there were certainly celebrated musicians and entertainers, but back then there were people in other art forms that were just as celebrated. Maybe more so. I think for a while the writers had the edge — between the invention of the printing press and the invention of radio they had the best mass-market potential. Ah, if only I was born a hundred years earlier! Before that, I’m not sure. Whatever the talented person in each village did, perhaps.

The Buggles claim that video killed the radio star. That may well be true, but the singers are still hanging in there, as long as they are attractive enough. You can’t be a superstar if you can’t carry a tune. Well, let’s just say you can’t be a superstar without singing. With Internet getting steadily faster video will become more and more influential, but the difference is that people will be able to watch anything, whenever they want. By putting distribution squarely in the hands of consumers, we might (fingers crossed) see the last of the manufactured pop star. There will always be those who have big promotional budgets, flashier videos, and whatnot, but already I only buy music from independent labels (not out of any sort of protest, their terms and pricing on downloaded music are better), and I don’t think I’m missing out on much. Honestly, I have no idea who’s popular right now anyway, and I can always find something I enjoy on an indie Web site.

I am told there are even people who use the Web to read what other people write.

The next few years will be interesting. Big extravaganzas like the one I witnessed tonight will work to make the next superstar, while beneath the stage the termites are gnawing on the supports.

Thanks!

The Little Café… is out of beer!

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Three taps may not sound like a lot to those on the other side of the pond, but this is a land of specialization. Three taps is about the maximum, except in tourist places. You choose your pub based on the beer you want to drink. One thing you always know is that the beer you drink will be fresh, because everyone in the bar will be drinking the same beer. A bar with many taps is met with suspicion. How long has that keg of Olde Snake Bite been tapped?

Which is all well and good, as long as there’s another keg waiting when the first runs out.

I asked for a Stella, and Wendy shook her head. “We have no beer,” she said in English. It took me a moment to digest that. “All three,” she said. “None.”

“Are the taps broken?” I asked.

“No, they’ve all been… I don’t know how to say…”

“Drunk,” I said. It’s not surprising she had a hard time with that word, as she knows it as an adjective that is applied to people. “Drunk up,” I added, not helpfully.

Little Café Near Home has been popular, lately. It’s been filled with a younger crowd, so when school starts to exert its fearsome grip on the souls of the nation’s youth, things might quiet down a bit here. While I wish the owner of this place all the success in the world, I’m kind of hoping the chain-smoking children who are noisily drinking the place dry get distracted by other pursuits.

The bar is out of beer. This is the Czech Republic. This should, quite simply, not be possible. In this country I imagine there is a room with rows of people staring into glowing monitors. At the front of the room is the Big Board, which shows the flow of beer throughout the nation. Right now there should be a giant red X flashing over this neighborhood while a klaxon sounds. People are screaming into their phones, and the army is mobilizing. A pub without beer. This is a national crisis.

I will keep one ear cocked for the sound of the helicopters making the emergency delivery, but in the meantime I’ll go next door and have some Budvar.

Thanks!

Man’s best friend

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One of the canine regulars at the Little Café Near Nome is a friend of mine. When she first comes in she rushes about, greeting everyone — except me. Without fail I feel mildly hurt as this pup with whom I’ve shared many an evening rushes about looking for quick handouts. Eventually, after working all the other guests and carefully scanning the floor, she will come over and sit by me, and bonk her head against my leg. After a nice ear rub (she really likes ear rubs) she will curl up at my feet, until someone new arrives. Then she’s off again, checking out the possibilities.

I think human females regard me in much the same way. That’s not a bad thing, overall. I can handle being home base.

Thanks!