#2 – 169 Bar: the authenticity paradox

For a second, I thought Google Maps was lying. There was no bar there. Only when we got closer, we discovered multicolored lights hidden behind a façade under construction. We heard voices. Finally, under the scaffolding, a few people, a door, and a sign: 169 Bar. It was my first night out in New York City.

Before, we had had some beers at some cool people’s place. Then, we went to a cool area, the East Village, and we tried to get into a cool club. The only uncool thing there was us, the  big gentleman at the door softly pointed out. Me and my two friends had to go on looking for a new place to save the night. A place where we fit.

We went down to the Lower East Side. We didn’t know it yet, but we belonged to the 169. This numerical bar is a haven for nightlife leftovers. The clientele consists entirely of people who were once denied entrance to another, cooler bar. The 169 has the virtue of being at the same time baroque and unpretending, as if it was saying ‘yeah, we have all sorts of weird shit going on. So? Got a problem with that?’. It is a monument to hyperbole and contradiction. The illumination is bold, mostly in the red, blue and purple range. The furnishing combines comfy diner-style tables with stuff you find in your neighbor’s backyard. On the food side, if your mac and cheese didn’t quite fill you up, you can order a dozen oysters. When you start going deeper inside, as in some cult with levels of initiation, you uncover the decorator’s true hallucination. On one wall, a lion-faced dry fountain, probably pillaged from ancient roman ruins.  Emerging from another, a couple of feminine figureheads from a ship, surely exchanged by an old see lion for a last round of booze. A few meters deeper, the bust of an angry Tyrannosaurus-Rex, whose meaning remains subject of intense debate among patrons and historians. And finally, at the very end, in 169’s deepest cavity, the object that summarizes it all. A pool table, covered in wild, dazzling, unapologetic leopard cloth. 

My friends sat at a table, while I went to the bar to get us a beer. I spent five minutes choosing a beer, and an eternity to get the barman. My attention-catching techniques failed miserably. I was feeling that everybody in the bar except him was noticing me. I was emasculated. I realized I was never going to get a beer, not that night in that bar, but in my whole year in New York City. I was preparing an excuse for my friends when the waiter finally came:

“Have you figured out what you want yet?”

The yet broke me in pieces. I forgot what beer I had chosen. I looked back at the menu, went through the whole calculation once again, and ordered three Narragansett “Jaws” Lager on tap, please.

“There’s only PBR.”, he said.

As he handed me three beers, I gave him $9. He counted and looked back at me.

“Tips are appreciated” he said, and I could feel him fantasizing with ripping my head off and using it to store lemon slices.

Embarrassed, I handed more dollar bills. I mumbled, ‘I’m sorry, not from here’, “it’s my first night” with an extra strong Castilian accent, but I don’t think he could hear it. I walked away with the beers and a masterclass in the subtleties of the American tipping tradition.

I went back to our table and found my friends chatting cheerfully with a young African American guy. I greeted him and he introduced himself Steve White. He stressed the last name and kept looking at me, silently, as if inviting me to point out the irony. I thought: “here’s a man who has heard every variation of that joke and is ready to receive it, own it, and crush you back with it until you forget your own last name”. I was too new in New York to get involved in that mess. He was also wearing a black hat with the phrase “Fuck you, you fucking fuck!”. I knew we were going to be good friends.

At some point, I went to the restroom and on the way back I came across another interesting feature of 169. There is a water cooler in the middle of the room, with glasses available for everybody. I thought this was a great idea, and a rare American example of universal free public service that I could not waste. As I was filling my third glass in a row, a tall, blonde, blue-eyed girl came to get some water. She finally convinced me that life in New York is, in fact, a living movie when she said, in quasi-perfect Spanish:

“He oído que ustedes están hablando español, ¿cierto?”

I suddenly forgot my mother tongue and replied something like “Yes? Yes. I mean sí”. We talked for a bit, she told me her name was Ariana, I praised her Spanish skills, and I told her I had just moved to New York and that it was my first night out. She asked how it was going. I said it was going great, and still improving every second. She laughed, I laughed, and I invited her to join and practice the language with us. She said she would love to, but she was just leaving with her friends. “But, here, I’ll give you my number”. She wrote it in a piece of paper and handed it to me. Encantada de conocerte, she said, before drinking her last sip of water and gracefully head for the exit. Anyway, that’s how I remember the conversation.

Back at our table, I found my friends in the middle of a heated discussion about authenticity. Jorge was saying he can’t respect people who don’t live by the values they preach. For example, he finds it impossible to like an artist if he doesn’t agree with his worldview. Steve agreed, unless the artist in question was “dope”. Javi wasn’t so sure. Me, I had forgotten my values back at the water cooler.

“You kids have no fucking idea”.

Who said that? I was ready to get into a fight, but when I turned to find the source of the voice, I just found this skinny, long-haired old man drinking alone. On his table, next to us, there was a notebook with scribbled lines and a pint of Guinness. He went on.

“You see, it’s easy to live up to your values when what you’re selling is some tree-hugging, love-each-other, we-are-the-world bullshit. You just recycle, don’t go to McDonalds too often, and contribute to a few charities here and there. But what if… what if your style, your whole bloody personal brand is based on convincing everybody that you are a complete son of a bitch, the reincarnation of Satan himself. That’s hard kids! You have to go around doing all sorts of crazy shit. You have to smoke, drink, fuck, deceive, swear, break things apart. You have to focus on being an asshole a hundred percent of the time. Do you know how tiring that is? How bad for your cholesterol? And there’s always some wanker that comes along and says ‘ow Mick, I want to be like you’, ‘ow Mick, I have all your albums’. Piss off! It is too much. Sometimes, I just wish we had been the love-is-all-you need types. Well not those particular types, not those wankers, but you know. The nice guy types, peace and love, mama’s favorite sons and all. Whatever, I’m just pissed.

I didn’t know what to make of this guy’s rant, but Jorge seemed pretty excited, talking to Javi and looking at the man.

“Dude, Mick, is it Mick Jagger, from the Stones?”, he finally asked.

“What, you want to be like me, too?”

“No, no, sorry, no. I was just wondering what you were doing here.”

“Well, what are you doing here?”, said the old man. “I was just trying to get some writing done when you started talking nonsense. You know, this used to be a good place to get inspiration and breathe some rock and roll. Now it is just full of wankers and hipsters. Although of course, that’s now true of the whole city, isn’t it?”

To celebrate our encounter —and to convince him we were no “wankers”— Steven decided to get us all Tequila shots. We welcomed Mick into our table. He told us he was writing lyrics for his new solo album: Inlovexication, a depart from his Satanic Majesty times, with tunes like The Devil’s healing or Will I forgive me? Everything he had so far was complete trash. He knew it, and that only made him angrier and more incapable to produce sweet songs. After the shots and a few more beers, we ended up singing All you need is love, with Mick making a non-PC imitation of Yoko Ono.

Soon after that, the bar staff started losing patience with us. After all, it was 4:30 and we were the only clients left. We were kindly asked to leave, twice, and then we were asked again. About twenty minutes later, they managed to get us out. I don’t think they were annoyed, but I’m going to wait a week before coming back.

Once outside, I asked Mick the question that was consuming me all night. How did he get those Guinness, if they keep telling me they only have PBR? I still can hear his answer, loud and clear:

“This is New York kid. Nobody is going to give you what you want. You have to take it”.

Then it hit me. I reached for my pocket. Then the other pocket and went through all my clothes. It was gone. That little paper with Ariana’s number in it, was gone. But it was fine, I didn’t freak out. This is New York: I will casually bump into her walking by the riverside on a Sunday afternoon. I will ask her if she remembers me, from 169 Bar. She will say no and reach for her pepper spray. I will say no sorry, I must have taken you for someone else. She will walk away, turning her back to make sure I don’t follow. I will seat in a bench to listen to Gershwin and contemplate the sunset until the credits roll.

#night #LowerEastSide #Bar #EastVillage #169bar