My favourite bar in Soho uses some kind of yogic Dr Gillian McKeith approach to getting wasted. You go in and choose some liquor, but rather than giving it to you they sit you down and then a mottled, supposedly healthy looking woman in a leotard walks out. "This tequila' she says, 'will remove the following from your body, these vitamins and these enzymes and this nutrient, to precisely counter the damaging effects you must mix it with this much carrot juice, these seeds and this dollop of yogurt - are you planning to sniff some cocaine in the toilet? You'll need some prunes, mackerel and broccoli, these endorphin and dopamine stimulators, this lemongrass, pomegranate, and we'll apply this mud to your skin for the duration ...' and so on. It's pretty cool.
They sell opium upstairs, which is administered by cute little oriental girls who clean your pipe out and fetch you things. My attendant explained that this was the third in a franchise whose themes were all based on the dying wishes of their patron, a drunk Turkish genius. She related how he spent his final days in the gutters of Kabul scrawling the pavements with puke spattered sketches of the pubs he expected to find in heaven. So respected was this man by the local warlord that his minions set about turning these ideas into reality.
I enquired as to the whereabouts of the other two bars and after much discussion was given the following, which at first I first took to be a poem but I now think is a review:
Downtown Singapore; beyond the gleaming discipline and the orderly streets of orderly hookers, beyond the turtle chop-shops and the yabba stands. Down among the alleys where it stinks of shit and food there's this bar.
Get past the gangsters, walk quickly past the cages. It looks like an abortion clinic, dun it; all shiny-bright, disinfectant and sorrow. There's a sexy girl behind the bar wearing a surgeons outfit. Breathe deep and you'll smell that old-school colonialism, when our boys went mad from the opium and the tropical fever.
The 4 Humour bodily fluid cocktail bar: a homesick, nihilistic fever-dream. Now get up there, because they'll probably shoot you in the face if you don't.
What'll it be? Martini mixed with the tears of broken-hearted virgins, or something dryer, maybe squeezed from spastic ginger twins. Fresh breast-milk white Russian? Don't worry, smile. Chase it down with fermented bile.
Watch the technicians screening the fluids, or pretending to. Have a bloody, bloody Mary, have it thick and positive. Drink a yellow pus monkey brain. Drink their cells and lives. Trust those little glassy-eyed students: you've come this far.
Good innit? Next stop Singapore then.
First published 28 December 2006
They sell opium upstairs, which is administered by cute little oriental girls who clean your pipe out and fetch you things. My attendant explained that this was the third in a franchise whose themes were all based on the dying wishes of their patron, a drunk Turkish genius. She related how he spent his final days in the gutters of Kabul scrawling the pavements with puke spattered sketches of the pubs he expected to find in heaven. So respected was this man by the local warlord that his minions set about turning these ideas into reality.
I enquired as to the whereabouts of the other two bars and after much discussion was given the following, which at first I first took to be a poem but I now think is a review:
Downtown Singapore; beyond the gleaming discipline and the orderly streets of orderly hookers, beyond the turtle chop-shops and the yabba stands. Down among the alleys where it stinks of shit and food there's this bar.
Get past the gangsters, walk quickly past the cages. It looks like an abortion clinic, dun it; all shiny-bright, disinfectant and sorrow. There's a sexy girl behind the bar wearing a surgeons outfit. Breathe deep and you'll smell that old-school colonialism, when our boys went mad from the opium and the tropical fever.
The 4 Humour bodily fluid cocktail bar: a homesick, nihilistic fever-dream. Now get up there, because they'll probably shoot you in the face if you don't.
What'll it be? Martini mixed with the tears of broken-hearted virgins, or something dryer, maybe squeezed from spastic ginger twins. Fresh breast-milk white Russian? Don't worry, smile. Chase it down with fermented bile.
Watch the technicians screening the fluids, or pretending to. Have a bloody, bloody Mary, have it thick and positive. Drink a yellow pus monkey brain. Drink their cells and lives. Trust those little glassy-eyed students: you've come this far.
Good innit? Next stop Singapore then.
First published 28 December 2006
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