One More for the Hymnal: Linda Ronstadt y Mariachi Vargas, "Y ándale"

En el ciberc@fe

Cybercafés. Do they still exist? Now that we all carry the internet around with us? I found a reference to one in Enrique Vila-Matas’ París no se acaba nunca, from 2003 (Never Any End to Paris, 2011, translated by Anne McLean). If they’ve disappeared, it wouldn’t be too sad—there’s something disordered about them in the first place, something so antithetical to the spirit of a bar. A waitress comes and takes your order, you mumble something without turning away from the computer screen in front of you. The closest comparison I can think of to them is a bar I know in Fredericksburg where they have video poker, and where one afternoon I watched a woman, a regular, get transfixed by the game. She was there without being part of the group; any time she participated in the conversation at the bar it was in the same disdainful way a teenager responds to her parents from the couch without looking up from her iPhone. 

Still, I have to feel some personal sadness since I went to Spain during the height of the cybercafé’s relevance, in the summer of 2000. That was how I talked to H while she was back in the States: most days, at an appointed hour, adjusted to account for the time difference and her summer work schedule,  I would be hunched over a screen at a  cibercafé in the Huertas neighborhood in Madrid. Chatting. On Yahoo. 

[Note: sometimes she went to a cybercafé, too, the only one in the US I ever heard of. It was in Georgetown, Texas, and it was a “Christian” establishment—which meant that they were vigilant about not allowing anything unseemly on their computers. Which meant there was very little privacy there. Which was ironic, because she only went there when she was staying at her parents’ house in Georgetown and, therefore, needed to get away to get privacy.]

My cybercafé had a decent menu. I usually ordered gazpacho, but I also remember having patatas bravas, and croquetas, and a tortilla sandwich. I think I drank beer there, too, but maybe not. I went to a few other cybercafés when I was out in different parts of the city, too. My second night there, my exchange program met downtown for a get-together night out, a small walking tour followed by drinks. And I remember that the penultimate bar we visited that night was a cybercafé.

Isn’t that funny? It was a night like so many out of books or whatever, a bunch of Americans out in a European capital, drinking too much and then staggering home on the metro. But in the middle of it, we all agreed to pause the merriness and spend a few minutes checking our email, absorbed in the blue glow of the computer screens which (for some reason I remember) were embedded in the tables of this bar. Then, finishing one-by-one, we each patiently waited for the others to complete their business. We came back together at the bar’s vestibule, a mass of young people heading rosily back out in the summer night.

Anyway, the reference from Enrique Vila-Matas comes early in the novel: the protagonist and his wife are trying to find the Dingo Bar, where Hemingway supposedly met Fitzgerald, on the Rue Delambre in Paris. The wife says, "You know what, I'm going to look up the Dingo on the internet, I'll go to that internet café on the corner..." The bar is gone, but the fact that they find it on the internet is I guess a commentary on how we've moved our lives online. Still, it already feels like a pretty dated detail to me.

Happy Hour in Havana

My latest at pterodactilo is a how-to on drinking in la Habana. A sample:

So here’s what you do: when you’re done researching and writing for the day, and the sun is starting to set and the heat is starting to fade, grab your colleagues or the friends that you’ve made on the island. Buy a bottle of Havana Club and some cans of TuKola. Go down to the malecón, where it will seem like the whole city is out sitting and talking and laughing. Claim some space. Face the city, not the sea. Open a can of Cuban coke, take a swallow, and pour the rum into the space you’ve just made. And there you go: a makeshift cuba libre.

Read the rest at blog.pterodactilo.com .

International Drinking with Gary Shteyngart

This sprawling, entertaining interview with Gary Shteyngart at Modern Drunkard Magazine is a real gem. Here's the author on drinking in Russia:

GS: Right. All Russian rites are suffused with the idea that you will get drunk after you’re finished. I think there is vodka at the end of everything that happens in Russia. My favorite ceremony to do is to go to gravesites of famous artists in Russia. You bring a bottle of vodka andzakuski.

MDM: Zakuski?

GS: If you go to a Russian restaurant, the first thing you see on every menu is zakuski. Which literally means “the thing you follow it with.” “It” being vodka. Appetizers are built around vodka. The mystery of Russia centers on what will happen at the end of the day, or the middle of the day. That being the drinking of the 150 grams (5.29 ounces) of vodka. When I go back there, and I go back every year, I have to acclimate like you would in Denver. Everyone, especially the men, brings their own bottle of vodka. Each finishes their bottle and they enter that land of no return. I’m not a religious person by any means, but you feel this kind of strange communion. With people who, if you had met them on the street, you’d think, “My goodness, look at this strange specimen.”

And here he is on writers drinking: 

GS: True. There are so few people to drink with. The literary community is not backing me up here. I’m all alone. There’s a couple of guys who are strong, but that’s it. It’s so pathetic when I think about my ancestors. Give them a bottle of shampoo and they have a party. And here I am with the best booze available.

On how Georgians drink:

MDM: My Russian brother-in-law tells me some Russians like to spike their vodka with a good jolt of hair spray. Is this true?
GS: Ah, yes, the old hairspray maneuver. You know who drinks like crazy? My favorite people, the Georgians. They drink from these big ram horns and each person has to toast every other person at the table. There’s the tamada, the toastmaker, he’s like the air traffic controller. A toast comes in, and he stops it and makes sure everyone is okay with it, then another comes in — it’s a fascinating job. A good tamada is like an MC, he gets hired to work parties and weddings. Their wine is like Thunderbird, really strong. It’s not for a connoisseur, it wouldn’t pass muster. When I was in the nation of Georgia, I met some guys in the government. Some mid-level ministers. We went to their dacha, this gigantic compound. They wanted me to get involved in a scheme to steal $600 million dollars from American charities.

And Italians:

GS: Italy is a dramatic country. I was living in this square, where all these orgies were going on.
MDM: Actual orgies?
GS: Yeah. It was the rich children of the Italian intelligentsia, famous Marxists, people like that. And they all had these huge apartments. It was just these wild parties. And all based on wine. People would bring their own wine, from whatever region they were from. There were a lot of arrivistes from southern Italy, so there was a lot wines from Abruzzo, Campana, and Calabria, the really violent province. The only time I got semi-violent in a bar, someone came up and said, “You must be Calabrian.”
MDM: It’s considered an insult?
GS: It is, but I thought it was quite a compliment. The whole scene was wild youth, women, wine and a dearth of clothing. There was this one Italian. An incredible Russophile. 

 Brazilians:

GS: It’s not the bars, it’s hanging on the beach. The people are so beautiful. They drink, then the dancing starts. I don’t have an ass. I don’t own one. But they do. It’s so sad to leave it. You think, where the hell am I going? It’s not an intellectualized drinking culture. No one gives a damn about that stuff. You can’t bring up Schopenhauer after a couple drinks. I had the most expensive sake I ever had in Rio. A hundred dollars for a little flask.

He even has something to say about Austin:

GS: I was just in Austin. I could live there. It seemed pretty cheap.

One more for the Hymnal: Lived in Bars

Cat Power, "Lived in Bars," The Greatest (2006).