Bars/Clubs in NY

2: Bars and Clubs 


Swing 46 Jazz club

First night – We were determined to find a good jazz club in New York but weren’t in the mood to travel across town searching for a good spot. To our great surprise, there were a couple of jazz spots along 46^th street, which was literally 1 block down from our own apartment on 47^th . The choices eventually boiled down to a piano bar and a place called Swing 46, of which we chose the latter. Stepping into the bar, it wasn’t all that packed and the musicians wrapped up their set within 5 minutes of us coming in. What followed though was a chill night of casual drinking in a relaxed environment and we had a good enough time that we agreed to come back earlier next time to actually hear the band play……

Second night – Having just visited Harlem, we were really tempted to hit the famous ‘Lennox Lounge’ jazz bar there as it had played host to some of the gods of jazz including Count Bassie, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. That was all the way in Harlem though, and we were lazy so Swing46 it was!

The second night was a different affair altogether. The bar was absolutely packed with people, and the musicians were in full swing. Rayna and I got there earlier than the others and decided to try and stake out an empty booth for everyone else. We checked our coats and entered the bar when I made possibly the stupidest remark in history. Swing46 is a small rectangular shaped bar, and to create the illusion of space, the owners had mounted a full length mirror on the wall near the entrance. Having checked our coats in, an employee tried to show us to some seats when I pointed in the opposite direction and asked ‘I’m sorry, but could we go this way?’. The guy looked at me for a moment before calmly replying, ‘I’m really sorry sir, but you can’t because that’s actually a mirror…..’ Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night trying (and failing) to avoid that guy.

We spotted a few empty booths up the front and made our way there and sat down feeling immensely satisfied, however we soon realised that these booths were reserved for dining patrons when the waiter started bothering us about food. We thought a second dinner was worth a prime seat so we were just about to order when the others came in, and we decided against it.

The band was great, especially the sultry lead singer; but the trumpets, bass and piano all kicked ass too. At the end of the night, after a fair few cocktails and tipsy staggering/dancing, we met the singer who was really chill, and lit up when we told her we were tourists all the way from Australia. She told us to come to one of her other gigs and asked us to friend her on Facebook. (Speaking of which, does anyone still have her details? Cause I’d like to do that!).

All in all, an excellent night and one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Copacabana –

Don’t remember much about this place tbh, wasn’t exactly a paragon of sobriety during my time there….

Aspen Social –

Having cast Shamila, Terry, Joe and myself out into the cold, the rest of the NYCrew headed here to spend new years getting well and truly hammered in the hopes of using up their pre-bought bar tab. I don’t know much of what went on till I arrived on the scene myself at 1pm. What I found though shook me to the very core and I remain a different person to this day. Tales of debauchery, drinking to excess, some random Fijian-Indian coming up and wordlessly kissing me on the cheeks and the wildly swirling ass of a man known only as ‘the hulk’ are but a few of the tales that abound. We also met some really nice New Yorkers including a girl who was coming down to Queensland to study medicine. We really should’ve got her details to hang out, oh well….. All in all, I think it’s fair to say that the other half had a pretty good New Years too.

Mercury Bar

This bar left such an impression on my heart that I felt compelled to leave my own little mark on the place too. We went there 3 times, including our very last night in New York which was a little sad.

Blarney Stone

A little pub on West 47^th street that we’d walk by every day. We’d laugh at the funny sounding name ‘Blarney’ but kept saying that we’d go there one day. That time came the night after seeing wicked. Everyone was on a high after the show and felt like staying out longer. We stopped in before we had a chance to go home as Alvin insisted that if we went home, we’d get comfortable and not head out again (he was absolutely right). A nice little watering hole, but I got too drunk and ended up staggering home, drunk off my ass.

1: The eagle has landed.

I went into this trip with mixed feelings as America was never really a travel priority for me. I was always fascinated by New York as it has been the setting of so many of my favourite movies, books, cartoons, comics (Spidey is a Brooklyn-er), music etc but the idea of being surrounded by obnoxious, ignorant Americans wasn’t something I looked forward to with any great enthusiasm. If anything, the only reason I went to America was to hang out with my brother, sister and our good mates for a couple of weeks in a strange new land.

All of that changed however, on our first drive through Times Square. We arrived at around midnight and traversed Broadway shortly after midnight on a Monday. What we saw was a veritable sea of people rushing about against a backdrop of enormous LCD panels advertising everything from chocolate to airplanes. That’s when it hit me, we were in New York. The biggest, baddest and most famous city in the world, and we had nothing but time, money and energy on our hands. This was going to be big.

Without visiting the city, it’s a hard thing to conceptualise so I feel it’s necessary to  try and paint a picture of the place before proceeding. New York is not a city in the conventional sense. Brisbane is a city. Melbourne is a city, even Sydney is a city. New York however is it’s own ecosystem. The place has a cultural, economical, intellectual and sociological colour all its own and all other cities I’ve visited have fallen short in their attempts to imitate it. New York is often called the world’s first metropolis and I understand why having visited it. There are 3 general conglomerations of buildings; uptown, midtown and downtown. Seen from the 88^th floor of the empire state building, or from the top of the Rock, these are fairly distinct areas and could be considered sizeable cities on their own. Viewed all as one, New York’s skyline is almost limitless. I’d be fairly confident in saying that the city has more tall buildings than every city in Australia combined.

The sheer size of the city aside, the other thing that struck me was the variety one found in New York. Every street had its own vibe from the artsy pretension of the theatre district to the ostentatious glamour of fifth avenue. The overall impression is that this was not a city that was built in a day. No two buildings are alike, there is no sense of planning or uniformity; rather, it seems like every architect ever contracted to build in the city set about creating the most beautiful building they could imagine, with the end result being an eclectic collection of floating, palatial masterpieces on every street corner as far as the eye can see. It’s definitely something to be admired.

I think that’s enough bullshit from me now. I’ll be updating the blog with the actual places we visited and accompanying pictures in future entries (being completely unorganised, I won’t be posting in chronological order though). Anyway, I felt it would be appropriate to provide a backdrop to these before I started, and that’s what I’ve done. Hope it’s useful to someone/anyone/everyone.

I look forward to reading everyone else’s entries too!

Peace out.