Yale Daily News -- Friday, April 4, 2003
Mondays at Cafe Nine: Beatniks' open mic
LUCY TEITLER
It's the kind of place that makes you look good on a date. It's somewhere between creepily sexy and sexily creepy. The room is dim and wooden and most of the light comes from neon beer adds and the illuminated Smirnoff Ice bottles that sit like lava lamps behind the bar.
Monday night is beatnik night -- "Hey hipsters!" the program implores. On stage is a man you think you might recognize from the weekly war protests on Park Street. He's about your father's age, and when he shouts into the microphone and expletives flood your ears and you begin to realize that he is rapping, you wonder if he reminds you more of Allen Ginsberg or Adolf Hitler in the beer hall. No one seems to be listening and you feel an odd affection for him when he sits back down in front of your booth and you see him scribbling out more apocalyptic hysteria.
Another middle-aged man comes over to say hello. "Are you reading anymore tonight?" he asks. You're beginning to feel like you're part of a scene so you look over at the other tables in an attempt to make friends. In the booth by the wall nearest you is a wild-looking man, shifting his weight and muttering hostilities.
A new man is on stage now: a solo guitarist with long hair and a vertical strip of a beard down his chin."Thanks for coming out here tonight," he says. "Though I don't know why you wouldn't. What else are you going to do, watch TV?" The crowd titters congenially. Except the hostile muttering man, who seems to be a reaching some kind of climax. You are suddenly really happy you came here. Sodas and juice are only $1 each on Monday. The cranberry juice tastes really good.
Domestic beers are $2 and imported beers and drinks are $4. You can just make out the prices on the cigarette machine: $5.75. Too bad. The machine is retro, but the prices aren't. It occurs to you that people won't be able to pick each other up in New York bars anymore, now that asking to bum a cigarette is a thing of the past.
OK. Now all you have to do is find someone to bring along, which shouldn't be that hard. Then you can walk along the dark quiet of State Street on Monday at 10 until you see the "musician's living room" sign, just before the highway. You'll go in and sit down.
"I love this place," you'll say. "It just has a sense of reality, you know." You'll lean forward so that your face is red beneath the lights. "You know someone got shot here," you'll whisper.
LUCY TEITLER
It's the kind of place that makes you look good on a date. It's somewhere between creepily sexy and sexily creepy. The room is dim and wooden and most of the light comes from neon beer adds and the illuminated Smirnoff Ice bottles that sit like lava lamps behind the bar.
Monday night is beatnik night -- "Hey hipsters!" the program implores. On stage is a man you think you might recognize from the weekly war protests on Park Street. He's about your father's age, and when he shouts into the microphone and expletives flood your ears and you begin to realize that he is rapping, you wonder if he reminds you more of Allen Ginsberg or Adolf Hitler in the beer hall. No one seems to be listening and you feel an odd affection for him when he sits back down in front of your booth and you see him scribbling out more apocalyptic hysteria.
Another middle-aged man comes over to say hello. "Are you reading anymore tonight?" he asks. You're beginning to feel like you're part of a scene so you look over at the other tables in an attempt to make friends. In the booth by the wall nearest you is a wild-looking man, shifting his weight and muttering hostilities.
A new man is on stage now: a solo guitarist with long hair and a vertical strip of a beard down his chin."Thanks for coming out here tonight," he says. "Though I don't know why you wouldn't. What else are you going to do, watch TV?" The crowd titters congenially. Except the hostile muttering man, who seems to be a reaching some kind of climax. You are suddenly really happy you came here. Sodas and juice are only $1 each on Monday. The cranberry juice tastes really good.
Domestic beers are $2 and imported beers and drinks are $4. You can just make out the prices on the cigarette machine: $5.75. Too bad. The machine is retro, but the prices aren't. It occurs to you that people won't be able to pick each other up in New York bars anymore, now that asking to bum a cigarette is a thing of the past.
OK. Now all you have to do is find someone to bring along, which shouldn't be that hard. Then you can walk along the dark quiet of State Street on Monday at 10 until you see the "musician's living room" sign, just before the highway. You'll go in and sit down.
"I love this place," you'll say. "It just has a sense of reality, you know." You'll lean forward so that your face is red beneath the lights. "You know someone got shot here," you'll whisper.
posted by Lucy at 12:34 PM
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