anywho, life's been pretty swell. it was my friend robyn's birthday the other night. we went out to this restaurant near odean. i had chicken and lamb skewers with some veggies and some ravioli. it was delicious. the 8 of us then decided to head to bastille, to the hideout, for some dancing. it ended up being the most fun night any of us have had since we've been here. the hideout is the very thin bar in the middle of rue de lappe in bastille. upstairs there are a light couches lining the walls and a few tables. there's little room to dance. upstairs is also the big bar, which is always always always overcrowded and is manned by at most two bartenders. as a result, we really just enjoy each other's company. there's also a downstairs to which we went. the downstairs has a totally different vibe. it's almost like a cave, lined with cobblestone walls with a small bar towards the rear. what's much better about this room is the massive amount of dancing space. somehow we ended up at saint michele-notre dame, i don't really remember why. but to get to bastille from there, we had to transfer at chatelet. as we're going through the ticket counters there, the biggest station is paris is arguably the most empty at 10 pm on a saturday night. a little weird, no? at this point, people would be packing the station trying to get from one place to another for their saturday night plans. but no, all of a sudden my throat started to burn a little, will started to cough, and robyn's eyes started to water. we look at each other and realize what's happening and why the station's empty. we yell back at the 5 others to just cover their mouths and keep walking (we were heading toward a ventilated part of the station). meanwhile, people next to us were feeling the same effects of the tear gas. i'm just glad it wasn't a direct encounter.
we got to the bar a little early and started the party, but within minutes the rest of our friends arrived, including my friend ali and some of her girl friends... and so did like the rest of paris. it made for a really fun night of dancing and celebrating robyn's 21st.
another great thing about that night is that i made buddy buddy with the giant black bouncer outside. i always tend to be the one to speak for the group for reasons i'm still not entirely sure on, but we talked for a little and he asked me where i was from. i told him i live in miami, florida and his eyes widened completely. he starts smiling and screaming in probably the worst english accent i have ever heard, "DO YOU KNOW BARAK OBAMA??? YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN!" i really didn't want to let the poor guy down, so all i could say was, "oui, je le connais." afterwards, we had a like 10 min french convo about how he's so proud of the united states for the strides forward in history they've been making and how something like that could never happen in france. he told me that i'm welcome back to the bar any time and if i ever have people waiting outside to just find him and he'll let us in. what good can come from a little white lie? i suppose a lot. ps, no pun on the white lie bit.
cheers, jhabra
No comments:
Post a Comment