Cool bar but where is it?

Trust me, I’ve been there
Zoe Williams

I’M about to tell you about the best nightlife experiences I’ve ever had on holiday – only don’t, whatever you do, get excited. Because my end point is that I can’t remember where they are. I can never remember where anything is. It’s maddening. When I revisit the city, I can never find that bar or club again. Sometimes I’ve even taken notes, and I still can’t find it again. Why do I even bother, you wonder?Isn’t one bar much the same as another?

No! There’s a bar on Manhattan which is bang opposite a kind of youth detention facility, which connects with a round-the-clock courthouse via a joyless little service-station-ey bridge; the prison officers all drink in the bar, and fromthe window you can see all these handcuffed 14-year-olds being escorted to their fate. There’ll always be one gruff fellow sitting on his own, giving his weird commentary: “He’ll go down and git right back up again.” “His mother never made a mistake about him” etc etc. Before you know it, it’s three in the morning, and the prisoners are still marching across, and by now everyone’s drunk and doing karaoke to the juke box on a loose prison theme (Happiness is a Warm Gun. The Chain Gang…). It’s not like a bar, it’s like performance art. Or an arthouse film, that you’re allowed to drink all the way through. Yes! I know it sounds cool! Where is it, you ask? I can’t sodding remember!

In Porto, there’s a restaurant on a whole street of other restaurants, only it isn’t a restaurant – it’s some chancer’s front room. Who knows why he won’t go legit and get a proper license? The authorities of course know he’s trading, so they pop in every five minutes to try and catch him out. As a spectacularly messy and chaotic foil to this, he makes his punters break into spontaneous rounds of Happy Birthday, and all pretend to know one another, whenever they see a policeman. I guess it’s fine if you’re Portuguese, but when you’re not, it’s taxing to the point that you get an adrenaline rush. What are the words to Portuguese Happy Birthday? Do we have to pretend to know these other people, and if so, do we have to pretend to speak Portuguese? Or will they pretend to speak English? Perhaps if things get really hairy I can just snog the owner? Yes! I know it sounds exciting! And nope, once again, I cannot supply you with the address.

And yet, in magazines, when people describe their favourite underwear shop in Paris, or a chocolatier in Sienna, or a haberdasher in Berlin where they have 17 cats, all wearing cat socks, they always finish by telling you where it is. How do they do it? Do they take a sherpa?