Times Square’s Smoking Jacket

As Lou Reed once said, ‘remember that the city is a funny place’. Well, it’s hard to leave an indelible impression in a city jam-packed with hipsters, brooklynites and fashionista JAP’s. But if we want Times Square to Art Square to be embraced by the young & happening, we’d better find the hang-outs to start spreading the word.

So we donned our most outrageous suits, combed our hair, and were taken along for the ride by Liza Jansen, on of the city’s better informed. So off we went to the outskirts of Chinatown, to the bar ‘Apothèke’. It’s hidden behind the façade of a closed-down Chinese restaurant in a deserted alley, and only a young doorman scanning the street is a way of knowing where the entrance is.

Once inside, the heady, sultry atmosphere of an old Chinese opiumhouse assails you. The backwall is filled with old glass jars full of alchohol and herbs of all sorts, and the bartenders all in apothecar’s white coats. The cocktailmenu comprised of various Aphrodisiacs, Pharmaceuticals, Relaxants, Moodlifters, etc; for me the choice of poison soon became The Smoking Jacket, a fine mix of smokey whisky and spices.

Music was very refreshingly not of the cheap-laidback-buddhabar clone sort, but ranged from the darker side of Joy Division up to Led Zepplin and the Cure; and before long, Justus Bruns had snapped up a group of enthousiasts trailing his pink-and-white striped coattails to the the makeshift dancefloor into a wild rage of movement. Several of the medicinal coktails down the road, almost everyone was introduced to the endeavor of changing all the billboards on Times Square into art. When leaving, the young doorman with his hat cocked at an impossible angle commented with a voice as smooth as Jimi Hendrix: ‘Sure it’ll work. He pulled it off with that jacket, so he can pull this off too.’

Alexander Bakkes, NY