Saturday night we decided to venture back into Testaccio, Rome's meatpacking district, for some food, music, and jigging. Our destination was Via Monte di Testaccio, a horseshoe shaped road of supposed hot and hipstery nightclubs. Our Lonely planet guide had warned us of how late these clubs get going, around 1am, as well as the fickle entry polices of the bouncers. Fortunately for us we forgot to bring a map and ate up some of our time repeatedly trying to guess which dark street a Roman hipster would turn down, until miraculously (really I'd put this up against stigmata), we wound up exactly at the street we wanted. We settled down at a restaurant called “Aqua and Farina,” for some appetizers and pizza. The real standout at dinner was a layered appetizer of cheese, spec, and thinly sliced zucchini.
Even after finishing dinner and chasing the waiter around for a check, it was still only 10:30, so Linda and I decided to just walk the horseshoe to get the lay of the land. As expected, each club we passed -- Alibi, Big Bang, Coyote Club, Charro -- were all pretty empty. To give you an idea, Charro actually had people with baby carriages and a family sing-along lead by the DJ. Only one place, a bar called “Rome on the Rox” had people in it, actually a lot of people, drinking pretty much american style, with no accompanying food, drinks followed by drinks. We saddled up to the bar where Linda had a prosecco and I had a well-intentioned Manhattan. The bartender seemed to be excited to actually mix a drink in a bar where almost everyone was drinking beer, and focussed intently as she mixed the whiskey, vermouth, and worcestershire sauce! Topped with a cherry. The highlight of the Rox was when the Train song, Soul Sister, came on the sound system and I got to hear a whole Bar of Italians sing along in English (my friend Jerry is actually in the band, which made it a little weirder).
The second time we walked the club loop it was just getting going. The strip reminded me a lot of 11th and Folsom area of San Francisco, once known for its live music, only to become lazer shooting, dry ice billowing dance clubs. We couldn't find live music, so we followed the loudest thumping bass, and the oddest looking occupants, which brought us to Alibi, a mixed/gay club. There was already a small crowd gathered in an unorderly mass outside the front door and after a couple of minutes of observation we were completely baffled as to how people were being admitted to the club. I asked a bouncer how we get into the club, he asked if it was the two of us, and then said, “wait one moment,” and pointed us to another small chained entrance 10 feet to the left (I assumed it was the exit since everyone was standing in front of the other entrance). True to his word, we were in in a minute or so, leaving a mass of helpless others outside.
After paying 20 euro a piece to get in, we were greeted by men in thongs, and women in key-lime green bikini tops, and the host of the the evening, Bambi, “like a disney character in the woods.” It had the vibe of a Anon-Salon or Laughing Squid party, more than a dance club. There was an upstairs dance-floor playing popular music, like Lady Gaga, and remixes of popular music. Downstairs, with the smoke machines and strobe-lights, had some pretty decent Deep House with breaks. I liked that they had multiple DJs and although the bass never stopped thumping (except for the breaks of course), you could definitely hear the difference in styles (otherwise why have a DJ?). The dance scene might have been a whole lot better if Linda and I weren't the best dancers in the club. Most people dancing seemed to personify a confusion of rhythm and style, as if 80's dance moves were being overlayed on top trip-hop beats. It seems like a perfectly valid thing to do, take one style of dance that you are familiar with and expand it into a new set of beats. Their complete failure reminds me of my attempts to shoehorn their language into my brain and then squawk it out again in an attempt at communication.
So, was this the hipster Rome experience we were expecting? Are these young Romans that hip? Or are we just assuming anything that starts happening at 1:00am must be cool? I'd have to say, for a city full of people who talk as loud as they do, there was very little attitude, and very few successful attempts at getting attention in all the crowds we wandered through. Roman “style” seems to be solidly 10 years behind the US, and a leather jacket and a T-shirt (god forbid, not a button down washed by their mother), is acceptably rebellious to be considered cool. I'd have to argue that anything that is acceptable cool removes it from the realm of really being hip. Club Alibi actually highlights the point really well -- most of the men were wearing white collared shirts with one button too many undone (very risky) and the women wore sparkly tank-tops and tights. A couple of weeks ago Linda and I had a conversation with a man in one of our language classes about his T-shirt, which said “Pretty Fly” on it. We surprised how hard it was to explain to him what “fly” meant in the US. I guess some part of hip also gets lost in translation.
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