Prick Knobinson sends a spicy report on his visit to the best of Manhattan’s bars. Warning: It’s not for the faint hearted! But is a seriously good listen.
Transcript
Pub crawl, I thought, as I was lowered from the plane in a wheelchair I hadn’t asked for. A litre of Islay Gin and a line of something that sparkled like diamonds had perhaps made me look shakier than I felt. I didn’t argue with the aircrew, why would I? I was on the plane first, and on arrival, wheeled to a taxi with my luggage delivered to my hotel room. My age and vowels that I suppose could curdle the finest organic milk and a stained blazer that probably cost more than your bloody mortgage (given to me by a particularly right wing billionaire cousin who uses me as tax relief) can sometimes bring benefits.
So, I decided to safari into the gilded underbelly of Manhattan. Forget your dreary “walkabouts” and your lukewarm pissy ales; we’re talking a five-stop detonation of high-octane alcohol and drugs in establishments so swanky, they probably employ butlers just to fluff the fucking cocktail napkins.
Our odyssey commenced, naturally, at The King Cole Bar in the St. Regis. Stepping through those revolving doors was like entering a bloody oil painting – all hushed reverence, mahogany gleam, and enough polished brass to blind a bloody magpie. The legendary Old King Cole mural loomed, a benevolent, boozy monarch overseeing the hushed clinking of ice in crystal tumblers.
I perched on a velvet stool, feeling like a particularly well-dressed, slightly inebriated parakeet in a cathedral. My quarry for the evening, a
certain Congressman “Chuck” Finnegan – a firebrand lefty whose rhetoric could strip paint and whose disdain for President Orange Anus Face was, shall we say, robust – was already holding court, a half-empty martini glass radiating righteous fury.
“You’ll find me in the snug of a dimly lit shit rundown pub,” I thought to myself, feeling a strange sort of anticipation for something a bit less… hushed.
“Knobinson, you magnificent bloody anachronism!” he bellowed, his voice a New York foghorn battling a head cold. “Trump’s just declared Kneecap a national security threat! Can you believe the cunt?”
I signaled the barman, a chap who looked like he’d personally invented the concept of “discreet,” and ordered a Negroni. “Dreadful business, Chuck, absolutely dreadful…”
Our next port of call, after a swift and fortifying round, was The Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle. Good heavens, this place was like being swallowed by a particularly charming children’s book, albeit one where the characters were all nursing very expensive drinks.
Ludwig Bemelmans’ whimsical murals of Central Park in all its glorious, slightly tipsy chaos adorned the walls. Chuck, by this point, was expounding on the finer points of gerrymandering with the passionate intensity of a medieval scholar debating the number of angels on a pinhead. “We say ‘fuck the King’ agus ‘ tiocfaidh ár lá’,” he muttered, a sentiment I could certainly get behind.
“They’re carving up the districts like a bloody Thanksgiving turkey, Prick! It’s a fucking outrage! Trump’s gangsters are laughing all the way to the bank -as well as the bloody ballot box!” He punctuated his outrage with a hefty swig of his bourbon.
I, meanwhile, was attempting to decipher a particularly enigmatic squirrel in the mural. “Fascinating, Chuck, truly. Though I do believe that squirrel is attempting to fuck that gentleman’s top hat. A metaphor, perhaps?”
The third stop on our itinerary was The Bar Centrale, tucked away near Broadway. This felt less like a grand hotel and more like the clandestine watering hole of theatrical royalty. Dim lighting, hushed conversations punctuated by bursts of theatrical laughter, and an air thick with unspoken stories. We’d pulled along with us, quite the entourage. My accent, foreign clothes and Chucks local celebrity ensured drugs galore… and people clamouring for news from outside America. I regaled them with stories of full supermarket shelves and toys given out willy nilly by parents who didn’t give a second thought. And lots and lots of luxury Chinese made American designer handbags… EVERYWHERE! The crowd oohed and ahhed at my Tesco receipt for eggs.
Chuck, now on his third Old Fashioned, was regaling a bewildered-looking waiter with his five-point plan to nationalize all artisanal pickle producers. “Up to the food bank, munchies, lethal,” I thought, picturing the potential for truly epic sandwich fillings under state control. Sazerac
“The brine, Prick, the brine! It’s a national resource! Trumpo wants to sell it off to Kim Jong Un!” His voice, though still booming, had acquired a certain melodic slurring.
I ordered a Sazerac, feeling rather pleased with myself for remembering the correct pronunciation. “Quite right, Chuck. Think of the bloody pickle cartels! The horror!”
The gathered crowd, that now included celebrated singer Billy Idol and rapper Five Fab Freddy (I had no idea they had a pie and mash chain over here), was descending into anm level of inebriation that suggested to me I may wake up naked on a car bonnet in a different country in a few days time, continued at The NoMad Bar.
This place had a distinctly Victorian vibe, all dark wood, plush leather, and bartenders with impeccably groomed moustaches who looked like they could conjure the spirits of dead goats as well as cocktails.
Chuck, by this juncture, was convinced that President Trumpski was secretly communicating with extraterrestrials through coded messages in his golf scores. “Giddy up, rack it up, get me fucked,” I muttered, feeling the subtle shift from intellectual curiosity to something altogether more… primal.
“Mark my words, Prick! Three under par on the back nine? That’s not golf, that’s bloody Morse code! They’re planning something, I tell you!” He jabbed a finger in my chest for emphasis, nearly sending my meticulously crafted Aviation cocktail cascading.
“Aliens,
you say? Rather unsporting of them to side with Drumpf, don’t you think?” I mused, attempting to discreetly mop up the spillage with my tie.
The final, glorious plunge into the abyss took place at O’Malley’s Corner, a proper New York Irish bar in the East Village. Forget your hushed tones and your velvet stools; this was a gorgeous, sexy, raucous cacophony of laughter, spilled Guinness, and the unmistakable twang of a fiddle battling a slightly out-of-tune jukebox. Irish music. The kind that tells stories of tutting dead old women haunting drunk old bastards in police cells on New Years day, 1889. The air hung thick with the scent of stale beer and fucking stories
so full of lies, even my editor would blush. Chuck, by this point a magnificent, swaying monument to righteous fury and fine bourbon, spotted a bloke with a shock of fiery red hair and a determined glint in his eye holding court at the bar.
This was Seamus, a self-proclaimed ” Second generation Irish Republican (with a lineage also traceable to William Shatner) and with a healthy distrust of all politicians, regardless of their bloody colours.”
As we stumbled over to him, the thumping bass and defiant lyrics of Kneecap’s “C.E.A.R.T.A.” blasted from a nearby speaker. Seamus roared with approval, raising his pint. “That’s the bloody truth of it, lads! ‘Politicians, gobshites, never tell us the truth!'”
Chuck, his eyes widening with sudden, drunken clarity, clapped Seamus on the back. “You speak the gospel, my friend! Trump’s nothing but a… a fucking odious gobshite!”
Before I could say “I’ll drink to that,” Seamus started rapping along with the track, his voice surprisingly adept despite the copious amounts of ale he’d clearly consumed. “‘They’re all the same, the bastards, lining their own pockets!'”
And then, to my utter astonishment, something snapped within the carefully constructed layers of one’s charade of English reserve. Perhaps it was the sheer, unadulterated truth of the lyrics, perhaps it was the cumulative effect of several exceedingly well-made cocktails, perhaps it was the news report on the bar’s TV showing fathers carry injured children from bombed buildings or perhaps it was just the infectious energy of the moment. Whatever the reason, I found myself joining in, my Cambridge-honed vowels attempting
a decidedly less refined, but surprisingly enthusiastic, rendition of Kneecap’s politically charged anthem.
“‘Smash the state, the rotten, bloody state!'” I bellowed, nearly knocking over a precarious stack of empty pint glasses. Chuck and Seamus roared with laughter, hoisting their drinks in solidarity. I nimbly climbed atop the bar battered a spoon off the side of my glass and shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” And the bar hushed. I pointed at random individuals, looking them soberly in the eye, daring them to challenge me. I stamped my foot and shouted, “Free Palestine!” And everyone to a person solemnly raised their glasses
and joined in my chant. “Free Free Palestine, and Fuck Netanyahu!”
The rest of the evening became a glorious, blurry montage of shouted Kneecap lyrics, increasingly slurred denunciations of President Trump, Netanyahu, Putin and all their ilk, and a profound, if temporary, sense of camaraderie forged in the fiery crucible of shared political outrage and excellent Irish stout.
And we sang a song by one of New York’s finest residents,
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin’”
By the time we finally lurched out into the New York night, I hailed a cab, and a wide, slightly manic grin plastered across my face, I couldn’t help but think: this, this was the bloody spirit of rebellion. Ireland was holding out. Scotland was holding out. Canada was holding out. Australia was holding out. And damn it, New York was holding out! Perhaps the crucible of the streets, the bars, with their alcoholics, nervous wrecks and prima donnas, jilted lovers, office clerks, petty thieves, hard drug pursuers, Irish speaking rappers, lonely tramps and awkward misfits will win this. I’m with them. They are me. And the rebellion tasted rather like spilled Guinness and the righteous fury of a riz rap group.
