We have bid farewell to y’all down south and lobbed into New York City. It’s drizzling and we are surrounded by light blocking behemoths down on 35th Street and the contrast with Nashville couldn’t be more striking. Adding a splash of colour, no doubt, will be every pimp for 500km with their flash limos and pink fluffy mirror dice. Why are they here, I hear you ask? It’s because around 140 world leaders with their extensive entourages are in town to condemn Israel at the UN. Isn’t that what they do at the UN? All of that illegal parking and extra traffic has turned the place into a carpark; the sort where parked cars are an active workplace.
Speaking of shit traffic, let’s move to Boston which is acknowledged as having the worst traffic in the USA. It’s as bad as the CB’s reverse parking. This and what I am about to tell you next shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s a great place. If you like history, it has lots of history. If you like pubs, it has a pub street (and many more of course). They have mildly amusing comedians. The CB and I tittered at 4 of them in one of said pubs in Pub Street. And it has Cheers but we didn’t meet anyone who knew our names.
It also has a Holiday Inn (one of many so i won’t identify which) which is the tittering version of America’s Fawlty Towers. More frustrating than hilarious but here’s what happened. This hotel has a bar. It looks like a real bar with shelves across the back wall packed with various and the usual bottles of spirits and liquores and glasses of various shapes and sizes. There are tables and chairs with high chairs up against the actual bar and carpet on the floor. They have a drinks list that details various beers, 8 different cocktails, five red wine choices by glass or bottle and 5 white wine options although one was rose` which perhaps should have hinted at the confusion to follow. All up, a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming this was a normal functioning bar.
On night 1, after a trip into town, the CB and I decided to have a night-cap on returning to the hotel. It was about 9.30pm. We enter and sit at the bar. There are a couple of patrons present and a bloke slouched against the wall at one end of the bar. A toothpick or piece of grass between his teeth wouldn’t have made him look more casual. I assumed he was a cleaner or hotel worker of some description as he made zero effort to acknowledge us, in fact he didn’t move. Eventually I asked him if anyone was serving. He asked what I wanted. I asked him if he was the barman. He again asked what we wanted. I said we wanted a wine list. He obviously had it memorised because he muttered “chardonnay” and something unintelligible. By this stage I was fantasising about the scene in Ozark where the cartel’s hit man takes out a smart arse, decidedly unhelpful kid in a service station. To short-circuit a process which looked like going down-hill fast I ordered two Chardonnays which prompted him to push himself resignedly off the wall, slope down to the other end of the bar and return with two glasses. We drank them, cut our losses and left.
As we come from the school of thought that says repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different result defines insanity, we went to the bar again on night 2. Our asshole “barman” from the previous night wasn’t there. Maybe the cartels were in town. Another bloke was there with someone who appeared to be his off-sider. He was very polite but as we found, politeness is no substitute for bar-savvy if you are running a bar. So to short circuit the inevitable debate on availability, I pointed at the Chardonnay I think we had the previous night and said we’d have a bottle of that. Then the debate ensued. It eventually transpired that this laughably mis-functioning bar had no bottles of wine. Our man disappeared for a minute or so and returned from the cellar with half a bottle of Chardonnay and half a bottle of Chablis, which wasn’t on the wine list and was probably the unintelligible thing mentioned the previous night. It was in a green bottle and I was reminded of paint thinner so it was two more Chardonnays and an early night.
Now, when I travel, bars have a particular significance. The name of this site may provide a hint. I particularly like the way older hotels, especially those in India do bars with their wood panelling and leather chairs. So, dear reader, you will understand why my expectations are high. And let me remind you- in this case, we’re talking about a Holiday Inn. Elton John wrote a song about them for God’s sake. Love you Boston, but really…