The Archive

One night in Istambul - hot men humbled

OK, so it's Saturday night. We stop off for a quick chicken shish to set us up - not because it was what we wanted, but the dodgy canteen we stopped in seemed to have literally nothing else available.

And on to the bar. We chose the lovely rooftop bar/club Dogstars and, contrary to our usual tactic of 'pay a fiver to get in, decide we don't like it, move on to another bar, repeat until broke' we elected to stay in one place for the evening.

And a jolly good time was had by all.

I made one attempt at a local lady, who was taking a picture with her friend...

'Hi, would you like me to take that for you?' *smiles*

'No.' *looks horrified*

'Right' *leaves*

Then, mysteriously, just as the place started to get busy, they put a ceiling over the previously-open roof terrace.

This would have been fine, except for the fact that everyone on the roof terrace was there because they wanted to smoke. And they didn't stop smoking either.

I'd forgotten how uncomfortable it can be in a really smoke environment.

Fortately, there was no smoking downstairs, where two dour Turkish youth were fiddling with a range of electronic items to create what I am informed was Dubplate, in which a single song was played for about eight bars, just enough to think you might want to dance to it, before changing to another song, interspersed with a selection of electronica effects, all of which were created with no regard for what the people on the dance floor wanted, in a cold, soulless exercise in pointless technical mastery. Which was fun.

Still, a good night was had. I left a bit early with Patrick, where I developed a new and cunning method for negotiating with cab drivers, which consisted of simply saying 'fuck off' at every ridiculous price they suggested (I may have been drinking at this point).

Meanwhile, the others, through sheet tenacity managed to convince the dj to play the music they all wanted to hear, and Istambuls one-night-only indie disco was born.

Once again, before retiring, everyone heard the siren sound of the call-to-kebeb and individually headed to Notdonalds for a midnight snack (ok, 4am, but you get the idea).

And then to bed. Because tomorrow we were going to have a massive hangover. And a cruise.

posted by Peter The Great @ 12:57 PM