Charles the barman: Regulars at Caribana now have to find a new ‘home’ pub. File
What you need to know:
You get attached to a bar because it’s a place where you go to unwind, to meditate, to mull over a decision, to disappear temporarily, to celebrate, to focus or to make deals.
Caribana Bar along Lenana Road closed down early this month.
The gate is locked and the small, printed sign pasted on the gate says they are not coming back. No fanfare. No warning. No farewell. Nothing. It ends with a white-sheet notice on the gate.
I have loved Caribana for so long. I was the first journalist to review it for a men’s magazine way back when it opened in 2008. Then I sort of fell in love with it over time.
It was a great bar; mature, an interior décor that wasn’t trying too hard and pizza that was unbeatable (the pizza sort of changed when they got in a new chef).
There was always a deejay. Fridays were party days. Wednesdays were rhumba nights. Jazz nights came towards the tail end of its existence. The parking was large, but on popular nights you would have to park along the narrow Lenana Road.
Then there was the barman – Charles Njoroge – with many decades of bar experience tucked under his belt, a mild chap with a firm disposition. Great barman.
Word is that they had to close because the lease expired and the landlord chose not to renew it. He’ll probably build a high-rise office block with underground parking. Or leave it there, to speculate for a while. Come to think of it, the death of Caribana was long coming, going by the demise of their next-door neighbour, Red Sea Restaurant not too long ago.
Bars close down all the time. It’s always a purely business decision, nothing personal. But for some consumers, bars are more than just businesses, they are an extension of their lifestyle.
You get attached to a bar because it’s a place where you go to unwind, to meditate, to mull over a decision, to disappear temporarily, to celebrate, to focus or to make deals. It’s home away from home. You sit at the same spot, order the same drink and get into the element because it’s a space that you own.
Sometimes you don’t even have to drink alcohol, you just sit there and have a juice or a meal and shoot the breeze with the barman for an hour or two. So when it closes down, without warning, it leaves you disoriented. Because now you have to find a new bar and build a relationship with it.
And so it’s jarring for most people who got attached to Caribana to show up and find nothing. It leaves you feeling orphaned.
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