Food & Drinks

At Shorty’s, New York Bar With No Waiters

beer

Of course with a name like that, this bar can only be in Harlem, New York. It’s on the 9th and 42nd street, a hole in the wall. Literally.

I went with a friend who said Harlem was the place for artistes to drink and hang out. There were no artistes at Shorty’s but there were lots of black people in there. It’s a grungy bar, loud and full of character. The music— as you would expect from a black bar—was thudding and sightly edging towards the old school, like New Jack Swing, if you will.

There were no waiters; you fetch your own drinks from the bar. Drinks are not cheap in New York, as I discovered. A double whisky was going for Sh1,800, but the beauty was that they didn’t use tot glasses to measure; they just poured the damn thing.

That’s a good thing or it can also be a bad thing, depending on how lucky you are. I’m a lucky guy.

At 8pm, they killed the music and a Latino band rocked up on stage with the most unlikeliest lead-singer. (He looked like an auditor).

Thankfully they were a riot. They sang in Spanish, and a group of Latina girls shook their waists that looked like rubber. Shorty’s got louder and louder as the night wore on. A little warning; the wash-rooms are downstairs, a steep fall down a wooden staircase which means if you have had a lot to drink going down there might present a bit of conundrum. And you also can’t nip out and take a wee behind the bar, against a wall, because that’s New York.

I had a great time, so good that I missed the last train back to New Jersey, which meant I had to Uber and that hurt more than climbing that steep wooden staircase to the loo did.

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