Baku is Boring

My first night in Baku, I was invited by a group of expats to an Irish bar here, O’Malleys. After two months of khinkali and shashlik, I was pretty happy to have a good cheeseburger, and it was indeed good. I even went back another night by myself for another one. In addition to O’Malleys Baku boasts Finnegan’s, Caledonia, Britannia and various other establishments celebrating various other parts of the British Isles, all understandably popular with the mainly Scottish oil worker crowd here.

I went out another night to another such bar, The Corner, where a barely competent guitar-and-keyboard duo was playing oldies covers like “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey.” As I walked in, a pasty middle-aged Scot with a short sleeved dress shirt tucked into his jeans was having an argument with an Azeri girl in her early twenties wearing tight denim shorts, fishnet tights and high heels. “We’ve tried five places, where do you want to go,” he said, exasperatedly, in his ridiculous brogue.

I ordered mince and tatties, because I thought it was a funny name. But it turned out to be ground beef in some sort of bland sauce and mashed potatoes. I took notes on the vapid conversations going on around me. “I respect them, but I don’t think if you’re not a Christian you can know right from wrong… They have no morality … I had a girlfriend in Thailand … They’re always scheming…” But there were a surprising number of older Azeri or Russian women with the Scottish guys, not just young paid-for looking girls, and everyone was having a good time, and I felt bad trying to be a spoilsport. So I left early and walked down to the seafront, where there are rides and cotton candy and the kind of game I’d only seen in cartoons, where you take a big mallet and whack the machine as hard as you can and it tells you how strong you are. There were a lot of Azeri families with kids and a nice atmosphere, and I felt better.

So these are the sorts of nights out I’m having. I figured there must be more to Baku, though, a booming city of close to two million people. I had some hope for the club that Willie D promised to open, but that apparently never happened.

So I was excited when my translator, Tora, said she would invite me out with her friends. Tora is an artist and a former member of an indie-rock band, and her friends are also artists. She's even in the Azerbaijan pavilion in this year's Venice Biennale (although she assures me that it is so badly curated that it is no great distinction). Surely she and her friends would be plugged in to all the cool bohemian joints, I figured. You can probably see where this is going. She called tonight and said “OK, we’re at a bar near your apartment. It’s called O’Malleys…”

Comments

[carpetblogger]

"cool bohemian joints in Baku." That's hilarious.