Aquí Se Bebe Fatal

Keep your shirts on. We’re not saying these establishments are necessarily going to show you a bad time. Expand your mind beyond the rubber bumper of idiom and perhaps you’ll remember that you once knew how to extract multiple meanings from texts and weren’t quite so afraid of ambiguity. This is simply a collection of places that remind us, in one way or another, of tía Tomasa’s funeral, which we attended on a Saturday afternoon after experiencing a different kind of Petite Mort. Death’s complex, and life is short, and sometimes they intersect. Come to think of it, do take your shirts off.

Atelier de la Muerte Negra

C/ Torrijos, 14

¿Sede de una secta? ¿Lugar necrófilo? ¿Cultos masónicos? Algunos vecinos no duermen. Al jese. Peligro. Quien quiera puede usar un timbre con sonidos de ultratumba. ¿Quieren la verdad? El día de los muertos de 2007 Otilio, un artista venezolano, inauguró su taller. Su afición se origina en un trauma infantil: cuando tenía 11 años no le comunicaron el óbito de su padre hasta que llegó a la funeraria, donde vio el cadáver y rompió a llorar desconsoladamente. Otilio usa su supuestamente sombrío local para trabajar. Recibe encargos variopintos, desde disfraces para orgías hasta ataúdes y utensilios para extraños rituales. No sólo los ciudadanos dudan de las intenciones del dueño, asqueado por las extravagantes preguntas de empleados municipales, que alguna vez, consecuencias de la Barcelona progre que en realidad es tradicionalista, le han precintado el local. Deberían pensar en las iglesias, llenas de cruces en honor a un hijo muerto.

Sunshine Bar

C/ d’Andrea Dória, 39 (more or less)

This bar isn’t as bright and sunny as it sounds, but the booze is cheap enough to give you that same warm feeling you get on a beautiful summer’s day. This corner establishment is just a room that sells alcohol; it’s unembellished aside from the bull’s head mounted on the wall opposite the front entrance, a Budweiser clock (don’t ask for Budweiser, they don’t sell it), and a Heineken sign (they don’t sell that either). The crew consists of a few old, very drunk men playing whoknows- what, very loudly; you; and the bartenders, who are probably elated to see any face they don’t see every day. If you stay long enough to feel that terrible urge to pee in a place you know you don’t want to go into, be prepared for shit(?)- stained paper and a toilet that doesn’t flush. All this having been said, sometimes comfort can be found in the simplest of places.

Coyote Bar

C/ Pere IV, 68

In most places, you drink on the street with friends until your bar opens. On these three blocks of Pere IV, you drink in a bar until things really start heating up outside. Though the fungus of teens with 8-liter jugs of homemade calimochos begins to breathe dark sweaty life around 23h, by 1:30 the mass is in full fruition. Coyote is one of several locales on Bogatell’s metal bar strip. Its sound system pumps out the same Spanish death-metal anthems as its neighbors; it offers patrons the same buckets of Pepsi and Don Simon. We like it because it’s kind of like a Wild West theme park for fifteen-year-olds who love kohl eyeliner and hate happiness. With dreamcatchers and vintage 2007 Jack Daniels posters on the walls, plus artificially weathered wooden columns reminiscent of an 1840s Colorado outpost, your ride on the Log Flume could be just minutes away.

Flash Flash

C/ Granada del Penedés, 25

Antes que Almodóvar, Alaska, Antonio Alix y otros seres estupendos inventaran la movida, Barcelona tuvo la suya con una década de antelación. Un buen día de 1970, Leopoldo Pomés y Alfons Milà paseaban por Londres después de una pavorosa comida. Traumatizados por la situación decidieron crear en Barcelona un local de fast food con la tortilla como plato estrella, le dieron un aire entre Carnaby Street y Blow up y lo llenaron de la Gauche divine. Los intelectuales tomaban un tentempié y continuaban la fiesta en el Bocaccio, símbolo de Tusset Street, que ahora recuerda más bien a Madame Tussaud. Han pasado cuarenta años y la web del local presume, esa es la transformación, de contar entre sus clientes con lo más cool, una pareja de abuelitas y el Rey. Si sois monárquicos y os van los precios altos, este es vuestro restaurante. Si sois republicanos y sufrís la crisis, siempre os quedará el bar de toda la vida.

Làpides - Marbres

Ave. Meridiana, 32

In a city where truly open-air establishments are few and far between, this place’s entire façade gapes with mouth wide open at the Avinguda, beckoning the demons of the road to become clients. During the day, particularly a sunny day, the spotless walls and white marble tile cast an ethereal glow back onto the street, and one imagines that being inside at night could effectively simulate the experience of living in a mausoleum. With glass IKEA shelves, that is, and a lone live tree, also à la IKEA showroom décor, to remind you that, if you lived here, you’d be home now. Like all the best businesses, everything on display is for sale, including some small urns and assorted knick-knacks. Whether your predilections are for granite, marble, an etching of a tree or perhaps one of some roses, here there’s something for everyone who’s no one. Envíos of your custom orders a toda España.