I found myself in a club on Friday night called The Gypsy Bar (formerly Pravda 116). Mind you, this is not your normal akaRaff establishment, but a roaming Birthday posse that I was grazing with chose this joint in search of greener pastures.

As you can see from the picture and their website, this place loves it’s foo-foo self as much as Barbara Steisand likes to hear herself preach about the hurricane’s and the sudden outbreak of global warming. With it’s high-brow fake-handcrafted wood decor and it’s fish tank full of live jelly fish, this place just emanates, “our shit don’t stink”. I am not one to care too much about that stuff, just as long as the bar is close by and the wait for liquor is minimal. So let’s head to the bar.

So there I was at the bar waiting, of course, for the hot female bartender to stop checkin her ass out in the multitude of mirrors that line the back of the bar. Finally she came by with a smile and offered a simple, “Yes?”. Am I not the customer here? Yes? How about “what can I get you handsome?” You know, butter me up a bit. Soon you will see why I should have been buttered like a piece of whole wheat toast. Well, it was about 10pm, and my swerve was far from crossing the yellow line, so I decided to go to my old stand by, Red Bull and Vodka. I order up 3 of them and needless to say, the bartender again had to do some ass checking and spent a few too many minutes chatting with a pack of cheesy dudes down near the vodka holster but finally returned almost 4 or 5 minutes later. This is where some pre-buttering would have come in handy for her. “That will be $30 dollars.” I mean she said this to me with a straight face. I politely said, “Excuse me?”, still clutching to the lone 20 dollar bill in my hand hoping it would miraculously suffice. “Well it is really $11 dollars per drink, but I like you.” Now normally I would take that compliment and run back to my friends and brag about the deal I got because she liked me, but she was well beyond the buttering phase. I pulled another $20 from my pocket, paid the sassy lassie, and said to her, “You may like me, but it is a shame that your boss doesn’t like you or me.” as I tossed a 50 cent tip, bit my lip, and walked away feeling like I just remembered being felt up from my days as an alter boy.

From there it did not get any better. Tthe layout of the place and the music is really cool and reminded me of what I picture [Insert any hip-hop artist here]’s basement to look like. There were 3 separate rooms, each with their own bar, dance floor area, and posh side seating for drinking your Courvoisier. Unfortunately the joint took this great layout and completely botched the experience. With its 30 member, “I am big and dumb and feel important” Goon Squad of bouncers lurking everywhere, I felt like the fucking President of the United States was there and that I was a deranged man with an uzi. 4 different times within 5 minutes I was told to move by one of those that look like Sloth from the movie Goonies “You can’t sit there, that is reserved!” “You can’t stand there!”, “You must be 5 feet from the fire alarm!” “Move away from the fire alarm!”. I mean here i am trying to drink my Red Bull and Vodka through my teeth hoping that I would be able to filter out the diamonds ($10 a piece there as to be something valuable in there) at the bottom and these over inflated selves are hounding me as if I my name was Poor Begger Raff.

In the end, I got the hell out of there as soon as I could and will never go back again. The setup was tasteful, but the experience was tasteless. But if you want to throw on your Striped Shirt and try it out for yourself, by all means do. Just remember you have been warned.

Enjoy