Zinc Bar

Last week, I went down to Zinc Bar for the Tuesday night jam session.  Even though I burped in his face (unintentional) over falafel, my friend Mark let me come along with our friends, Pat and Ivan, and we walked down to the train station under an unusually blue night sky.

Look at the four photos below in clockwise order—once you go through the swinging double doors, they lead to two sliding doors perpendicular to each other, with the mens room on the left and the ladies room on the right.  You have to pull with force on the sliding door; the first time I visited Zinc Bar, I thought the bathroom was occupied because I couldn’t open the door.

Once you get the door open, you’ll see (or not be able to see—can you make out Ken® in the photo below?) the dark restroom covered in black tiles, with two stalls housing black toilets.  I liked their ornate accessories, from the stand-alone toilet paper holder and elaborately framed mirror, down to the coat hook and the soap pump, but it’s difficult to make them out in detail, because it is really dark in there.  It makes me think back to 90 mph van rides through pitch black darkness in the Amazon on unpaved roads, but less exhilarating and less scary, even though the restroom entrance looks haunted in the photos above.

Just as I like being able to see the food I’m having in a restaurant, I like being able to see the toilet seat to make sure that it’s clean, but you’ll find it difficult to do that in this dark restroom.  Still, it is not cramped by Manhattan standards and they are stocked with soap, toilet paper and paper towel so it’s a fine restroom to use.  And it’s fun going through the series of doors to get to the toilet, from the double doors with windows that lead to the sliding doors, to the wooden doors with slats for the stalls.

Being female, I only caught a glimpse of the mens room in a brief moment where the door slid open; I imagine that it’s similar but different.  I wonder how different the world must be through different eyes, in a different body.  My life experience and world view would be affected, certainly.  How do the perspectives of women and men differ?  I can’t tell you, for I am confined to the ladies room.

I also wondered what all the non-musicians hanging out in the club through 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night must do for a living.  It was packed in there for a while, making it harder to breathe the farther you got away from the door.

The house band was led by trumpeter Igmar Thomas, with a pianist and trombonist that I was not able to identify, in addition to Obed Calvaire (drums), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Mark Whitfield (guitar).  Like father, like son; it was amazing to see just how much Mark, the aforementioned falafel one, resembles his guitarist dad.

Among the handful of classmates I ran into at the jam session, drummer Philippe from the Netherlands tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Dutch —

Waar is de WC?