So I finally did it. I went to Silencio, the Paris nightclub designed by David Lynch.
I realize I'm a little late to the party - it opened up last summer. But in my defense, I think I was 6 months pregnant when it opened. And it's definitely not a place you want to go if you're pregnant, unless you're naked and using the pregnancy as some kind of performance art.
The club is in the middle of Paris, near the Bourse, or the old Stock Exchange. You descend several flights of black metal stairs, adorned with pictures of depressed naked women and lonely suburban houses to really give it the Lynch-y feel, and finally you end up in this cabaret-slash-bomb shelter which really is kind of awesome. When I arrived - this was for a friend's going away party - there was a concert going on in one room, in which a beautiful woman with streaky eye-makeup was screaming/singing like Trent Reznor while a shirtless dude with long hair manned a Powerbook and played some beats behind her. They were apparently "friends of Bjorn", and were like an Icelandic version of a band you might see in Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY (one of my favorite films in college, no joke).
More tales of Lynch-y antics, including this blog's first ever NSFW picture, after the jump
The only sad part about the friends of Bjorn's performance was that they'd closed the bar for it's duration - because the cocktail shakers would drown out the screaming? I was wearing heels and skinny jeans, and the only thing that could have made that possible on a weeknight was my desperate need for a martini. And possibly a cigarrette.So when the bartender started back up again, I was hopeful - he was Irish, spoke to me in english, knew what a martini was, etc. But then he asked if I had a gin preference.
"Bombay." I said, which is just what I always say, mostly because its what my parents drink.
"Oh, I HATE Bombay" he said "Its just so light. If you really want a light gin, what you should get is Millers. It's distilled in England, but then blended in Iceland just to get it really cold."
All I could think to say was "Well, since you hated my suggestion so much, I'll have to try yours."
As he was mixing it, he said, "I really love this gin, its got a kind of rice paper mouth feel".
I don't really know what that means - that it melts in your mouth? Clearly, I wasn't cool enough for this bar.
After I received my rice-paper martini, I went to the smoking room for a cigarrette - the room is actually really cool, with long plastic stalks that look like bamboo or skinny birch trees running from floor to ceiling, except attached to each are little glass ashtrays. Finally, I thought, here I am in this cool club smoking a cigarette and drinking a cocktail while hip Parisians with stylish haircuts speak French all around me.
Except of course, after one martini and one cigarette, I was drunk and felt sick to my stomach. These are the wild times of my life now, people. I think I partied at Silencio for all of 90 minutes. But I do recommend it - in those 90 minutes, I felt cooler than I had in the last 2 years.
SILENCIO
142 Rue Montmartre 75002 Paris
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