In Gemmayzeh, “Gauche Caviar” Is on Your Right

If you are walking away from Downtown and towards the end of Gemmayzeh, you will find that the pub Gauche Caviar is on your right. You go in, you get a table, order your drink and sit. The music – if that’s what some choose to call it – is so loud that it makes you think that the people belong to mime theatre or to a German Expressionist movie. They cannot hear each other and shouting is just too tiring, so they perform, they exhibit quite a unique sign language not found elsewhere, their faces contort to make sure the emotions are well displayed and conveyed.

You look around and the movement is grotesque because not only do they want to “communicate”, they want to dance as well. The music is mostly techno/trance/house or whatever name they wish to give to the identical variations that are played in that pub. I can never tell one from the other and I have no wish to do so. Since talking is not an option, drinking is a must, people find themselves, glass in hand, probably a cigarette in the other, smiling at each other, sipping, blowing kisses, winking, sipping, BBMing, or combinations of sticking their tongue out and winking… then after a while, your face hurts and your facial creativity has run dry.

So you sit there, you try to dance but the music doesn’t really help and you end up doing a kind of interpretive dancing, where modern jazz and I-Had-Too-Much-To-Drink-And-Not-Enough-To-Say combine to create… art.

“Mamiiii et papiiiii got me the cutest caaaar!” exclaims the female linguist who has a knack for elongated vowels.

Leave it to Lebanese people to seek fun in a place with a name that seems to mock them. “Gauche Caviar”: you claim to support socialism but your lifestyle CLEARLY suggests otherwise. It basically means that you are not really sincere in your beliefs. INSULT! I don’t know if people who go there are socialists (I highly doubt it) but they definitely smell of caviar.

German Expressionism, also found at Gauche Caviar