Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2011, Side 20

20
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 6 — 2011
It’s safe to say Portus were less interested in the
culturual aspects of Harpa, so there was a strong
focus in that period to optimise and detail the
commercial parts of the building, the conference
centre aspect, whereas the cultural aspects—the
music part, the public cultural institution part,
where it all started—were somewhat toned down.
‘HAPPY HOURS’
1919 Radisson Hotel
Pósthússtræti 2
Monday, 20:30
700–900 1190–1290 990
Bright with a nice view over the harbour.
Elegant, art deco.
25+, High Income, low tolerance,
business people.
Soft, lounge music.
Tasty and elegant, complimentary olives.
“People don’t really come here to drink
shots”.
Inside the old Eimskip building—a rare
pearl of Icelandic architecture.
An elegant and relaxed lounge bar

Austur
Austurstræti 7
Friday, 23:00
1000 1300 700
Feels very upscale. The word “swank”
would not be out of place here.
Black is the deciding theme, although
the red stairs that curled upwards in
front of a wall mosaic of mirror pieces
stand out as downright daring in
comparison.
In the front half of the bar, young
club-going men, at the back,
middle-aged suburban women.
Piped-in low-key electronica and dance
music suitable for an upscale bar.
Austur is a fully functioning steakhouse
during restaurant hours.
Didn't really seem like a place you'd go
to get hammered, but more for inviting
an important VIP out for drinks, or to
have a pre-dinner cocktail before your
anniversary dinner.
Classy without being stuffy, laid-back
atmosphere.

B5
Bankastræti 5
Friday, 23:52
900 1400 800
Fairly jovial in a relaxed way.
Understated and sparse in that
Scandinavian style.
At this point in the evening, middle-
aged suburbanites, although some
young people were trickling in.
There was a troubadour duo on
keyboard and guitar, but a DJ typically
plays on weekend nights.
There is a Hamborgarabúlla Tómasar
outlet in the back, which is open during
restaurant hours.
It's one large room with a big window
onto the street, so you can see
everything going on in there as you walk
by.
Pretty nice place to drop by early in the
night.

Bakkus
Tryggvagata 22
Saturday, 01:30
700 1000 600
Hip, crowded and loud.
Artsy and dark.
Globalised hipster.
Hip dance music.
Not eating is hip.
"I'm from Astoria, Queens. Where are
you from?”
Hipster central, smelly toilets.
Where the hip young things of Reykjavík
gather to drink, dance and chat. It's a
fine example of a hipster joint but is let
down by smelly toilets with broken
fixtures. Decrepitude may be hip, but it
would be nice if they fixed the sinks and
toilets.

Bar 46
Hverfisgata 46
Monday, 23:00
700-800 1000 700
Gloomy
Classic pool joint + abstract-expres-
sionist paintings.
Drinking veterans mixed with pool
players of all ages (including weathered
hustlers).
Blues, classic rock, oldies, ambient
lounge, mostly depending on the
bartender on shift.
Sometimes they’ll have nuts, but you
shouldn’t count on it.
“So this is where the locals at Grand
Rokk went?”
Pool tables! A smoking area that really
feels like you’re smoking inside.
For those who love a game of pool, this
is the only place to play downtown.
Drinks are fairly priced and the staff is
friendly. With the abstract-expressionist
paintings on the wall, this place offers
the perfect backdrop for a bizarre
evening.

Bar 11
Hverfisgata 18
Saturday, 04:24
750 1100 650
Like the cantina in Star Wars, with
worse music.
Whatever chairs they could find, vomit,
lack of giving a fuck, the smell of teen
spirit.
15–25 year-old kids who just don’t give
a fuck.
Pitchfork-core
No
A place where having 8 shots actually
kind of makes sense.
Just thinking about this place brings the
smell of vomit to my nose; it’s that
awesome.

Barónspöbb
Laugavegur 72
Friday, 19:00
650 1000 750
What you’d expect.
In the style of a bar in the Austrian Alps
for some reason.
Seasoned alcoholics and middle aged
sailors. 40+
No music.
There are plates of food wrapped in
cling film.
“Vikings are overrated”.
The bartender is either on the phone or
absent.
End of the line, yet surprisingly
expensive.

Bjarni Fel
Austurstræti 20
Sunday, 22:30
890 1000 650
A few girls rooting for Finland’s hockey
team, a few guys in open buttoned
shirts discussing Liverpool.
Nearly identical to Hressingarskálinn,
save for a lot of TV sets displaying
different sport events.
Sports fans.
It’s a sports bar.
Food from Hressingarskálinn.
“3…2…1…FINLAND! FINLAND!”
Lots of sports.
In same building as Hressó with the
same proprietors—not much separates
the two places except one has a higher
ratio of sport fanatics.

Boston
Laugavegur 28B
Friday, 00:54
850 1200 800
Decidedly upbeat-the place was
packed, but not in an obnoxious, holy
crap I can't move way.
Dark. Pretty basic bar furniture, to be
honest, although the black tassels over
the windows gave it a certain Far East/
Deep South charm.
Hipsters, hipsters everywhere. Actors.
This is a bar for the 30+ cool crowd.
Post-ironic Fleetwood Mac appreciation
club. Dance DJs on weekends.
Reminiscent of what Kaffibarinn and
Sirkus used to be like, although the
location—just outside the hub of most
pub activity downtown—is refreshing.
A nice enough place early in the night,
and probably a great place to swing by
at peak hours.

Café París
Austurstræti 14
Saturday, 23:00
900 1100 700
Relaxed and friendly.
Furnished like any upscale street café in
any major city—but very clean and neat
in comparison.
Families taking a stroll in town during
the day, at night 30+. Tourists and
people starting their night out.
Inoffensive background music.
Large bistro menu, everything from
crêpes to prime lamb, whale and
baccalao during restaurant hours.
“Are you going to be asking a lot of
questions? I’m very busy waiting tables,
you know”.
The sidewalk café, open during the day
is a good place to soak up the brief
Reykjavík summer.
Among the very first ‘cafés’ that sprang
up in Reykjavík in the ‘90s, the leading
‘French’-style sidewalk café since. It has
maintained its status, while avoiding
becoming a hangout for drunken
Icelanders. A quiet place to sit down
with a beer at night and avoid drunk
locals. As touristy downtown bistros go,
Café Paris is actually quite good.

Celtic Cross
Hverfisgata 26
Saturday, 02:32
800-900 1600 800
Irish frat boy. Interesting mood!
Like they grabbed every ‘ye-olde-pub-
be’ cliché in existence and stuck it up
on the walls.
The typical Icelandic teen: egocentric,
plainspoken, drunk.
TROUBADOR ALERT LEVEL 1500!
Doritos/Lay’s @ 450 a packet
This is where you can go to partake in a
sex crime.
Disneyland with drunk teenagers. The
basement is where it’s at. Ignore the
ground floor.

Den Danske Kro
Ingólfsstræti 3
Monday, 18:00
800 1200 800
Quite crowded for a Monday afternoon.
People are loud and the smoking area is
full.
Classic, wooden, Danish, bodega style.
Everyone that likes to have a beer after
work and a few more after that one. Is
there an ‘average beer drinker’? Well,
that’s the average patron.
Live troubadours and bands every night
from 22:00. Classic rock and oldies, too.
Chips and nuts for sale. Open faced
sandwiches if ordered well in advance.
“NU SKAL JEG FANDME HA´ EN
CLASSIC!”
The buzz around happy hour is
refreshing. No bar will be as busy on a
Monday at six.
Perfect for that after work beer and a
game of darts or backgammon. But you
need to bring your own backgammon.

Dillon
Laugavegur 30
Wednesday, 21:15
800 1100 800
Dark, intimate, musky, like the inside of
a ships galley. A place for a decent
session.
Decked in black/dark chocolate wood
panelling, faded grime-infused floors.
Pictures of rock greats: Cash, Bowie,
Dylan, etc. Also a photo of resident DJ
Andrea Jónsdóttir (aka ‘The White
Witch’) with Robert Plant.
A mix of 25+ urban types wearing jeans
and jumpers, rockers and bikers.
Playlist is a classic RAWK clusterfuck.
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stone Temple Pilots,
Guns n’ Roses, Kings of Leon. DJs on
weekends and regular live music. All of
it rock based.
This is a BAR. No munchies here.
“Alice In Chains totally peaked in ‘96”.
There is a beer garden, but this does not
get used that often and then only in the
summer.
The dirt and faded frontage means this
is not a fancy bar by any stretch. But its
relaxed atmosphere and lack of
pretence means you can have a proper
drink and a chat.

Dubliner
Hafnarstræti 4
Saturday, 00:52
850 1000-1700 750
Like the bar from ‘Pirates Of The
Caribbean’, but without the fist fights
and attractive people.
Clichés, the works. Wooden tables,
candles in whiskey bottles, framed Irish
rugby shirts.
Weekend dads on their off weekends,
drunks who wish they were writers and
the not-so-bonny lasses who love them.
TROUBADOR ALERT, LEVEL 5!!!! MAN
THE HARPOONS!! RIG THE LINES!!
Soups and sandwiches during the day.
Picture a pub. Then picture a lot of
people in leather jackets. Now, go to
Dubliner. Buy yourself a drink. While
you’re doing stuff for me, could you get
me a Mars bar and an orange soda?
Thanks.
An Icelander walks into a pub …

We really love drinking (who
doesn’t though?). It’s part of
what makes life on the island
vaguely bearable, and it is a
fun way to kill some time.
Drinking at bars is especially
fun, as it will often expose
you to people and situations
you wouldn’t find drinking
at home with the curtains
drawn (unless you live in a
bar).
BUT THERE ARE SO MANY BARS!
HOW DO WE KNOW WHICH ONE TO
GO TO?
Yes, that question has plagued us
too. So we got the crazy idea of doing
something about it. We thought: there
can’t be that many bars in 101 Reykja-
vík. Why don’t we pay every single one
of them a visit and write down some
pertinent info and what we think?
So we ganged together a bunch
of our fun-loving writers and their as-
sociates and divided the places be-
tween them. Our research revealed
that there are well over fifty places in
101 Reykjavík that can be classified as
bars (depending on your definition, of
course—we made our own, which you
may read somewhere on this spread),
and we strived to include every single
one of them (if you find your favourite
one (or the one you manage) slipped by
us, do send us a note and we’ll do it jus-
tice in a future issue), and for a glorious
five days we worked hard at buying one
beer at every single one of them and re-
laying our experiences through words
and Gs.
Of course you might not agree. Of
course we might have visited at the
wrong hour, or maybe our tastes just
differ greatly from yours. Or we might
be wrong. That is to be expected, this
thing is for entertainment and informa-
tional purposes, and it is meant to incite
discourse more than anything.
And if it helps you find a new bar
you love, then that’s all the better.
LEGEND
Time visited
Price of beer
Price of single + mixer
Price of shot
Mood/atmosphere
Interior decor
Average patron
Style of music
Munchies
Quote of Note
Identifying characteristics
In short
Rating out of five
Icons courtesy of Joseph Wain at glyphish.com.
Thanks to Andri at vefstofan.is