Wednesday night at Harry’s

On a Wednesday night, when the flag is up behind the bar at Harry’s, signaling happy hour, you’ll hear more Texas twang than at a Cowboys game. The center of the bar, last night, was dominated by a woman about sixty, named JJ, with masses of platinum hair wearing scarlet capris and a matching halter top. She was holding a little chihuahua in her lap that she called Bebe. The dog was wearing a red bow around its neck to go with its owner’s outfit.

Across from her was a man in jeans and cowboy boots smoking a Cohiba he’d undoubtedly picked up at the Cuban cigar shop next door. His massive belly was being constrained by a leather belt with an oversized rodeo buckle. He had shots of Don Julio silver with sangrita backs in front of him; JJ sipped a Cosmopolitan and had another waiting for her.

Shortly after I arrived, another couple came in and joined JJ and her husband, whose name I never heard. The woman, wearing dangling earrings and heavy pieces of jewelry around her neck, was smoking a filtered cigarette. She also carried a chihuahua. The women sipped their drinks and talked loudly while slipping their dogs bites of the appetizers called salvividas—calamari, little hamburgers, po’boys.

It’s two-for-one at happy hour so everyone downs their first drink quickly and then starts to attack the second so they can order uno mas—which is really dos—before the bartender with the ponytail rings the bell signifying the end of happy hour.

The bar at Harry's. Photo by David Lansing.

Everyone smokes. Everyone kisses. And all the women seem to have lap dogs named Coco or Mima. The men, who often times wear more jewelry than the women, seem so ineffectual that they compete for the attention of women who’ve had so much plastic surgery their faces are as taut as snare drums.

There are a thousand bars just like this in the States. The only difference is that, for the most part, the crowd is younger and tends to stay on their best behavior. Here—because it is Mexico, because their friends back home will never know—they drink twice as much, talk twice as loud, and do whatever they please. Like the middle-aged woman at the bar taking the hand of the man sitting next to her, someone she met perhaps 20 minutes ago, and placing it under her blouse and up to her breasts.

It sounds like I don’t like Harry’s, I know, but I do. I’m here, aren’t I? It’s just that it’s nothing like Mexico, which, I suppose, is why everyone ends up here on Wednesday night.

The bar itself is beautiful. Deeply varnished hardwood with drop halogen spots tethered to an arbor covered by a flowering indoor bougainvillea. The back bar is mirrored, running twelve feet high, with smoky glass shelves showcasing well-lit bottles of single-malt whiskies, flavored vodkas, and French aperitifs.

There are delicate vases of bird-of-paradise on the white linen tables and lithographs of famous New Orleans restaurants. And the music, which is never over-powering, tends towards George Benson or Michael Brecker—stylish mood music popular 25 or 30 years ago.

I sit alone in the corner, finishing my second shot of Don Julio like everyone else, trying to make eye-contact with the waitress, Daniella, hoping to get uno mas before the bell goes off and the bartender chimes, “Es tiempo, mis amigos. Es tiempo.”