Barkowski Is The Charles Bukowski-Themed Bar Nobody Needs (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
This is from December, but it's the first time I've heard of it. Title of the thread is the title of the article.

A Charles Bukowski-themed bar, appropriately named Barkowski, is set to open this Friday in the obviously dark and dingy streets of Santa Monica.

Formerly Bar Pico, Barkowski is the brainchild of Richard Miller and John Moritz, who took over the property to turn it into the kind of dive that a lowlife poet would love.

Except, it's not. Judging from the pictures over at Eater, the place doesn't really look like a bar that Bukowski himself would patronize. Where's the acrid smoke? The divey atmosphere? The lusty and downtrodden barflies? The bar looks hip, high-end and pristine, the kind of watering hole that Bukowski would most likely avoid.

Indeed, Miller tells Eater that Barkowski is, "a 60s dive bar with a little class and without the filth." The filth is so important, though!

There are so many things wrong with this place that can be seen almost immediately. Barkowski looks like a bar for bougie people who claim to have read "Ham on Rye" once and go out of their way to tell everyone that it "changed their life." It's the bar equivalent of buying a Misfits shirt at Urban Outfitters. Also, doesn't King Eddy already exist, and didn't Mr. Bukowskiactually patronize that place?

Barkowski will have its grand opening celebration this Friday, December 13, with an ugly Christmas sweater party. Fantastic.

barkowski.jpg
 
It's not the first time a bar exploits Bukowski's name and it won't be the last. It's tragicomic because Bukowski would never mix with the in-crowd in some posh bar, but that does´nt matter as long as they can make money off his name.
 
nothing says 'bukowski' like a typrewriter light fixture!

ponder, i wish you hadn't posted that, since it's bursting my ignorance to the fact that people in the netherlands can be just as gauche and shameless as americans.
 
"In an age where creative marketing is king, even feces can be turned into gold!"

In an age where replacing restaurant chairs with toilets is considered "creative"...
 
You're welcome.
Thank you for collecting the stories for The Bell Tolls for No One, I'm reading the book right now. 8-))
 
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cool idea. i thought it was a real bookshelf at first until i saw the door.

is that a mock-up or the real wall? i don't think it said in the article.
 
With all that work, they could not get the spine colors right? Yellow POST OFFICE? Yellow WOMEN? Of course, only a buk-boy binding sniffer like me would care or know and I am NOT their audience. My beard is not dark brown and over 9" long. I don't wear suspenders with flannel.
 
is that a mock-up or the real wall?
It's the real wall. I've seen a few pictures of it during its progress. It was even more "off" before, as far as depicting the actual books. So they have fixed it up.
Yellow WOMEN?
Probably because the wall is brown? That'd be my guess. If I was painting it I wouldn't want a book spine the same color as the surrounding wall. But there's plenty of artistic license at work there.
 
while sitting near the artisanal wood burning stove drinking my powdered water with cracked sea salt smoking a vegan Gauloise reading God Hates Us All by Hank Moody.
 
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