Amaro: Means bitter in Italian and is an alcoholic beverage made by infusing various botanicals, herbs, spices, roots, flowers, citrus peels into a base spirit, such as grape brandy or a neutral spirit. Though bitter sweet it is not to be confused with Amore which comes from a different root.​ Bar: The last of the Temporary Autonomous Zones. A place for the cross pollination of ideas where you can collect and curate your thoughts. Cocktails: None of the cosplay speakeasy bullshit. Consistently crafted no nonsense cocktails using carefully selected ingredients. ​Dépense: The forbidden art of wasting time. An example being the Dérive - A psychosocial meander through internal and external psychogeographies during which bars and amari will be sure to come in handy. Event: An event is a radical rupture or disruption in the usual order of things, which reveals something that was previously missing or unthinkable within a given situation.​ We have those. Food: Not really our thing but we have many amazing restaurants nearby. Feel free to do takeaway or delivery. We can help you pair the wine. Garden: We have one. Our very own little heterotopia which is a microcosm of the world. A distinct space that juxtaposes multiple environments. A symbolic site for growth, decay, and the testing of alternative realities, often happily bringing together myriads of contradictory elements in a single place. Happy Hour:4-7PM llluminati: Our overlords and they're pretty clueless so we get to do whatever. But just to be on the safe side, we keep a few nice rotating pilsners on draught. Juice: We only use fresh squeezed in our cocktails which are crafted with splendor and care.
On our walls:
The James Rosenquist F-111 homage is our current house wall paper, it is tentatively titled: F-35 Escatology on the Rocks, and is replete with the three mathematical equations from Pynchon’s Gravity's Rainbow and other esoteric imagery that intermingles with Rosenquist’s original pop appropriations.
The condiment sneeze guard on the bar is a reproduction of a mural in a Croatian Church by Vincent of Kastav (Vincentius de Kastua) and his workshop from 1474. The theme is basically death as a leveler portrayed through the prism of medieval class and social diversity. Albeit, a happy existential leveler which should be part of the social program of any bar. Far from a depressing self reflexive memento mori the fresco lends itself to the social heterotopia where value and meaning are put into play (they dance) and everyone has an equal seat at the table. We believe a bar should be a platform for events and situations. Contemporary spaces are often fragmented and pigeonholed into demographics. We would like to be an antidote – A place to expand our individual and collective temporal bandwidths.
Mathilde was the mythic larger than life Great Aunt of the founder of the bar. She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery. The “e” at the end of Mathilde is a nod to her time as an actress in Paris as well as Jacques Brel’s Mathilde (and the Scott Walker homage).
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