I was going to write a post about how things change (or not) but as I did some research I found out I’d already written it. Check it out.
The dog barks, and the caravan moves on.
The dog barks, and the caravan moves on.
I was going to write a post about how things change (or not) but as I did some research I found out I’d already written it. Check it out.
So how did the renovation turn out?
Club Paraiso is now one of those bars where the girls behind the bar ask you to buy them drinks. All the trophies are in the storeroom. They used to have all these primitive paintings on the wall (directly on the wall) and they all got painted over.
So in a word, the renovation is shitty.
The Paraiso was one of those bars that opened up after WW2, I think. It was open 24 hours on Ugarte, on the fringe of Zona, but it was classic.
What is the storeroom now used to be the room that they let the women into. It had its own door to the street.
One of the chapters in Manny Campbell’s book Drug War Zone talks about the Paraiso. It’s the chapter with the interview with an ex-cop. He talks about how prevalent the drugs were there, and about how dangerous the place was, but I never saw any of that.
Maybe it was just dangerous for cops.
I had stumbled upon your article Paradise Lost and Found a few years back before I knew who Rich Wright was. It was a good read then and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again. In my younger days (18-22 years of age) I used to hang out at the dance hall next door to the Paraiso. There were plenty of friendly girls there (not hookers) to get acquainted with. I would walk by the Paraiso but it never occurred to me to go in. At that age, I probably would not have stayed long if I had.