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Monday, November 23. 2009
"About a B-Cup"
Friday night was The Veils at the stupidly-named San Francisco Bathhouse, but more of that later; first I come to praise the re-opened Espressoholic and their delicious parcels of deep-fried dough.
Many moons ago I used to spend plenty of evenings in the old Espressoholic, and then I started visiting it again; shortly thereafter, it closed in a rather public fashion after the landlord refused to renew their lease. The appearance of a new cafe with the same menu and some of the same kitchen staff was NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUS, of course; I have been waiting to see the new ‘holic re-open in Cuba Street for some time, and finally got a chance to swing by. It is largely the same place; the food is mostly the same, the prices are the same. It’s all pretty good, really. There are even some improvements: the toilets are a great deal less terrifying, for example.
There’s one delicious addition: the donuts. They’re done kind of like churros; chunks of dough deep-fried and coated with deliciousness, and served with maple syrup and marscapone. The first time I tried them I got four small ones, and on Friday I got a pair that were, as I later estimated for the folks at the Southern Cross on Saturday, about a handful each.
I’m not sure whether it’s the fault of venues or New Zealand artists themselves, and I have to say I don’t especially care: if your act says 8 pm on the ticket it would be nice if the main act started at, I dunno, 9 or 10, not 11. Or later. This seems to be de rigeur for New Zealand, and I’m fucked if I know why. If the likes of Iron Maiden or David Bowie can drag themselves onto stage by 10, why can’t more local acts manage the same? Fortunately the doorman at the SFB was happy to tell us when we could actually show, hence the visit to Espressoholic.
Anyway, we came in to the last few songs of the Emerald City, who Maire enjoyed a great deal more than me, and in plenty of time for The Veils to take the stage at 11, and they were well worth the price of admission. As a group they run a stage well, and Finn Andrews is a superb frontman, selling every line with every note of his voice, every facial tic and gesture. It’s great to see him in such a tiny venue, but I imagine he can easily command a much larger one with the same conviction.
The set covered all three albums, but it seemed like the most vigorous response from the crowd were for Nux Vomica tracks; said crowd, incidentally, were well into the band as opposed to, say texting, talking, or making trouble, which places them a long way ahead of most of the mobs at the last few Atomics I’ve been to there. There were also more than a few people, mostly women, looking like they’d put a lot of effort into carefully sculpting hair and selecting outfits that would look just right in a photoshoot with Andrews; it added nicely to the sense of occasion.
There is one drawback for the new Espressoholic, though: as we filtered out of the Veils at midnight we discovered they’d closed up. Where’s my open-to-4 am, guys?
