Crhistmas weekend (I): About St Mortiz, a door and a long party night

Last weekend was one of those you really hard a difficult time to recover about afterwards, and to remember as well. I’ll try my best to explain how things were, but I cannot guarantee any accuracy on it.

Part A. Ben Crouchs Tavern
77a Wells St, London, W1P 3RE

First of all, we met on the Ben Crouchs Tavern, a pub in Fizrovia very close to Oxford Street. For those not too familiar with London, Oxford Street is the main shopping street, dividing the shopping area composed by Carnabby Street and Regent Market in the south and the Soho in the north. Whatever. The fact is this pub is a really cool one, and it really deserves to be paid another visit at least. With a goth deco unanderstandably messed with Chistmas motives and fairly good music, the place is superb for several early drinks on a Friday night, and there we were to prove it. I had had a couple before with my jobmates, and as more and more people joint and the Guinness pints and tequila shots were downed, it was clear enough right from the beginning that wasn’t going to be a happy ending night. But that’s anticipating, isn’t it?

We where quite a lot of people over there, mostly the usual suspects: Teo, Pablo, Diana, Aux, Justin, Cara, Cesar, Vlad, Juan, Cesar&Cesar and myself if my memory is not failing, and I reckon it isn’t. The music type turned around quite a lot of times, as we stayed in the pub for easily three of four hours. Beers, as I said before, were mainly Guinnes (always your best mate in a nite out), Staropramen and the classic Fosters/Carling combo. Just if Diana wouldn’t have asked the Mexican stuff so far everything would have been alright…


Once they closed the pub, we had one of those Spanish discussions for 20’ about where going later. Yeah, we were something as 50% Spanish people in the group, so we had to somehow share our national tradition about being stupidly cold on the street trying to find out where ‘the perfect night’ it. This is obviously bullshit, but we don’t care and we love it, don’t we? At the end, and losing Justin on the way, we decided that a club called St Moritz, in front of Waxy O’connnors, was the best option. I had never been there, so why not trying?

Part B: St Moritz
159 Wardour Street, London, W1V 3TA

The club itself was nice enough. Located in a basement (as there is a fine swiss restaurant in the fist floor, hence the name), it was quite empty at our arrival but soon enough people came in a fairly friendly mood. The music was nice, 90’s classics as Blur, Pulp, Smashing Pumpkins and so on, and beer was alright, even when they served it in plastic glasses as almost everywhere after 1 am in London. Before I had time to settle down everybody was sort of dancing with someone, known or unknown, friend or pretty bird willing to be hunted for good. And on the top of all that, they had some tables to have a relaxed chat if you weren’t up for the global madness, which was suitable as well. All in all, a good option for a weekend in a place quieter and smaller than Metro, but mainly for that reason also more intimistic. The entrance cover was just £5, again better than average in London, and paying for the drinks wasn’t really a pain.

Just a problem about the place. The toilets door is opened towards the wrong way, if you know what I mean: from the inside to the outside. That is really clever in a place where people are supposed to go to drink booze, isn’t it?

From then on, everything is an speculation. I remember being waiting in the toilets, outside as it was one of those with a single loo you have to queue for. The next I remember is being in the floor, waking up and bleeding. These are my guesses:

1. (The annoying one).Some drunk thug punched me from my backside.

2. (The most likely one). Someone left from the toilet opening the door quite suddenly, hitting me on my temple on the way. I fell to the floor afterwards, and lost conscience for just 5-10 seconds.

3. (The pathetic one). I was so drunk I just fell off incosncious.

However it was, the result was the same one: stitches, a consistent wound very close to my eyebrow (besides the one I got in Munich, but that’s a different story) and another one below my chin. Fortunately Cara was really the nicest person ever at that time and, helped by Juan, they got me some plasters in the pub (amazing the medical aid kit they had, just as it was something common to have that sort of problems over there). My brother, by the way, was looking for someone with any blood in his garnment just in case it was the option one the one that took place (my brother is shorter than I am, so this was quite hilarious). The most hilarious thing, though, involved Cara. Just after sticking the second plaster in my face, she looked at me and, after all her help, I expected something like ‘do u want a cab?’, or ‘do you wanna go to Hospital to have a look at that?’, or something of the like. No way. ‘What do you want to drink?’ she said!!! (You have to say it in Irish accent to get the whole picture J). Of course, I asked for a Carling and I carried on partying, until I fell down from the stairs something as an hour later and my brother decided that at that point I was seriously risking my life and it was time to go home and get some rest.

The final bit involved Teo, as when we leaved the place he was in the door of the club with her sister and one of his eyes in even a worse state than mine. He went for the option 1, it seems, as he found a drunk thug indeed, with amazing punching skills to make the problem bigger. St Moritz was really trying to kill us one by one…