Bar Basso

Milano

The motif: words from behind a bar.

Without question, on landing at Milan Malpensa, I ran to a train leaving for the centre. On the escalator going down I got stuck behind a father holding a huge suitcase and a folded pushchair. The mother and kids had ran ahead. They stood by the door closest holding it open. The train was leaving in seconds. The whistle blew as he got on, I jumped through the closing doors. Heavy breath. Panting. A scene from Indiana Jones, on his holiday. I’d be in Milano for less than forty eight hours. Cooking at Gloria was the main event. A negroni before or after, before would suit better. Preprandial. Fitting into the aperitivo. The city and the aperitivo are linked in a way Guinness is in Dublin. Look closer or pay attention to that bottle of Campari, Fernet or ramazzotti : Milano.

The google map path from the central train station to Bar Basso led me passed different bars and cafés displaying different sized bottles of these spirits. Campari took centre stage. In the glasses too. Diluted red from vermouth and gin or soda or prosecco. Slices of orange in the glass or chewed and discarded in ashtrays. The town was showing its colour. To me sticky red - I think of negronis during covid - breaking a full bottle. My fridge, my shoes, my cupboards and walls needed a lot of hot water. The neon sign of bar basso glowed red. From the other side of the road I took a moment to check in. To tell myself that I had made it to a place I’d had saved on notes for years. In the bar I paid at the counter which got me a ticket which I held in my hand waiting for the barmen to notice. They went through more bottles of Campari in five minutes then most bars would in a month. They poured Campari over ice in huge glasses and added either gin and vermouth or vermouth and prosecco. They didn’t stir. They opened bottles, throwing the caps behind them, they poured, bashed ice and added orange slices. One opened packs of salted potato chips and filled black bowls which were places in front of those who had a glass. It reminded me of a pub in Hackney on a Saturday night circa 2002. People of age and grace surrounded throwbacks and handmedowns wearing hipsters blending in with artists and tourists. These bars cant be gentrified as they exist in another dimension. These bars are timewarps. If your grandmother ran a bar in Milan and she’d had three ex husbands (two dead, one divorced) leaving their mark behind on the walls it would look like this. The food too. Finger food from the 70s. Prepared at another bar where you present your ticket and wait for slices of white bread and ham, puff pastries triangles, small sausages. As the negroni worked its intoxicating magic on me I decided to read the walls, read the memorabilia, treat the place like a museum full of drunks. There- the picture of the original owner in black and white, many faces I didn’t know and James Bond. Sean Connery posing as Bond. Signed and behind a glass window. Do people still collect autographs? Are photos currency now? I finished the negroni. A drink of three parts. A drink that Orson Welles said ‘’The bitters are good for you, the gin bad. They balance each other out’’. In a cocktail there is balance and in an old bar haunted by past patrons, surrounded by glasses of melting ice and tobacco stained walls absorbed by booze fuelled idea and arguments, romance, confirmations of suicide, celebrations of birth, the beginnings and ends, hangovers and hair of the dog, the balance tilts up, down and in certain moments in equilibrium.