Greece Nightlife Includes Dancing On The Bar – Sometimes Without Your Pants!
It was sometime past midnight on Mykonos – prime party time – and after establishing myself at the island’s “home base,” the Skandinavian Bar, I was ready to check out a couple of other places.
Friends were not due to join me for a couple of days so I was alone. I could have delayed my trip and traveled with them, but I had the time and was not going to pass on spending a couple more days on Mykonos!
So I headed down one of the alley-type streets, feeling little pain and few inhibitions after a doing a couple (few!?) shots at the Skandi bar when I came upon a small place, about the size of an average American bedroom, with ear-piercing music blasting out of it.
That’s actually typical of bars in the Greek Islands: they play Euro techno tunes as levels so loud you think your ears may explode. If your brain wasn’t so dull from all those shots and beers you had earlier, it would give you a headache.
Yet like some of those places which are empty, this one was pumping. Called Down Under, it was so packed I had to turn sideways to and wiggle just to get inside of it. As I proceeded to try and get a beer, a girl who was dancing on the bar told me the only way to get a drink here was to hop up on the bar and “shimmy” your way down to the bartender.
She helped me up but to reach the bartender, I had to make my way past a dozen wild and partying girls who were dancing up a frenzy. As I started to work my way past them, they each started taking off my clothes!
Two girls ripped off my shirt and flung it somewhere into the crowd (this brought many cheers). Another girl stopped me, unzipped my fly, unhooked my belt and took off my pants! She held my shorts above her head, twirled them like a rodeo rider does his free hand and launched them, where they landed on one of the blades of the rotating ceiling fan.
Around and around my pants went on the blade of the fan. I was standing there in my underwear while everyone cheered, laughed, did a big drink salute to me and, of course, kept on dancing.
Well I might was well join them, I figured, so I got the bartender’s attention and she handed me a beer. “I can’t pay you now,” I screamed at the top of my lungs, barely audible over the music. “My pants are on the ceiling fan.”
“That’s okay,” she screamed back at me. “Just pay when you get your pants back.”
At that time, I happened to notice a t-shirt tacked to a cork board on the wall. It was the most basic of tees – a cheap white shirt with Down Under written upside down in blue script – so I had the bartender pull it down (it had holes in it from the push pins) and add it to my tab. At least I had something to wear!
I partied there for a while but soon had the urge to move on, and somehow a guy retrieved my spinning pants from the ceiling fan. I paid my tab, shimmied back down the bar and squeezed out the front door. I never did get my shirt back by the way, but the tee I bought wound up getting lots of attention on the other islands, so that swap turned out pretty good in my favor.
Once outside, my head was ringing from the music and it took me a few steps to regain my senses before I went onto more bars and eventually, I’m sure, back to the Skandi bar.
What happened the the rest of the night is a forgotten blur, but the Down Under experience remains a great Mykonos memory.
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