Edinburgh after Dark Schizophrenic Edinburgh bustles with students, tourists and busy Scots during the day. But it’s not until the sun dips beneath the horizon that the city’s secret identity comes to light—be it winsome game-show host, coquettish strip-teaser, or grim mouthpiece for the ghostly underground. Spend the weekend in Scotland’s capital and you’ll discover the city’s split personality shines brightest on the dark side of life.
by jonas moody Photos by Páll stefánsson
Burlesque performer Leyla Rose at Edinburgh’s Villainesque.
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Thursday Night: Let the Games Begin! What’s the only club in the Premier League whose name doesn’t include any of the first seven letters of the alphabet (A-G)? What country shares a border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Namibia? What’s the profession of Otto from the Simpsons? These are the brain-busters rattled off by quizmaster Robert Bruce (a commanding name as it’s also that of Scotland’s famous warrior-king) to the jovial crowd inside the steamy windows of The Abbey pub in Newington, Edinburgh’s 12th-century neighborhood. They say every nation has its own way of social drinking. The English throw darts while tossing back their Bass. The Welsh belt out songs when bolting down their Brains, the national beer. The Irish turn to fisticuffs when it’s time to guzzle their Guinness. But when it comes to clinking their Caleys, the Scots take a different road. They have a fondness for stumping one another with arcane trivia in a rousing ritual known as the pub quiz. The trend seems to have caught on outside the isles, but to experience a proper quiz night, you’ll need to head down to your local watering hole on a Thursday or Sunday—and on the way be sure to brush up on your Kings of Prussia, the bones of the ear and every line of dialogue from Top Gun. As to whether a pint helps or hinders your chances of winning the big cash prize, Bruce’s rosy-cheeked wife Muriel replies, “If I had a drink every game, I’d have quite a name for myself, I’m afraid,” and then emits a peal of effervescent laughter before ordering a Coke. But it seems that everyone else in the room is taking advantage of the “pub” aspect of this quiz (see Mind Your Ps and Qs on page 29) with cask ales and hearty pub grub like potato-leek soup and Guinness stew. With his PA system and thick brogue, our stout quizmaster Bruce quips his way through two rounds of general knowledge questions, two rounds of name-that-tune questions, and a picture round where we are meant to identify 20 board games. Bruce’s family is kind enough to adopt me onto their team and I’m able to get a few questions, but his wife and two grown sons, Steven and Robert Jr., long-time devotees of the Thursday night pub quiz, are able to get far more. They have been conditioned for these mental acrobatics. Surprisingly, in the four years Bruce has been running his pub quiz nights, his family team has never won the grand prize. Tonight they stand a chance. Quizmaster Bruce feigns chagrin as our team announces our score for round three, making us the frontrunner. Although Bruce spends his days as a sales rep, it’s not until the sun goes down that his secret atlantica
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Above: The bright lights of Yonge-Dundas Square and one of Toronto’s many ethnic enclaves. Opposite: Toronto’s trademark CN Tower. Above: Weekly quiz night at The Abbey with legendary quizmaster Robert Bruce. Opposite: Looking down the Old Town’s Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle.
identity as witty game-show host emerges. “He has loads of books,” Robert Jr. says, then Steven adds, “and he spends all this extra time coming up with questions.” Band of Gold by Freda Payne… Golden Brown by The Stranglers… after Robert Jr. sweeps the second round of name-that-tune an older man from a nearby team turns and jokes, “Oh bollocks, get a life!” The boys are obviously proud of themselves, and their mother rewards them with another round of drinks. Down to the last set of questions: we are asked for Daniel Radcliffe’s birth year. We’ve narrowed it down to either ‘88 or ‘89. I push for ‘88—a gut reaction—and the boys write it down. As the answers are read, my stomach is in knots. The 28
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table of older men is three points behind. The answer is announced: 1989. We lose four points and while the table ought to be shattered, everyone smiles, shakes their heads and gulps down the last of their drinks. We’re given a conciliatory bottle of wine for second place and I feel like the proverbial weakest link. I say my goodbyes for the evening. It feels like we’ve been through war together and I let our squadron down. But the Bruce boys are a magnanimous lot, as most Scots are, and graciously allow me to take home our team’s bitter booty: the bottle of wine and promises that next Thursday will even better. Oh. And for those curious: Portsmouth, Angola, and Otto is a bus driver.
“If I had a drink every game, I’d have quite a name for myself, I’m afraid.”
MIND YOUR Ps AND Qs The pints and quarts of Scotland’s pubs are a touch different from those of its neighbors to the south. Historically, ales were taxed by their alcohol content in shillings (/-), but the system is still used to distinguish the brews, from 60/- light (under 3.5%) up to 90/- wee heavy (6% and up). Scotland’s oldest brewery, The Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh, makes the gold standard of Scottish ales, the Caley 80/-, but for a drink that will turn your hair ginger try the ales from the Orkney Islands. Skull Splitter is seductively sweet but packs a wallop. Dark Island you could drink all night, but the next morning you might wake up in a kilt, a tam and little else.
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Left: The Fabulous Sarasvati Belly Dancers. Center: The ballroom floor at Villainesque. Right: A view from the Edinburgh Castle esplanade.
Friday Night: Clothing Optional… Sitting at the Tigerlily bar (chic) on George Street (bustling) in the New Town (hip), nursing my Mistress Sage cocktail (stiff ), I strike up a conversation with an American tourist (college kid) here to venture out into Scottish nightlife (bumpin’). He asks me about my plan for the evening and I tell him I’m going to an evening of burlesque, a trend catching on in Edinburgh. His eyes search me for a moment, hesitant to ask the question, but he inevitably relents: “So do they get completely naked?” As I was to learn, burlesque is not about the clothes you take off. On the contrary, it’s all about the clothes you put on. On Friday night Edinburgh goes home, washes off work or school and dons its slinky alter ego as provocative nightlifer. As I enter the cavernous, triple-chandeliered ballroom at George Street’s austere Assembly Rooms, the 18th-century venue for Villainesque, 30
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I am greeted by glamour in all its incarnations throughout the ages: swing dance gals in their poodle skirts with floppy-haired, top-cat partners, gangsters in pin stripes and spats with Moulin Rouge Can-Can dancers hanging off their arms, and baby-faced WWII GIs dancing with their pin-up girls in the flesh. And these are just the audience members. I find the evening’s hosts of Villainesque, Serge Strictly and Simone Martini, taking a spin around the dance floor to Louis Prima’s That Old Black Magic. They are anything but graceful. Martini, a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Betty Boop, repeatedly careens into dapper Strictly, knocking his fedora off kilter—but in their joie de vivre they conjure up all the finesse of Fred and Ginger. Both Strictly, who comes from Northern England, and Ireland’s Martini came to embrace burlesque not for its bawdy reputation, but for the more subtle undertones of theatricality often associated with good bur-
Burlesque is not about the clothes you take off. On the contrary, it’s all about the clothes you put on.
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lesque. “The performance is characterized by humor,” explains Martini. “It uses irony and pastiche to tell a story.” Strictly adds, “Some of the performers work in offices and banks, so this is a bit of fantasy—an opportunity to be outrageous.” The first act opens with a young man with a pompadour wearing little more than a Hannibal Lecter mask and flesh-colored balloons with faces scrawled on them in black marker. He flits around the stage trying to run from the spotlight as a siren howls against the screeching heavy metal of AC/DC. He brandishes a dagger hidden in a boot and begins to burst his adoring fans in effigy, each balloon spewing a little stage blood as the performance takes a grisly turn. As his finale, he pops his crotch balloon and stands in front of the audience nearly naked and covered in gore. While his act may be a trifle more performance art than his co-entertainers’, the crowd still claps fervently. Twenty-five-year-old Lucky Strikes is one of a handful of “boylesque”
performers. “It started out in a pub with some friends,” explains Strikes, who works as a cook during the day. “I played a pantomime horse, getting branded and all. It was a disaster.” But now he takes his work more seriously. “It used to be just good stories,” Strikes says, “but now I’m hoping to compete at the Exotic World Pageant in Vegas.” When Ireland’s Leyla Rose, the buxom brunette with translucent skin headlining the show tonight, steps on stage, a hush comes over the room. Her bosom spills over the dark red satin femme-fatale dress, and her pristine face is framed in long black curls. She has the room transfixed as she deftly removes layers of clothing. Unlacing a sequined bustier, she wraps her breasts in a white mink shawl before turning around to shimmy. “You are, of course, displaying a vulnerable side,” says Rose who has been dancing for nine years and holds a master’s degree in feminist anthropology. “But the performance in itself is atlantica
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empowering.” The tension in the room reaches a critical mass—not a breath, not a cough, not a movement from the audience—just before she reveals her abundant breasts covered in rhinestone pasties. Just a peek. But it’s enough to ensnare the audience. The final routine of the first act has the Fabulous Sarasvati Belly Dancers—Laura (a computer specialist for IBM), Ali (a student loan officer) and Lynn (a caregiver to her husband)— dressed in tattered crop tops, pin-stripe Can-Can skirts, bangles and bindis on their foreheads. Equal parts gypsies, streetwalkers and Hindu concubines, the three Glaswegian women dance to the beat of their own genre, known as tribal fusion belly dancing. The women begin with a sultry undulation towards a bottle of absinthe, where they kneel and take a swig. “This is about the art of tease,” Laura answers when asked the difference between burlesque and stripping. “It’s not about getting your kit off as fast as you can.” The woman sits in front of me half naked, but appears entirely comfortable. She is the pudgiest of the three, but unde-
niably the most alluring in performance. After all, belly dancing with a six pack is like fencing with a toothpick. After their bout with the green fairy, the dancers are imbued with a new spirit, lifting their upper bodies into rigid poses, popping and twirling with all the prowess of flamenco dancers. The finale has them gathered center stage, intertwined in a tantric pose. “Our performance doesn’t disempower women,” Laura explains, “It says, ‘You’re going to watch, whether you like it or not!’” Saturday Night: Notes from Underground Edinburgh’s split personality is quite apparent on Saturday nights when the entire city gets dolled up for a night out. You could head south to the Old Town with its cobbled streets, medieval fortresses, cozy pubs and classic charm. Or you could follow the droves of young people north to the New Town with its neoclassical architecture befitting of its swanky bars and
Center: Old Town Edinburgh. Right: Looking out over the city from Edinburgh Castle. Below: Inescapable Scottish street food. Opposite below: Inside the underground vaults.
Sunday Recovery: Choke it Down! The surefire cure for a Scottish hangover is a greasy Scottish breakfast, frying up all the bits of Scotland’s fauna you might not eat under ordinary circumstances. Although the origins of these morsels are probably better left unknown, here’s a decoder for the iron-stomached: Haggis The national dish of Scotland, minced sheep offal mixed with suet, onion and oatmeal, stuffed into the animal’s stomach then boiled and fried. Black pudding Who knew pig’s blood could be so tasty? Mixed with oats, onions and suet and served in fried patties. White pudding Black pudding minus the blood. Potted heid Brace yourself: bits of face meat from calf or pig suspended in gelatin formed from boiling the animal’s head. Square sausage Like regular sausage only square. Just because. Scottish street food If breakfast doesn’t fill you up (or you can’t keep it down), Scotland is famed for its propensity to deep-fry. From kebabs and hamburgers, to Mars bars and pizzas, if it can hold batter then the Scots will fry it! 32
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There is only one way to recover after being scared out of my wits… a strong drink at a local dive to steady my nerves.
cocktails. Both districts are remarkable in their own right and have been recognized as such as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However, I choose to abandon the topside for the time being and make for the underground. I am standing in the airless, dirt-floored room where Burke and Hare, Edinburgh’s 19th century serial killers, supposedly hid their corpses before selling them to the Edinburgh Medical College. We have descended into the subterranean remains of the South Bridge Vaults, an 18th century viaduct underneath the busy Cowgate area of Edinburgh. The underground complex was originally intended for business, but soon turned to slums and a den for brothels, thieves and murderers. Nowadays its original purpose, that is, as a place of commerce, has been revived by a number of tour operators who take groups of unwitting visitors down into a few of the reclaimed rooms of the vaults to scare the hell out of them. Euan, our lumbering 20-something guide who owns his own cape, has an
obvious passion for the occult. And although at first I was disappointed not to get a more theatrical docent, Euan bedazzles with welltold urban legends and folklore from the dark streets, narrow closes (that’s Scottish for alley) and macabre rooms of the vaults (which the BBC News says is “probably the most haunted place in Britain”). Spectral denizens of the vaults include the Watcher, a hostile spirit said to harass those who enter his domain with nudges and threats. Then there is Jack, a young boy who is known to take hold of visitors’ hands with icy fingers. Finally there is the Woman in the Corner who is said to attack only other woman. Yours truly saw no ghosts, but was duly horrified by the tales of bodily mutilation and botched public hangings—and refused to bring up the rear. Naturally, there is only one way to recover after being scared out of my wits… a strong drink at a local dive to steady my nerves. And what better place to find a drink than Edinburgh on a Saturday night? a atlantica
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THE EDGE ON EDINBURGH Robert Bruce’s legendary Thursday night quiz 9-11pm at The Abbey, 63 - 65 South Clerk Street, +44 (0)131 668 4862. The Lap of Luxury Tigerlily. Swish boutique hotel and the poshest bar in the New Town. 125 George Street, tigerlilyedinburgh.co.uk. The best of burlesque Check out strictlymartini.com for more Villainesque evenings, or ministryofburlesque.com for all burlesque events. Get the lowdown on the vaults Mercat Tours provides access to the vaults and some unexpectedly frightful storytellers, mercattours.com.
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A cozy night out in the Old Town The Jolly Judge, tucked away on James Court close just off the top of the Royal Mile, jollyjudge.co.uk. The quintessential Scottish pub The Sheep’s Heid, 43-45 The Causeway, Duddingston, sheepheid.co.uk. Check out Skittle Alley, but order from the pub menu. Finest fishy fare Creeler’s on Hunter Square, creelers.co.uk. For everything else... grab a copy of The List, available all over Scotland, list.co.uk.
Icelandair flies to Glasgow three times a week.