tiuwiti's blog: "History of Nirvana Rock-Cafe"

Nirvana Underground. Located inside the newly rented house. The bar was located as I said downstairs and the V.I.P. upstairs. The original bar of Nirvana Rock-Café which had been sitting in the outside for almost six months didn’t fit in the livingroom of the house, so a part of it was cut to make it fit. It came back to life in Nirvana Underground, hosting many parties. The computer monitor, keyboard and mouse was placed on top of it for the first time, since that in Nirvana Rock-Café it had been below the bar. This change brought about more people browsing through the mp3 collection and requesting songs. For those who had not been customers of the previous two Nirvanas, it seemed odd to walk into a house and as one entered finding a “bar” instead of a livingroom. Since Nirvana Underground was not centered as a business, nothing was sold in it. The bar became the centerpiece of entertainment luring all kinds of people looking for a nice place to listen to music, drink, smoke, meet friends and even watch the soccer games Guatemala was playing in its struggle to get to the world cup. Friends and friends of friends showed up with bottles of rum, scotch, vodka, tequila, liters of beer , and as mixers there was coca cola double liters for Cuba-Libres, orange juice for Vodka and rum screwdrivers, v8 tomato juice for bloody marys and michelada beer, lime, black pepper, salt, Tabasco sauce and many other ingredients for cocktails. Groups of friends showed up and shared their drinks with everyone and almost everyone pitched in to buy even more to keep the parties going. The fridge in the kitchen stored the ice and everyone helped themselves with ice, glasses and even plates for munchies. Famous drinks were Tequila Sunrise and Bloody Mary. Commonplace drinks were beer or Cuba libre. Chess was sometimes played at the bar, as well as “lie dice” (“Dudo” in Spanish.) When there were soccer games, a flat screen t.v. was hooked up and placed on top of a tower of empty cases of beer to give it some hight and people even reserved their stools at the bar in advance to get a better view of the games. When a soccer match was won by Guatemala, the crowd went in euphoria, fire crackers were set off and music cranked up; The garage doors were left wide-open and the whole block could sense the party going on at Tops’ house “Nirvana Underground”. A soccer game entangled preparations beforehand in which cases of beer were bought, sings and flags were hung and even the balcony upstairs got crowded of people. Just as Nirvana Rock-Café, many more songs and videos were added to the mp3 collection. New musical additions included music which was not precisely the Rock, Classic Rock, Punk, Guatemalan or Spanish rock, Heavy Metal, Trash and Grunge which the previous Nirvanas had played. The new genres included: Joaquin Sabina, Manu Chao, Trance, Rave, Psycho, Salsa, Rancheras (on occasions), Trova, Fusion, acid jazz, and the beginning of Trip Hop (for the V.I.P.) being Massive Attack, Bjork, Portishead, Cibo Matto among the new sounds which Nirvana Underground brought. The main impression in the neighborhood was that the house was a party house where people gathered to drink and party. Parties which lasted till daybreak were common, some lasted three days non-stop, but usually parties began at 6:00 in the afternoon and began to die out at around 11:00 on weekdays and 2:00 a.m. on weekends.