The Weekly Wad: Little Bear Goes To Town

The cortado was getting cold. My Chilean friend, Mack, was laughing it up as the tightly clothed ladies gave council to a crowd of older men, mostly in suits. Sipping slowly so as to take the entirely strange scene in, I wasn’t so much focused on the pair of legs who served me the signature espresso and milk drink, as I was on a nearby pair of legs who didn’t. Most of the women at that particular version of café con pierna, or “coffee with legs,” weren’t the type of lady I wanted to see sporting tight clothes anyway.

For a country as conservative as Chile, especially in regards to its wilder neighbors, i.e., Argentina and Brazil, a bawdy coffee house is a surprise. But even the bawdiness itself is conservative. It isn’t as if the mostly middle-aged women working these, essentially standing room only cafes, are wearing next to nothing. Their body-hugging uniforms just happened to be restricting their circulation and were tapered off well above the knee; a less provocative Hooters for the caffeine crowd.

Older businessmen would rustle up to the bar and talk as they would to a weathered bartender that wasn’t wearing makeup. Mack was the only woman on the male side of the bar and she kept taking my camera to snap discreet photos of the environment around us. Close to lunchtime, the men poured in, each hurrying over to their favorite server with their stories of daily tribulations or general gripes. Quickly, I finished my drink and left a tip for my actual server while leaving my eyes fixed on my preferred server.

In theory, the idea of having coffee served to me – a professed coffeeholic – by alluringly dressed women is a no-brainer. In practice, though, I find it odd that these establishments only serve a stimulant that does nothing but further excite the senses of their customers. Stateside, a similar place with openly forward women in skimpy clothes would only be peddling alcohol and would be located off an interstate somewhere outside of town. Café con piernas are situated on the main pedestrian thoroughfares in the touristy part of town (which, in Santiago, isn’t saying much) and they only serve coffee. Things tend to get a little more rowdy when beer and liquor are involved but eventually, alcohol’s depressant effect starts to kick in by the end of the night. Most of the café con piernas, however, were only active during the day, providing their patrons with the ultimate coffee break to fuel the rest of their day back at the office.

The whole gimmick is strange, yet it endlessly fascinated me. Picturing a similar situation in the States was difficult. I’ve heard of no one going to a strip club in Vegas for their exceptional French roast. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine the Girls Gone Wild franchise being as lucrative if those quick-to-bare college girls were merely hopped up on cappuccinos.

Right next door to the first café was another such establishment that seemed geared more to even older men who wanted the legs bringing them their coffee endowed with a little more experience and maturity. Again, the clothes were still tight, only these women really shouldn’t have been anywhere near apparel so form-fitting. Needless to say, we passed on a coffee.

Mack and I continued our jaunt on a comfortably warm March day through Bella Vista, the capital’s comparatively mild answer to Soho. Some vivid graffiti plastered the chipped, stone walls lining streets filled with galleries and cafes. While there seemed to be, on first glance, some interesting restaurants and haunts, for the most part, many of the bars with open doors looked dark and uninviting.

Somewhere on one of the pedestrian walkways downtown, Mack and I walked past a small storefront with blacked-out windows. She knew exactly what kind of place it was and asked if I wanted to go. As dedicated as I am to field research, I couldn’t possibly refuse.

The place was snug and dimly lit with a television to the right of the door blaring that annoying reggaeton music. Mack and I went in and paid the cashier to our left for a cortado. We then walked through the thin rows of hanging beads to what appeared to be a mini dance floor. Surrounding the floor, was a bar at a height just slightly above my abdomen.

Romeo’s Café pretty much disproved my first couple of paragraphs. To say the women at Romeo’s were dressed is to commit visual perjury. Fishnet bodysuits and miniscule thongs were the order of the day and so was the double cheek kiss for all visitors; particularly racy for a country where the single cheek kiss is the norm.

The lady who served me was a much too skinny thing with a white bra-top and a few straps of leather representing, I believe, panties. She kissed me on the cheeks and then did the same for a caught off-guard Mack. She tried talking to me in the native tongue and when that proved fruitless, she grabbed a remote and turned the TV to a channel the gringo might like. It was live footage of a Led Zeppelin show. Good enough.

Romeo’s had a clear lack of innuendo and subtlety. The other servers were constantly bent over their patrons, ensuring cleavage spilled bountifully all over the bar. The men who came to Romeo’s were more of a working class stock as opposed to the suits at the other places we had visited and it became quickly obvious Romeo’s was definitely not in the tourism bureau’s official guide.

When my cortado was ready, the gaunt waitress brought it to the section of the bar where we were standing, and placed it on the surface in front of her. Because the area behind the bar where the servers stood was elevated, my cortado sat at the same height of the waitress’s flower tattoo; café con crotch.

Of course no trip to Romeo’s for the average gringo would be complete without a souvenir photo; a memento to stick on the fridge. While Robert Plant squealed the lyrics to “Rock and Roll”, the almost naked lady serving me came from behind the bar and posed for a photo with yours truly. Mack was having trouble holding the camera steady due to incessant laughter.

After a few snaps, my server summoned one of her buxom, black-haired colleagues over who immediately gave me a great big bear hug as she called me her osito, Spanish for ‘little bear.’ Of course, I wasn’t made aware of the occurrence or the meaning of the term until Mack had repeated the story to all of her friends, family and semi-interested strangers amid screaming laughter and several impromptu osito dances.

Somewhere within the confines of my digital camera’s memory is a freeze frame of myself in a café, sandwiched between two pairs of legs; representing perhaps one of the more absurd moments of my Chilean travels. Thankfully, the coffee was good.