booze news
Kert Watch: The Return of the Budapest Boogeyman
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, it's crazy to be putting up these stories about great outdoor bars when the weather is just to start really sucking, but one of the best such spots only opened for business sometime last month, and is likely to stay open even when the weather starts getting even suckier.
Mumus (follow link for contact details, etc.) didn't exactly "open" for business late this summer as emerge from a deep, multi-year sleep, in a new location on Dob utca just a few blocks from its old haunt across Király, complete with the perforated oil drum tables/lamps pictured above.
In its previous incarnation, the "boogeyman" was one of my absolute favorite kerts, due to its intimacy and overall good vibe, and I was pretty much gutted when it failed to appear again the summer after it closed, which I'd reckon would be 2005 or '06. And I must say that its reappearance, after what I understand was a long round of wrangling with the devils in the permits department of the District VII municipal offices, is one of the best bits of local bar/club news I've heard since.
Drinks are exactly what you'd expect, cost-wise, and there is some indoor seating and a weird covered area in the back I reckon may suggest it will be open for a while. But given how it disappeared last time faster than a boogeyman with a stolen child, I'd go check it out now.
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SITE FEEDIt closed after the summer of 2004. As a seventeen year old, I had my first taste of Jagermeister and Soproni there. And oh yeah, the first time getting sexually harassed by older ex-pats...
Anyway, it was a great place and I am happy to hear it found a new home (especially considering the tourist trap szimpla kert has turned into).
Szimpla started out one of the all time best kerts in the city, but has become a victim of its own popularity. It is one of the only places where I count my change, so consistently do they try to rip me off (and I speak Hungarian). Aside from that, the bouncers have a bad rep for being hot heads, and it just gets kind of gross late at night. Plus, the bathrooms have that hot, steamy, acrid piss smell. BUT, they still serve beer in glasses, not plastic cups. Decide for yourself.
And painted eyebrow lady (she of the perma-scowl and the short-changing habit) is still at Szimpla I think.
Demagogue, she's still there, still scowling away, although I'd add the only thing she's short-changed me on is a pleasant beer buying experience.
I remember the same discussion on Szimpla a few months ago. Just to keep it balanced: I love the Szimpla Kert, loved it when it was five tables in a hidden courtyard and love it now that it's a Blade Runner-esque super-structure where most people speak as much Hungarian as Edward James Olmos...but I'll be interested to check out the Mumus too.
