At the Bottom: Vanishing Viennese eateries for the urban poor
In recent years, there have been fewer and fewer small pubs in Vienna, which are frequented mainly by the urban poor and marginal personalities. These bars are still somehow afloat, but still factors such as alcohol abuse, smoking bans and the economic crisis are forcing owners to close their drinking establishments.
Clemens Marshall and Klaus Pichler decided to explore this strange world from the inside, photographing visitors to these fun places and asking them about this and that. "It's great when you seem to be sure that in a couple of years of communication with the regulars of pubs you've already heard everything you can, but then you get to an unfamiliar place, and it's a completely different universe, and there are stories that you just can't believe," said Clemens.
Their book, called Golden Days Before They End ("The Last Years of the Golden Age"), tells about the eccentric world of these unique places in their own way. Below you can find some photos of these small but very interesting establishments and their permanent inhabitants.
(12 photos in total)
"Drinks in these bars are very cheap, there is no food there, and they look very dilapidated. And they're usually very cramped and there's a lot of smoke," Marshall said.
Marshall and Pichler visited about 100 small eateries, in 70 of which they took several pictures and talked with visitors.
More than 25 bars have closed since they completed the book. "Probably even more, because something changes every day, as we realized in the process of creating the book."
The photographers focused on the oldest, disappearing places. "It was always a good sign for us if the bar looked like it had already been closed. Well, if people told us: "I don't go to such and such a bar, there are fights all the time," guess where we were going in the first place."
Marshall calls the bars "resorts for regulars."
Marshall described one of the most memorable moments as follows: "At 9 a.m., we had a morning coffee and go to a bar where the party has been going on for God knows how long, and in the midst of the fun, an impromptu striptease show on the table becomes a kind of cherry on the cake."
The regulars of these bars are usually elderly people who know perfectly well that excessive alcohol consumption can cause serious harm to health, but they turn a blind eye to it. "Customers usually know that they have to solve their health problems, and not pour their experiences with booze, but most often they do the latter with great enthusiasm."
"Basically, these people are friendly and polite, but only as long as you treat them with respect. Some of them were swindlers in their youth, some were rich, and then went to prison because of how they earned this money. But now, being already people of a respectable age, they want to enjoy life, because they understand that they don't have much time left."
"It was interesting for me to delve deeper into the world of these zucchini, I often visited them and watched the dynamics of what was happening."
"At first glance, it may seem that these pubs are wild and there are no rules in this small world. But then you realize that, in fact, there are certain rules that you need to follow, and there are boundaries that you should not cross, otherwise you will have to leave this place and go try your luck in some other place."
Some bars stop working due to dilapidation, and with many of their regulars, almost the same thing happens. "We started working on the book in early 2012, and by now, according to our data, about a third of the people we managed to talk to have passed away," says Marshall.
"Many bars have already closed, and it would be almost impossible to create a similar book now. I think that it will be difficult for people who will come to Vienna in a few years to believe that such places ever existed at all, because after new owners take possession of the premises, no traces and signs remain of the old pubs. They just disappear," Marshall said.
Keywords: Austria | Alcohol | Bar | Poverty | Vienna | Cheap | Marginals | Drunkenness | Old age