Hooka Bars- Le Souk #2

Wow. this place is huge. as we walked past the shisha smoke being smoked out of bubbling hookahs by college kids in collared shirts and black dresses, i realized that this hookah bar was quite the scene. and by scene i mean there were drunken frat guys and sorority girls that were decked out in fancy clothes and sort of reminded me of the west village. this i thought was peculiar since this hooka bar was located in the east village in alphabet city. all in all i thought that the scene was quite plastic. in fact that is one of the only ways i would use to describe this scene. it was very plastic. so as we proceeded through the hookah bar i realized that the dirty house music was coming from down below. what? there is another floor?? now this place is really really big and i could not quite comprehend how a place this size could fit somewhere in the east village. so i decided to walk down the stars to the dance floor where the third alcohol bar was located. across from the now desolate dance floor was another lounge area that was slightly elevated and had pretty white candles on small tables. as we sat there for about ten minutes i wondered why there was no one serving us... as a waitress came by i asked if we could order a hookah and what i though she replied was "you have order at the bar" what she really said was "you have to order a bottle." thsi was the point which i said "what?" wait a minute, the only way we can sit here is if we order a bottle? this was by far the chillest place in this bumping hooka bar and we could not sit there unless we ordered a bottle. what a let down. we had ventured downstairs to escape the plastic twenty somethings to find out that the chill area in the bar was exclusive and that we were not. to be continued....again

Leaky Hookah- Shahara East

on the outside of this east village hooka bar there are great colorful yellow signs with a sort of make shift hand drawn feel. you can see the sign that says Sahara East hookah bar. when i walked in the door there was no one seated in the front and i was a little confused. then i saw down the long narrow hallway lights coming from the back and people seated smoking shisha of different varieties. the first thing that i noticed about this hooka bar were the very bright lights which were quite misgiving due to the relaxing nature that a hookah bar should have while people are engaged in smoking sheesha. i thought wow these lights are bright. so in the front of the establishment you can see that it is a restaurant and i figured that the back would be a lounge type area with comfortable couches and dim lighting. instead there was a restaurant style seating with hard chairs around stiff tables. the back area of this hookah bar looked sort of like a tent that one might see in the middle of the dessert, covered with tapestries and hanging lights. this was ok but as i said before the lights were too bright. the hookah was poor and 15$. there is a one drink minimum at this bar and they are all 5.00, even the water! there is strange middle eastern up tempo music playing. they really need to make this back area a lounge if they want to make it cool. they serve nakhla tobacco and walnut coals! the tobacco is low grade but the coals were of an excellent wood variety. we got mint raspberry and our hookah was very leaky. this was all in all a disapointment. this bar has a high school vibe reminiscent of fraternity boys and drunken louts. the hookah had a strange licorice taste and it was obvious that it was not cleaned well. the mango juice was heavily sweetened. this is not the best hooka bar by any means but if you are a high school kid or a frat guy this may be the place for you, as we should try to keep these types in a fixed location:) just kidding.