Long Street, Cape Town

Long Street. It's the 'nightlife district of Cape Town and nothing but those two words does a better job of conjuring images of packed streets, fake cab drivers and thieves, hordes of college students and 'real people' enjoying themselves while inebriated, overpriced and mediocre clubs and some decent restaurants and take-away places. Long Street during the day is nothing like Long Street at night, however. During the day, it can be a busy street with lots of traffic, both automobile and pedestrian, but it's usually quiet for a busy area. It feels very 'urban' and nothing like the southern suburbs of Cape Town where I spent a lot of time. In addition, it's near the gorgeous Company's Garden, the Slave Lodge, the National Gallery of Art, and several other important sites and spaces in the city centre of Cape Town.

So, if you're in the area during the day (there is also an extension of the UCT campus nearby, so one could get to the city centre for free via the university's Jammie Shuttle system for UCT students), there are lots of sights to see, interesting restaurants (including Addis in Cape, a delicious though expensive by South African standards restaurant right off Long Street, or the best falafels I had in South Africa at a Turkish place on Long Street) and beautiful public spaces to see. There's even a decent and very clean McDonald's and lots of other options, depending on one's taste (McDonald's in South Africa is not too different from US McDonald's, which was a little surprising because the KFC menus differed greatly by offering pap and some specifically South African dishes one would never find in the US). I suppose if you take the trains or minibuses to the city center, one should always be careful at the Central Train Station (where minibuses and trains stop, several random businesses operated, and 'questionable' people congregated). I never went there at night after 8, but one gay European guy I knew was almost robbed by a group of men (he probably stood out, given his love for dressing stylishly and perhaps being too flamboyant and flashing a nice phone) so it's always wiser to not go through that station at night if you're alone. Surprisingly, the guy escaped unscathed despite hitting one of the men with an umbrella!

Anyway, back to Long Street. At night, it's a whole other story. Gone are the more family-friendly spaces in the city centre and welcome to a night of sin, lust, clubbing, etc. I went out a few times, but never enjoyed it much. One club, Joburg, was a hip-hop club with a high fee of about R50 for entry (women were exempted that night) but only playing loud, dated, and commercial hip-hop music. Long Street is packed with drunken revelers, a myriad of taxis operating with trustworthy and known companies or independent, mostly African (from other African countries of black South African) 'taxis' who were a little sketchy but sometimes very easy to negotiate a good price. One could have great conversations with Congolese, Kenyan, South African, and an assortment of African taxi drivers from across the continent, such as one nice Congolese man who was very interested in talking about Congo and Haiti with a Haitian-American friend and I. Of course, he was impressed by how much we knew about his country, probably because he's not used to meeting any Americans who know a damn thing about Congo DRC.

Moving on, some of the other clubs and restaurants were nice but, again, most of the music was often generic popular music or things that just didn't interest me. In addition, alcohol also has a tendency of bringing out the worst in some people and led to pointless, inane, and unnecessary conversations and fights (all verbal) within some of the groups I occasionally hung out with. So, if you like drinking, being around drunk people who will hit on any and all women in your group (well, almost all women), and being unable to hear someone due to loud music and loud crowds, Long Street just might be the place for you. Indeed, some women's inferiority complex and self-loathing due to sexist, patriarchal gender norms and the attention certain better-looking women got could incite immature and heated conflict, despite everyone being old enough to know better. Oh well, welcome to Long Street, and welcome to the expected reality of college girls with low self-esteem.

Though I did not spend too much time there nor did I 'party it up' often, Long Street provided me with one of the mos relaxing evenings. I was with an American friend on Long Street one night after not seeing each other for weeks, and so we ended up going to a hookah place after a bar and ran into two Bahai acquaintances. My friend, Jess, knew one of them through a dinner party, a South African from Durban, and he was with a close friend of his, a postgraduate student at UCT and from Paraguay (but spent a significant portion of his time in the UK). We ended up chatting for several hours, talking about life, the Bahai faith, etc. Some of it was beyond me due to my ignorance of the faith at the time (that would change somewhat after talking more with the two fellows), but there were endearing moments, such as the childish glee those two grown men (one a recent UCT graduate living and working in Cape Town, the other about to graduate and pursue a career abroad) revealed when telling me about the possibility of purchasing a peanut butter milkshake from a restaurant on Long Street. Regardless of my general disdain for peanut butter, the happiness on their faces over something so simple and the child-like way they said, "Peanut butter!" forced me to order it. Good times, perhaps the best of times, on Long Street.

Of course, one should also check out the Timbuktu Cafe, this decent Indian joint, and a plethora of other things on and around Long Street. There's so much to see, though the city centre of Cape Town is not very impressive in the way that Johannesburg wows. And if you're one of those nightlife people, taking the cabs to Long Street every weekend (and sometimes weeknights) and enjoying the overpriced drinks, etc. will be your day. I guess if one is coming from Europe or the US, they're not too expensive, and one can feel surrounded by fellow tourists and foreigners on Long Street. Most Coloured and Black South Africans in the Cape Town area don't make enough money to enjoy Long Street like the whites and non-Capetonian people of color (including 'black diamonds' from Jo'burg or international students, expatriates, and foreigners passing through Cape Town). Indeed, if one likes the idea of being in Africa but feeling like one is in Europe or North America, there are spaces in Long Street (and, of course, other parts of Cape Town) where the only people of color you see are waiters, cleaners, security and one can listen to mediocre European dance music or pop and hip-hop from the US.