To my mind the only truly mysterious aspect of David Lynch's new Paris nightclub Silencio is that the bar is the size of a coatcheck.
The space - what I saw of it the other night was a tangle of corridors, a smoking room, and a dance floor - totals 650m2. The result of this size discrepancy is that all the poor punters who succeed in gaining entry (a feat which it turns out can be achieved by simply being young and decent-looking and waiting for ten minutes*) have plenty of time to discuss the conventionally overwrought décor, as they wait eternities for drinks from the psychotically overworked bartenders. Was it really done by David Lynch? Who the hell remembers what the club in Mulholland Drive looks like? Why should being an excellent film director have any bearing whatsoever on the skills required to design a successful nightclub?
Presumably in efforts to minimise waits, Silencio is equipped with a second bar, tucked away in the corner overlooking the dance floor. This bar, however, is completely deserted, because it is the wine bar, replete with eight or ten selections of Douchebag Reds and Predatory Whites entombed in an Enomatic wine dispensing machine. The girl working there looked like her isolation was the punishment for something - perhaps the owners' strange idea that these wines are appropriate in a nightclub setting. This begs the question, then: what would be an appropriate wine in a nightclub setting?
