Thirsty Dog: The Bar Nick Cave Got Drunk In

Dear Gen Xer,

Next to Prague’s Municipal House, opposite Revolution Square, was a legendary bar called The Thirsty Dog. The air was smoky. The music was loud. Its pale yellow walls were covered in illustrations that looked like Keith Haring on acid.

Myriad languages could be heard above the din: Czech and German, English and French, and whatever in the world Australians speak.

It was groundbreaking stuff in the early 90’s. A year had barely passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall; since the Velvet Revolution had ended four decades of oppressive Soviet rule. Czechs were finally able to travel. And foreigners who hungered for adventure, who thirsted for experiences that were cheap and uncharted, poured into the country.

Frank Zappa and President Havel, 1991

What they found was a city in flux. Street names, curriculums, members of the press and government – all of that, and a whole lot more, was changing every day. Ad-hoc businesses popped up daily, selling everything from chewing gum to porn. The police disappeared down alleyways; surfacing only at the oddest hours to collect their greasy bribes.

There was anarchy in the air. Not in a violent or destructive way. More like the rules were up for grabs. Forty years of communism were over. People were loosening up.

Which brings us back to The Thirsty Dog.

It was a bar for searchers. For people who were done being told how to live. They echoed the exhilaration the city was engulfed in: the rare opportunity to reinvent oneself. To shape a society that was as new as you.

The Thirsty Dog welcomed one and all. But it wasn’t a place for civilized folk. Clutching your pearls, strutting like a peacock, or tut-tutting the vices on full display were surefire ways to get you thrown out, usually by a couple of beefy bouncers, who spoke very little and cared even less.

Fights. Nudity. Coke in the stalls. You could have it all at The Thirsty Dog. Allan Ginsberg did poetry there. Joe Strummer played his guitar. Nick Cave would hang out, too. He even immortalized the bar in a song.

Thirsty Dog appears on 1994’s Let Love In: the eighth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The song is a straight-up rock and roller. No frills, no pretense, no fancy accoutrements. A runaway train of futility and regret.

You certainly saw a few broken passengers at The Thirsty Dog: every one of them feeling sorry like the narrator in Nick Cave’s song. Because freedom doesn’t mean you only get what you want. Freedom means you lose shit, too.

Consider the middle-aged citizens who lost their jobs in quick succession. Tens of thousands of miners and teachers, of clerks and bakers and village officials. They played the game. Followed the rules. And became obsolete overnight. Too old, they felt, to return to school, and yet too young to retire, they found themselves in a no man’s land of sheepish shrugs and indifference. Little surprise that many of these people, now well into their golden years, continue to vote for the communist party.

Another casualty was marriages. The divorce rate skyrocketed after communism fell. There wasn’t much else to do before but get married and have a family and grit your teeth until your heart gave out. But now you could go out whenever you wanted and meet men and women who wore designer clothes, spoke with sexy accents, and looked like the people you’d seen in movies. Some of these unhappy spouses left their homes for The Thirsty Dog. Others came to The Thirsty Dog after they’d been left.

Take the man who lost his wife to a guy who sounded like Roger Moore. Take the woman whose husband left with some slut from California. How about the cuckold who got so drunk he swung at a guy and lost half his teeth? Or the woman who took E. to blunt her abandonment and wound up on the floor in the fetal position crying for her mommy?

Ah, yes, prices are paid when everyone’s reaching out for rapture. Sometimes the ground is yanked from your feet.

Irish, Scottish, Norwegian, oh my! Photo by Paul McNamara

The Thirsty Dog closed its doors after 18 months of mayhem. A second location opened in Old Town, a couple of blocks from the Jewish Quarter. It’s long gone as well.

Thirty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall; nearly as long as communism reigned. Prague has changed so fundamentally, it’s hard sometimes to recognize her. Gone are the pop-up businesses; replaced by international franchises and brands. Gone, too, are the underground bars that came and went like a TikTok trend. Sure, a few of them are still around. They’re practically tourist locations now.

I think, at times, on my walks through the city, about the cuckold who lost his teeth. The wife whose husband fled to California. The woman who took E. and cried for mommy.

I wonder whether they’re in Prague. Whether they adjusted to the flood of freedom. If they’re thirsty today.