Interview: Divan de Alicia

I ended up getting smashed enough to not be able to perform the interview with the guys from Soldiery at the Divan. In all honesty the beer was good and you can't beat one liter of beer, one third of a gallon for you gringo, for 1.50 bucks each.

Also due to the unfortunate event of me acquiring a passport I could not stay long enough to interview everybody and could not afford it, beer even though decently cheap was quickly draining my pocket and I could not afford that so woe unto me.

I did get a quick verbal interview with the owner of the Divan which unfortunately I could not record because my cell phone was being shitty and music was pretty high enough for it to distort whatever was being recorded, so the interview went something like this:

VS: So they call you Perro.

Perro: Yeah, that's me.

VS: What are you, the owner?

Perro: I'm the manager of the Divan.

VS: Who's the owner?

Perro: There used to be 4 (5?) of us but in the end me and another person bought everything off from the rest of the guys and here we are. Funny fact, I was the one that invested the least on the bar so I told the other guys that I should be the manager and here you have me 2 years later.

VS: That's awesome!

Perro: Yeah, and back then we weren't sure what to expect but we went for it since there was not a place like this dedicated to Metal where you could at least listen to the commercial stuff all day long. It took some time for Metal that wasn't the black album from Metallica to be accepted at La Plaza and once that began to happen the idea of the Divan became "profitable" and we went for it.

VS: So you started at La Plaza? (La Plaza is what we know as Plaza Fiesta or La Plaza del Balazo, funny fact is that there's been some people shot and stabbed over there but all places keep opening as if nothing had happened)

Perro: We started there and we had two floors. Below it was dedicated to the headbangers in general and upstairs we had DJ's coming in with the heavier stuff.

VS: Dark? Psycho?

Perro: Dark, Psycho, Trance, it varied but yeah we had it and it worked for us!

VS: Then you decided to move down here.

Perro: We decided to move down here and continue with the what we have. We're making some promotions to bring more people in like Metal bands for free on Friday and beer at half the price from 8 to 10.

VS: Yep, that's why we come down here and stay! (Note: December saw a change in the promotion with beer being at half the price all day from Thursday to Saturday. Go for it!)

And this is roughly how it went. There are some minor additional details but most importantly is the fact that the Divan lets local bands play, sometimes giving them some cut, provides you with cheap beer and good music. Also you've got two mini-marts just across the street so what else could you ask for?

Ohh yeah that's right, that guy that comes in when we're really drunk and sells us pizzas freshly baked. Hmmmmmmmm... pizza.