Horus Cafe: More Like Hor-rible Cafe-tastrophe. Hortastrophe. Like This Title.

Location: At the corner of Terrible Service Ave. and Rip-Off Lane, but more precisely, 6th St and Ave. B.

So, as is the wont of all the young rapscallions whose company I keep, my friend decided to get a tattoo one random day when she resolved to quit stalling and start doing! (I have no such ambitions. I am extremely averse to pain, as well as to the retelling of stories detailing painful experiences. Once in a while, the conversation will move toward stories of increasing gore and pain as the storytellers try to outdo each other with the plight they, or their friends, have suffered. Of course I join in, but, having contributed my story, wimp out and ask that we stop this conversation thread. People try to outdo me, so I have to loudly yell over their competing story, but actually listen enthralled. I would argue that this is akin to the horror movie phenomenon--we watch because we like having survived the movie, and we retell because we were lucky enough to emerge from our fall off the roof/rock to the face/collision with falling bomb unscathed and convinced of our invincibility) In any case, there we were at East Side Tattoo ready to watch our friend get some INK. (Posturing is fun!)

Oddly enough, the people there were not at our beck and call when we rolled in 6 deep unannounced (surprise! we all got matching tattoos to commemorate our commitment to COLLEGE! PARTYING! We wanted something that would say, "it's time to party."
Nothing quite captures the spirit of receding innocence like this image.

OK. Enough lies. Eventually, inevitably, I got hungry, and I dragged everyone down with me. Now, we didn't want to go far from where the tattoo place was, we didn't want to spend too much money, and somehow we got stuck choosing between two equally sleazy places. Long story short, we chose Horus, a hookah bar. As soon as we walked in and were greeted by our waitress, I knew this was a huge mistake. The place was awkwardly empty, and had random Ancient Egyptian-like paintings on the walls. We sat at a wooden, extremely phallic table, that, I suppose, was meant to evoke some feelings of luxury and debonair-ness that hookah-smoking generates. All we were missing was Jafar, Raja, an elephant to carry me places, and a servant to feed my grapes and fan me with a giant palm leaf to make the picture complete. Instead, we got an ersatz model of that--our waitress. She was a giant in short shorts. I legitimately see her as a cross between Khloe Kardashian and what I imagine would be Hagrid's wife, proportion-wise. Please see below for a scale model. (Given perspective and depth perception, it's clear. THIS WOMAN IS HUGE.)


The other woman/girl-child working was probably confused because it definitely looked like she was trying out to be the sexy hooker/extremely lubricated/sexually subservient girlfriend/main bitch for a rap video. It was odd.

Anyway, THEY FORCED US TO GET DRINKS, even though we had ordered food. The waitress was snarky. The food took forever to come out. How hard is it to lay out some carrots and hummus on a plate? Mmm? And those sneaky owners realized that their service was atrocious because they were employing a half-giant not fit for Muggle company and another girl that was clearly disoriented, so they include the tip in the price of the meal. Well, surely they would be reasonable and make the tip the standard 15%, you think. Wrong. 18%. Wildly undeserved.

The food was good but that is irrelevant. We ate, disgruntled, and made like trees.

Conclusion: Avoid unless you want to oggle the ridiculous people who pass as service staff here.