Kypseli: Fokionos Negri
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The centerpiece of Kypseli is a wide avenue that follows the course of a river, or what passes for rivers in Athens but what you or I would call a stream, brook, creek or ravine where rainwater runs down. The 'river' that comes down from Toukovounia was covered, paved and called Fokionos Negri. |
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In the seventies, in one of the smartest moves ever made by city planners in Athens they closed it to traffic, tore up the concrete and asphalt and turned it into a long park with stone sidewalks on either side. Both sides of the pedestrian avenue are lined with cafes. Some are very modern with room for hundreds of people and pop music playing all
day long for young patrons drinking espressos and frappe, served by beautiful young waitresses, which open at 9am and close whenever the last customer leaves, usually well after midnight. Others are smaller, some former cafeneons which have metamorphosised into cafe-bars with just four or five tables outside and not many more inside. All the cafes have their own distinct personality and colorful names, some are popular and some you wonder how they stay open. They all have tables and chairs outdoors and in the
spring, summer and fall it is the kind of scene that people go to Paris looking for. No cars. (Okay, the occasional motorbike but what can you do if the police won't stop them?) Just grass, trees and people passing by, on their way to work, home, to shop, or walking their dogs. If I was going to choose one character to represent Kypseli on the neighborhood flag or emblem it would be a woman walking her dog on Fokionos Negri, probably in her mid thirties, pretty, single, bohemian and independent. Near the top
of Fokionos is a statue of a large dog, sort of the Patron Saint of Fokionos. The Kypselians love their dogs and you could create a calendar of the different dogs and their owners and have a unique photo for every day of the year. Of course their love of dogs makes for difficult walking on some of the sidewalks of the back streets and I would not roll carefree in the grass of Fokionos on a beautiful spring day. Once pooper-scoopers become law things will get better though probably because at that point some people
may decide it is too much of a drag to have a dog. Until then the dogs own the lawns and the kids play football and ride their bikes on the paved plazas of Fokionos Negri. But Kypselians who walk their dogs on Fokionos do seem to be responsible and clean up after them.
Half way up Fokionos Negri is the old Demotiki Agora built in the 1930s and which was at one time a smaller version of the central market on Athinas street. For those who saw the seventies film 'For The Love of Benji' the Agora has been immortalized as the place where Benji the dog steals a
string of sausages and runs down Fokionos (when it had cars) and magically appears in the Ancient Agora below the Acropolis to share his bounty with one of the Athens street dogs, who even back then were large, lazy and full of personality. When Benji returns to try it again he is captured by the locals and..... well I don't want to spoil it for you. But the Agora closed and as usual the city wanted to tear it down to make a parking garage, not a bad idea but too little and too late, and in the wrong place. There
were protests and the building was occupied by the people of Kypseli and turned into a venue for community activists and other sensible Kypselians. There is a cafe, several small gallery spaces with photo and art exhibitions, a library, and a school that gives free Greek lessons for foreigners (for info see 
Most of the cafes on Fokionos are at the bottom, a block from Patission Street. Some cafes costs millions of euros to build and seat several hundred people on a good night or afternoon and some are small and intimate like Foibos at #19. Which place you prefer will probably depend on how old you are and what kind of music you like. Most crank out
mindless pop but several show good taste in music selection and volume. Foibos for example caters to an older crowd of writers, musicians, poets and people who read books instead of fashion magazines and their music reflects this, playing jazz, blues, classical and sophisticated pop and rock music. Several of the larger cafes have live music or karaoke on weekends. Oddly most of the cafes are on the shady side of the street which is fine for summer when it is hot and for the evenings when it does not matter,
but for winter sun the north side cafes offer more. Onar at the top of Fokionos is a rock cafe with some good choices of beer and a younger crowd of heavy metal-classical rock lovers. On weekends they have live rock and techno. Most of the other cafes are strictly coffee, alcohol and deserts but a few, like the Flocafe at the bottom of Fokionos, do serve food. The others make up for what they lack in nutrition with many page menus of fancy drinks, coffees and amazing looking deserts. On Sunday
they fill up with families and couples who come to talk, drink coffee, eat sweets and read the paper while watching the parade of people who walk up and down Fokionos all day long. On weekday and Saturday morning the cafes and sidewalks belong to the elderly. By afternoon the young people are moving in and by evening many places are full. If there is a big game on it will be on the big screens of every cafe, and as in most places in Athens the Africans selling their pirate CDs and DVDs make their rounds
among them.
There are several souvlaki shops, a Pizza Hut and some tiropita places as well as a popular zacharo plasteon (pastry shop) at the bottom of Fokionos, but the restaurants begin after the Demotiki Agora. There are several good ones, even the worst is better than most of what you will find in the Plaka if you are in search of
good food and wine in a non-tourist atmosphere. Bioletta, Mezedomaxies, and Faidra (photo) are all interchangeable in terms of what they serve and the quality of the food and are all within a few steps of each other and they are all good. They are a combination estiatoria-mezedopoulion where you can get anything from fresh fried or grilled seafood, grilled meat, oven roasted dishes, salads and fresh vegetables and lots of stuff to go with ouzo if you choose to go that route. They are all
established
places
that have been there for years, friendly, clean and comfortable, with tables outdoors for nice weather, and covered and heated outdoor areas for the coldest days and nights of winter. (Imagine smaller low-key versions of Vyzantino Restaurant in the Plaka, without the massive foot traffic.) The Africans who come around to sell you CDs and Pakistanis who want to sell you flowers or tools are here, but not on the nuisance level of downtown. 
There are several other restaurants on Fokionos including a psistaria (grill house) a couple doors up from the Demotiki Agora where you can go for an inexpensive meal of souvlakia or splurge and spend 6 to 8 euros on a plate of roast chicken, pork or lamb (though there are better places in the neighborhood if you want
to stray from Fokionos). Towards the top of Fokionos at #72 is O Mbakalogatos, (photo) brought to you by the same people who originally had To Tsipuradiko, one of the first and best of the traditional-modern mezedopoulions in Athens. Their new restaurants offers a larger selection of mezedes for ouzo, tsipuro, raki and wine drinkers as well as a number of interesting entrees including several pasta dishes, grilled meats and fish and other specialties, cooked and presented
in a neo-Greek style that is fashionable without being too pretentious and yet totally traditional. This is one of the best restaurants in Athens with food by Panayotis Papanicholao one of the most well known and respected chefs in Athens, and worth going out of your way for even if you have to take a taxi here and back. (The restaurant will call a taxi for you when you want to go home).
Among the many cafes, restaurants, and fastfood places on Fokionos Negri you will also find an internet cafe, several boutiques and men's clothing shops, an elementary school which I would not even mention except for the fact that it is so cool to see Greek, Albanian, Arab and African children all playing together. At the top of
Fokionos is a typical old guy cafenion with tables and chairs outside and in, excellent Greek coffee and espresso in a no-frills atmosphere where old men talk loudly and play cards and tavli (backgammon), the kind of place that you can find all over the city but which are slowly dying out. Like many others they serve nice simple mezedes with ouzo for those who have tired of the overpriced mezedes of the ouzeries. At the top of Fokionos is Platia Kypseli, or Platia Kanaris, which has another
old guy cafeneon, some fastfood joints, a foreign press newstand, two psistarias with rotisserie chicken, one for mostly takeout and the other with restaurant seating in the back. Its also where you can catch the 2, 4 or 9 trolley back to central Athens. (If you are staying at the Hotel Attalos the easiest way to get to Fokionos Negri is to cross Athinas street and take the small 035 bus and get off at Platia Kypseli.) Also of interest is a vintage record shop at the top of Fokionos, on the square, right
by the bus terminal called New Sound. (There is another vintage record shop on Syrou street, right behind the Demotiki Agora.) In the square parents bring their children to play on the swings and feed the pigeons, older kids play football and ride their bikes, and old men and women share the park benches, talking or even playing a game of tavli. If you hang out in the square for an hour or so a day you will see the same people and you will realize that this is more than a hive of activity. It is a community,
a neighborhood like you would find anywhere in Greece whether its a large town, small city or even a village on an island. It just happens to be in the center of Athens.
There is a little known story from the annals of Rock and Roll history that in 1965 a then twenty year old Eric Clapton and some British musical friends formed a band and came to Athens where they auditioned and got a job at The Igloo Club on Fokionos Negri, at the intersection with Drossopolou, owned by a gentleman by the name of George Karamousalis. When they got the job they called themselves The Faces and played covers of Chuck Berry and Rolling Stones songs among others. (Not to be confused with the Small Faces who later became The Faces when Rod Stewart joined). They were the opening act for a popular Greek band called The Juniors. When a car accident killed a member of the Juniors and injured their guitarist, Clapton filled in and was playing in both bands, sometimes ten to twelve hours a night. When a rival club owner turned in The Faces for not having work permits, and the hotel they were staying at demanded the money that the club was supposed to be paying for them, the band decided to get out of town. Only by now the club owner realized that Eric was a former member of the Yardbirds and worth keeping around. The band decided to escape and after a concert at a movie theater, as they used to do in those days, they were able to get all their equipment into and on top of a taxi and drove to the train station and got out of the country. The photo is from a memorial concert in Pireaus at the Terpsithea Theater on October 10 1965, with Eric Clapton on the right, playing with the remaining members of The Juniors. Eric was able to retrieve his guitar but his Marshal Amp stayed in Greece and what happened to it is one of the unanswered mysteries of Rock and Roll.|
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