Rattlebrained

washboards, rhythm bones, drumming & the blues...

Friday Evening At The Red Turtle

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picture for the flyerNext Friday Dave & I will be playing at the Red Turtle Club (update ’17: doesn’t exist anymore) here in town. It’s a bar that recently reopened and that actually has a real stage, not very deep but quite wide, and that has already seen a good amount of musicians in its first three/four months. We stopped by a couple of days ago to confirm the gig, I had sent a picture for the flyer but had not heard from the organizer.

I asked about the bar’s name since “Turtle” is pretty hard for french speakers to pronounce and was wondering if there was a story behind it and sure enough. Here’s to a bit of history!

A friend had already told me about the 20 or so bars, bistros & bordellos that used to line the Rue de L’Hôtel de Ville; a street that used to be the main entrance to the city. Apparently the success of a Saturday night could be measured by whether you managed to visit them all. However that wasn’t the only bistro packed street, it would seem that 100 years ago there were so many bars on the city’s main stretch: “Le Pod” as it’s informally called, that visiting them all in an evening was impossible. This to put you in the ambiance of the city’s dark cold winter nights.

fountain with turtlesIn 1888 a fountain was raised to celebrate the construction of a 20 kilometer long underground aqueduct that still brings running water to the city. Now I don’t guaranty that the following is true but it is what I was told: The first project had 12 maidens, symbolic of the town’s night life, this raised a stink and they were replaced by turtles…

(If anyone has a better explanation for the turtles, please comment!)

bronze fountain turtle So where’s the link here? you might ask. Well, apparently the bar was supposed to be situated across from the fountain and someone thought it humorous to name it the Red Turtle… But circumstances prevented it from opening in the planned space and the bar ended up a good ways towards the other end of the city.

They have a cool logo however!

BTW: The fountain was renovated last year which is why it’s so shinny and clean.

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