http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,1403119,00.html
Lahore bar gives Pakistanis breath of fresh air
Declan Walsh in Lahore
Tuesday February 1, 2005
The Guardian
With its velvety sofas and soft lighting, Pakistan’s first bar looks and feels like it could be in any western city, with prices to match.
But instead of glasses of wine or pints of creamy beer, the counter is lined with tubes that dispense a tipple more befitting a good Muslim country: pure oxygen.
The Oxygen Bar, in a suburb of Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, is the first public bar since alcohol was banned in 1977, in a country where most socialising is done behind closed doors and where alcohol is - legally at least - unavailable.
For £4.50 a hit, well-heeled Pakistanis insert a neon cannula up their nostrils, hit the button and stretch back for a 10-minute oxygen rush, in aromas ranging from cinnamon to spearmint.
“It’s like a natural high,” said Irfan Khan, 31, a biomedical engineer turned lounge-lizard entrepreneur. “You feel refreshed because your cell reactions are faster, and the free radicals are taken care of.”
This is far from the “cells” and “free radicals” Pakistan is most famous for, the ones that carry guns, hate America and profess loyalty to Osama bin Laden.
But for Mr Khan, the bar represents Pakistan’s less publicised but equally valid urbane, sophisticated side. Down the street stands a new BMW dealership, a McDonald’s and several trendy clothes boutiques.
Elsewhere male beauty parlours have sprung up offering pedicures, manicures and facial massages.
“We are a third world country but the elite has a lot of money, and don’t know what to do with it,” he said. “We can help them.”
Lahore, a wheezing, belching metropolis of 5 million inhabitants, is a fitting place to flog gulps of fresh air. Famed as the “city of gardens”, its streets are now clogged with beaten-up cars and auto-rickshaws spewing choking exhaust fumes.
Traditional pleasures include the hookah, a water-based tobacco pipe that is popular among young people.
But Oxygen has no pretension of catering to the unwashed masses. Its target clients are unashamedly the healthy and wealthy. “We are targeting the elite A-class: actors, models, people from the fashion world,” said Mr Khan. “Taking oxygen is a fashion statement.”
It is also a financial statement in a city where three sucks of the flavoured tube costs as much as many families make in a fortnight.
“I had already been to an oxygen bar in the US, and I thought it was really good,” said Haider Sultan, an actor, speaking from a shoot. But Oxygen had just 68 customers in its first four weeks of business. Some thought they might get served a cold beer. “It’s wishful thinking,” said Mr Khan, “that just because there’s the word ‘bar’ there might be some alcohol. Then they come in and find out.”
