Sei Divino, My Old Friend

I hadn't been to Sei Divino in a long time. I've been so busy going to Beerfest and the French Riviera and Prague that I haven't had time to party as hard as I used to. And when you go to Sei Divino, you party. Its a classier kind of party in a classy place, until it closes and Divertimenti brings you to some insane nightclub and you take shots until 8 a.m. After all the traveling and running around I'd been doing, I didn't think I could handle any 8 a.m. nights until I'd given myself a big chunk of recovery time. When I finally made it back to Sei Divino, I didn't realize that I'd basically be saying my goodbyes. I was grateful that I went on a Thursday and was able to take some video of jazz night.

I sat in my little chair, looking around at the strange black and white photos all over the shelves, and I thought to myself that I was never going to find a place like Sei Divino at home. I'm never going to befriend a bartender who invites me to his house to cook homemade Mexican dinners with the guy who owns half of the Ponte Vecchio. I won't know there is a place where I'll always get half off on my drinks simply for being me. I'll never be able to order an LIT in a pitcher again. It was in Sei Divino that I realized that its really over. Living in Florence, studying abroad, is done. Sei Divino is going to be a memory, soon. My favorite winebar in the entire world will be a kind of myth when I get back home. People can choose whether or not to believe that a place as incredibly fun and wild as this really exists in the world. Divertimenti will meet new students next semester and they will fall in love with Sei Divino, just like me. They'll dance for hours to jazz night, they'll bring all their friends to meet the coolest bartender in the world, and then suddenly, it will be over, and one of them will sit in a chair and realize that they couldn't recreate these things if they tried.

So I danced my ass off. I'll go back to Florence before I leave Italy in July and of course I'll go to Sei Divino. I won't be with friends, though, and instead of the authentic experience of being drunk and dancing to jazz in a huge group of the people I love, I'll be strolling through memory lane with my mom, dad, sister, and her boyfriend in tow. Divertimenti will smile, maybe forget my name, and act like a complete gentleman instead of the wacky, fun guy I know him to be. I'll tell them to order the mojito, order aperitivo, and before the jazz band even shows up I'm sure my family will say they are tired and need to rest for another day of tourism tomorrow. So I decided since I could never do it again, I was going to dance with complete disregard to my personal image and the well-being of those around me. I danced all night, enjoying jazz music from a band I've loved since day 1. This song is one of their signature songs. Buzarro and I used to shout when it came on and dance all night. I was a little sad that I was recording, espeically since it turned out so horribly, instead of dancing.

By the end of the night I'm pretty sure all of us were hammered. The spaghetti vomit a few cars down was proof enough. Divertimenti did his best to make the night special for us, but we found that with the summer months coming, the place was too packed to be the same as we always enjoyed. There were folks in the crowd who kept on begging the jazz band to let them play too. They actually let this dude: He played a few songs, they were awesome, before some guy in a robe and funny headdress climbed ontop of a table and started to recite Dante. Sei Divino, the one that I know with unrelenting jazz and non-stop dancing, had transformed. It was catering to the tourists, now. It doesn't make Sei Divino any less amazing-it wouldn't be so crowded if it weren't the best bar in town. But my old friend Sei Divino, it seems, has become a part of my past.

I hope that all my friends, like me, will remember that bar as the place where they were the happiest in this city.
Arrivederci, for now.
Love, Gabby.