I went for a meal with friends in Manchester recently at a bar called The Alchemist. It came as quite a suprise to find that about half of their waiting and bar staff were long-haired men. One may even have had longer hair than me! (He wore it in a bun, so it was hard to tell.)
It definitely made for a more relaxing atmosphere as quite a few of the other customers were also longhairs. Oh, and the food was pretty good too.
Lancashire or New Hampshire or somewhere else?
Lancashire.
Occasionally I've experienced similar pleasant surprises out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's always fun to not feel like such a minority, as is usually the case!
Also, completely unrelated to hair...
There's a very beautiful rose called The Alchemist -- bred in Germany during the 1950s, as I recall. The color is a wonderous old-fashioned style combination of golden yellows, apricot/peach, and even occasionally some pink thrown into the mix -- and fragrant, to boot! Unfortunately it only blooms for about a month in spring / early summer, with no repeat bloom until the following year; but definitely one of my favorites, in spite of that fact... Maybe your bar is named after that rose (LOL)!
- Ken
Exactly. I felt really comfortable there. There was a relaxing atmosphere and for once, I didn't feel as if people were staring at me because of my hair length.
That sounds like a beautiful rose, and you never know, it could be named after it, but I have a feeling it could be down to their cocktails and desserts; they do a few spectacular things with dry ice. One of my friends chose an interesting one which consisted of ice cream served in a mini cauldron on a bed of dry ice with a beaker of hot espresso and a 10ml syringe of amaretto. You can imagine the effect when they were added to the cauldron. I wish I'd gone for that, but the lure of hot Belgian waffles with cinnamon was just too strong.