the sleazy story of how coffee bars first appeared in Santiago 'Cafe With Legs'

---

As I mentioned earlier Chileans love sweet drinks, they have loads of different coloured fizzy drinks, fresh juices made in the street and most alcoholic drinks are served with either coca cola or ice cream. Nobody likes bitter drinks, they are unheard of here. For that reason and for the fact that Chile is not a coffee producer real coffee is quite rare. Instead they serve every type of tea and herbal tea you can think of and they always leave about 5 sachets of sugar on the table to put in the tea. For a cup of coffee here you tend to have to go to Starbucks, most cafes and restaurants sell Nescafe and instant coffee or you can go to cafes known as ‘cafes with legs.’

Back in the day in Chile coffee was disgusting and mainly drunk by men. As a result this gave birth to ‘Café with legs’ coffee shops – they are called this for this reason - there were no seats, just tables with legs which you had to stand at – no seats so you aren’t tempted to sit down for a long time to drink your coffee as it is disgusting (there are still no seats nowadays) and a beautiful waitress in a short skirt with long legs would serve the men and make interesting and intelligent conversation with them (a bit like the idea of the Geisha in Japan) to take their minds off the foul coffee. Now many of the coffee shops are in arcades hidden from view, are frequented by men and are behind a dark glass screen. For a while before the behaviour got banned, there used to be such a thing as ‘happy minute’. For one minute only all the waitresses in the coffee shop would take all their clothes off, do a dance for the men and put them back on again within the minute. Only the barmen knew when this minute would be so this encouraged men to come and drink loads of cups of coffee waiting and waiting for this naked moment.

ACCORDING TO THE TOUR GUIDE

---