There was a time when football fans would troop to Avenida Restaurant on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue to watch live matches on the screens as we moisturised our throats. The last time I was there, my team got a mighty drubbing and I got some excoriating, choice-reconsidering banter from rival fans.
I was partly to blame, though, as I had donned the team’s jersey on a match day. Red and proud. Others think it jinxes your team but I am brave like that. I will still wear my team’s jersey on any match day because, hey, am I the one playing? Am I the one earning, every week, an equivalent of a county’s payroll just to lose matches ad infinitum?
Anyway, at Avenida, if you were lucky you could get a space at the balcony. That offered a double view of the screens and the street underneath, judging Nairobi people and with their rushed walks, begging sprees, and motorcyclists doing everything to paint the city red – and not in a good way.
The design of Avenida was the epitome of a Nairobi club in its day. All clubs needed a street they were ‘looking down’ upon, with a fancy balcony to facilitate that, and sometimes another noisy club next door for good measure. Avenida had all this.
We have five senses, so they say, and whenever you were at Avenida, your ears got a treat of music from a deejay who typically mixed all the genres to cater to all audiences. Your eyes followed the live match or judged the people going about their business on the street. Your tongue would by that time have been treated to a drink, and they came in twos for whatever reason. Food was available, though I often found it a tad pricey.
The nose had little to do, but if it was sharper, you could smell scandals from the discussions here and there and catch copious whiffs of unfaithfulness because this is Nairobi.
Avenida logged out without much of a warning, fuelling speculation on social media. Its last post on social media was made in April. In the first week of October, the building that housed it was fenced off, ostensibly for redevelopment. Will Avenida return? Will something else come up?