Coffee with legs

You may have noticed that downtown Santiago has a lot of strip clubs.  Actually, most of the ones you’ve seen are probably cafés con piernas (“coffee with legs”), a type of coffee bar notable for its lack of tables and food, as well as its abundance of scantily-clad waitresses.  This type of establishment draws attention anywhere, due to its inherently titillating nature, but it stands out like a sore thumb in Chile, a country with a reputation for being culturally conservative.

I showed a draft of this article to a friend of mine, my sole acquaintance whom I could consider an expert on the café con piernas phenomenon. I had written this:

A PG café con piernas is brightly lit, the windows are large and clear, and the waitresses are fully clothed, at least down to where the all-important legs start.  You may even see a businesswoman there among the male customers.  It’s the kind of café con piernas featured in this blog post.

An R-rated café con piernas is dark, the windows are covered, and the waitresses are wearing only enough, I suspect, to keep the place from being legally classified as a strip club.

My friend read it, chuckled, and said, “That,” referring to the PG café con piernas, “is not a café con piernas at all.  It’s just a café.”  He then went on to describe the raunchy goings-on at a real café con piernas, which I won’t repeat here, this being a PG web site.

Anyway, regardless of whether Café Haiti and Café Caribe are technically cafés con piernas, this is all just an introduction to the following excellent news feature.  Watch it and you’ll get a good sense of the atmosphere in a café con piernas and hear from the customers, the owner of the café, and of course, the owners of the legs.