"What's it going to be then, eh?"

The Korova Milk Bar is a hip, swinging locale that serves milk heavily laced with designer drugs in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. More obscurely, it's also the name of a rather unpretentious goth club located in New York City's East Village, just a few blocks away from Tompkins Square Park.

As you might expect from a bar in East Village named after a futuristic opium den that is a key setting for one of the most fucked-up works of fiction ever written in the English language, the club caters to those of a highly avante-gardish leaning. Fat balloon letters spelling out the names of nonsense drugs like "DRENCROM" and "VELLOCET" festoon the walls, the barmen serve martinis in unique, fishbowl-shaped glasses and (most importantly) the whole place is decked out in a delightful array of psychosexual imagery, employing the nubile, idyllic forms of female mannequins as tables, benches, television stands, and ashtrays, sometimes with head or upper body removed in order to better serve their respective functions. Ergomeric, retro-futuristic recliners offer a comfortable fit for the over-indulgent patron, with a nude dummy with a TV screen in place of a head linked to the bar's closed circuit television system. Unfortunately, the legendary milk dispenser so tenderly favoured by Dim ("Hullo, Lucy!") is missing from the interior, but aside from that, the designers seem to have done a good job.

No self-respecting "moloko pub" would be caught dead without a drink gimmick as well as a specially-tailored ambience, and the Korova Milk Bar serves it up in the form of its ice cream cocktails on the Moloko menu. Each carries a seemingly randomly-assigned name of some poor veck or devotchka who's had his fair share of bad publicity throughout the years. There's the Moloko Amy Fisher (amaretto, raspberry vodka, raspberry juice and a cherry), Moloko Jon Benet (vodka, peach schnapps, and strawberry), and the Moloko Anton LaVey (sasparilla schnapps, white cocoa cream, and chocolate syrup -- yum) just to name a few.

Still no idea what goes in a "milk plus," though. After all these years, you'd think they'd have gotten it finally right. (adjusts eyelash).

Korova Milk Bar
Avenue A, between 12th and 13th Streets
New York, NY 10009

Open 7 days, from 7 PM until 4 AM
212-254-8838 for general info
Or, to discuss holding a party or event at Korova Milk Bar, call: (914)-525-0672 during normal business hours.

SEE: www.korovamilkbar.com, which features a drink menu, and an online retail shop selling the sorts of gawdy merchandise that any other self-branding bar or restaurant sells.

My experience has been that Korova Milk Bar is rather crowded (perhaps because it's small), with an unusually high number of tourists making their pilgrimage to a place that turns out to be a lot less swank than the bar featured in A Clockwork Orange.

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