Kostas Spanos was a sea captain. He spent years moving between ports, and somewhere along the way he fell into jazz — specifically into New Orleans, which captivated him so completely that not even a billiard ball, thrown at his head when he entered a bar where white patrons were not permitted, could diminish the city’s hold on him. He collected what he could carry: vinyl records, cassette tapes of jazz broadcasts he tuned into on the BBC, memorabilia from every port that had something worth taking. The billiard ball came back with him too. It sits at the back of the bar today, beside an old typewriter.
“Not even a billiard ball thrown at his head in New Orleans could diminish the city’s hold on him. He brought the ball back. It’s still at the bar.”
In 1978 he returned to Agia Galini, a small town on the south coast of Crete that he loved, and opened Jazz in Jazz — a beach bar in summer, a quiet room in winter, the records and the whisky bottles arranged behind the counter the way a sailor arranges a small cabin. He ran it as his own private world: the jazz, the memorabilia, the atmosphere of a place that belonged to its founder’s obsessions rather than to any market or trend.
In 1994, for practical reasons, the bar moved to Athens — to a narrow street in Kolonaki, at number 4 Dinokratous, where it has been ever since. Everything came with it: the vinyls, the 78rpm plates, the autographed photographs, the tap shoes, the harmonicas, the enormous bottle of Chartreuse that looks as though it has found its permanent home, the rare Ardbeg beside it that has clearly decided the same. A photograph of Kostas sits among the spirits on the back bar, looking out at whoever happens to be standing there.
His nephew Vangelis Spanos has run Jazz in Jazz for fifteen years, with bar manager Konstantinos Gkionis alongside him for the last six. The two have held to Kostas’s original proposition while keeping the bar alive rather than preserved. The cocktail list is devoted entirely to classics — Gibson, Final Ward, Brooklyn, Vieux Carré, Penicillin, Paper Plane, Clover Club, Last Word — each made with the precision the room demands. The house philosophy is self-service: guests order at the bar, between the two railings that define the space where seating is not permitted. First contact, second contact, third contact. It works like someone’s home, because it was built from someone’s obsession with what a bar should feel like.
Kostas Spanos died before the bar became the Athens institution it is now. His presence in the room has not diminished.