Escape 24/7 sits at 24 Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston and the number in the name is the entire proposition: it does not close. Sports bar by day, kitchen at any hour, nightclub at the weekend. If you have ever wanted ackee and saltfish at four in the morning in Kingston, this is one of the few places that will actually cook it.
History
You are drinking on a racetrack
Knutsford Boulevard is not named after a person who lived here. It is named after the racecourse it was cut through. Knutsford Park Limited was formed in 1904 to promote horse racing in Kingston, and the first race at Knutsford Park was run in 1905. The track occupied roughly 85 acres running from what is now Knutsford Boulevard down to Oxford Road, and it hosted polo as well as racing. For half a century, the ground under every tower block in New Kingston was a one mile turf course.
Racing left at the end of the 1950s, when the sport moved to Caymanas Park in St Catherine, where it still is. The land then did nothing for years. Accounts from the period describe it as a large dusty vacant lot where people took learner driving lessons, which is a fairly startling image of the ground that now holds the country's banks.
Why the money came uptown in the first place
The reason a business district ended up here rather than on the harbour is the 1907 earthquake and the fire that followed it. Downtown Kingston was wrecked. The merchant class, who had traditionally lived above their own shops in the centre of town, moved out onto the higher ground of the Liguanea plain, and commerce eventually followed the people who owned it. A consortium later bought the old racecourse and built what they described as a city within a city. That is New Kingston, and the reason it feels like a separate place from the rest of the capital is that it was designed to be one.
As for the name itself, Knutsford is a town in Cheshire, England, and the likeliest source is Henry Thurstan Holland, 1st Viscount Knutsford, who was Britain's Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1887 to 1892 and took his title from that town. We have not found a document that states the link outright, so we offer it as the probable explanation rather than the proved one.
The bar itself
Escape's own history is not documented anywhere we can find. No opening date, no named owner, no press coverage of a launch. That is normal for a Kingston bar of this size and we would rather say it than invent a founding year.
What it costs and when it opens
It is open 24 hours a day. There is no cover charge on an ordinary night, though promoter events and party nights can carry one. Food is bar and Jamaican counter cooking: fried chicken, curry, peppered steak, fish fillet, sandwiches, and ackee and saltfish, the national dish, which is what makes the round the clock kitchen worth something. Expect a plate in the region of US$8 to US$18 and ordinary Kingston bar prices on drinks. Cards are accepted, there is parking, and there is outdoor seating.
What it is actually like
It changes character several times in a day, and that is the honest way to describe it. Daytime it is a functional sports bar with televisions and a lunch trade from the surrounding offices. Evening it fills with after work drinking. Late Friday and Saturday it becomes a club, with karaoke, game and dance nights in the mix. Early morning it is the last place still serving, which is a particular kind of clientele.
Do not come expecting design. Come expecting a room that is open when nothing else is, on the main strip of New Kingston, within walking distance of most of the hotels on that side of town.
Knutsford Boulevard is one of the better lit and better patrolled streets in Kingston, but a venue that trades at 4am still means arranging your ride in advance. There is no late night public transport in this city.
How it fits a day
We use Escape as the flexible piece rather than the destination. It is the lunch stop when a New Kingston day runs long, the first drink at six before dinner somewhere with a kitchen worth booking, or the last stop at three when everything else has shut. Emancipation Park is a five minute walk, so a morning in the park and a plate here is an easy, cheap pairing. If you want a single anchored evening in one room, choose a lounge with a door policy instead. Escape is the place you end up, not the place you plan around.
