Ball House

Tulsa asks me (in her comment on the preceding post) if I know of or would recommend this joint? Yes, and NO.

This is apparently what it's called, although there is no sign bearing a name - in Chinese or English - either inside or out, so it's all a bit hypothetical really. Is it a clever play on 'Bauhaus'.... or just another piece of inept literalism in the Chinese use of English? I think more probably the latter.

The place is pretty much impossible to find: behind an unmarked door down an unmarked alley - an unmarked alley that during the daytime is often partly blocked by the workbench of a neighbourhood carpenter. This 'hidden treasure' quality might be rather charming if the place were a treasure, if it were actually any good at all: it could be an "our secret" kind of place, where you feel glad of the privacy, the exclusivity.

In fact, it's charm begins and ends with the space: the space is great. It's a large, rambling courtyard house with high ceilings, bare wood beams, a mezzanine loft; discreetly decorated. Yes, promising.

Unfortunately, everything else about it sucks.

Its gimmick - not a 'unique selling point' perhaps, but certainly its main distinctive feature - is that it is supposed to be a pool bar. But it's not. It has 2 or 3 tables. They're all shit. Nobody ever plays there. (The main thing a good pool bar needs is a coterie of regular players to provide you with some testing competition.) The reason nobody ever plays there - apart from the tables being shit - is that there's a 25 or 30 kuai per hour charge for them.... which is just utterly f***ing outrageous! Bars do not charge for pool in this town. Pool halls generally charge barely half as much as that per hour; and they provide good tables. What's even worse is that this charge is not advertised (at least it wasn't the last time I went there), and is not mentioned by the staff until you finish playing. It is, quite simply, a con, a rip-off.

Pool is very dear to me. Thus a bad pool bar is something I particularly despise. And a bad pool bar that tries to extort money out of people retroactively for playing on its bad tables is just EVIL.

Not that the place has any other redeeming features either. The staff are grumpy and obtuse. The prices are high. They are reluctant ever to turn the air-conditioning on for you.

Tulsa wondered about the atmosphere on 'busy nights'. I think that was a busy night, Tulsa. Two groups of people at the same time?! I imagine they might sometimes go a month at a time without that happening.

I have heard of certain foreigners in the area forming a slight fondness for the place. They like the Starbucks-coffee-shop feel of it, and the fact they can have the place all to themselves.

Call me a curmudgeon if you will, but I ask rather more of a bar than a veneer of trendiness and a complete absence of customers.

This raises another question about the bar industry in Beijing in general. This place is next-to-impossible to find, does nothing to advertise, offers no appreciable service, often goes for days at a time without attracting a single customer, and rarely manages to collect its exorbitant pool table fee even when it does (I just flat out refuse to pay every time). It must be haemorrhaging cash. And yet it is now in its third year of operation. There are many, many bars like this in Beijing. The usual theory to explain this is that they are vanity projects of rich idiots who are more concerned with being able to brag to their friends that they "have a bar" than with actually making any money...... and/or that they are money-laundering fronts or extravagant tax write-offs for gangsters and other dodgy businessmen. An alarming reflection.

So, no, Tulsa. I don't like Ball House. It has been on my boycott list since shortly after it opened. I go back once or twice a year, to see if there has been any improvement. I usually judge that the place has got even worse. My least favourite bar between here and The Tree!!