Or perhaps I should say, too naff for satire.
In the Simpsons' episode The British Cowboy alluded to the other day, where Moe takes his bar 'upmarket', Moe's Tavern is re-branded as M. This prompted me - in my epic post yesterday about the defining traits of good and bad bars - to pour scorn on bars which name themselves after letters of the alphabet.
Then, last night, I happened to read a magazine article about one of Beijing's newest bars. It's in the Sofitel Hotel, which is buried inside one of the city's grotesque new mega-malls. It's a (would-be) upscale cocktail lounge.
And it's called..... M.
Ye gods!
Oh well, I don't suppose I'll ever go there.
I wonder, though, if they were perhaps consciously referencing the Simpsons in choosing that name. Unlikely, I fear; but if they were, it might just redeem them.
1 comment:
I thought the letter M from TBC's comments sounded oddly familiar (beyond the Simpson's reference), but couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe I was thinking Sofitel... hmmm... it's not ringing any bells, so I'll just let it go back to being an annoying half-remembered thought, for now.
and indeed, life is stranger than fiction. We read fiction as a pre-cursor to living life. Experiencing oddities vicariously through favorite characters helps us deal with the real life tragedies and what not.
Not that one more overpriced, pretentious bar in beijing is a tragedy... unless I find myself a type-3 visitor there - but even then, a little lighter in the purse, I'm sure to come out with a good story to tell, and a reaffirmation of who I am and what I like (and who I am NOT and what I don't enjoy).
But, probably, the destruction of whatever hole-in-the-wall intrigue that existed on the land where Sofitel now stands IS a tragedy. But what do I know? I'm just another foreigner romanticizing the old city.
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