Quot homines, tot sententiae

Loyal readers may recall that last month in my annual Bar Awards I named D-22 as Beijing's Worst Bar - in the face of stiff competition from the likes of Centro and The Tree. It was also runner-up as Worst Music Bar (saved from another victory only by the mystifying continued existence of New Get Lucky - which is really so dreadful it perhaps ought to be excluded from competition) and the scene of the year's Worst Gig (and, quite probably, all of the year's worst gigs). In my opinion.

According to a readers' poll conducted by leading expat listings mag That's Beijing, however, it was........ Bar/Club of the Year.

There's no accounting for taste, I suppose. But that is a very surprising result. I have detailed and cogent reasons for my detestation of D-22. And I am very far from alone in holding such a view of it - I can't think of anyone I know that actually likes the place (and that includes quite a few musicians who play there or people otherwise "involved" in the music biz in some way).

The owner, Michael Pettis, is a relentless self-publicist, and he probably did a good job of marshalling friends and colleagues to vote in the poll. And I suppose it's quite likely that a lot of people might only go there once or twice, to see a particular band, and if they enjoy that band they might form a positive (but unwarranted) impression of the bar. Can this really explain this amazing result, though? Or must we suspect some more nefarious vote-rigging machinations?

I will admit that Pettis has managed to make himself and his bar an important feature of the Beijing music scene - I applaud the good work he's done in nurturing and promoting new bands. It's just a pity that he's such a self-important tosser; and that his bar and most of its staff are so thoroughly tainted by the same smugness; and that the space there is so cramped; and that the service is often non-existent; and that the acoustics are so utterly SHITE; and that the sound system is truly terrible too, and keeps on breaking down; and......... Oh, stop me, someone; I could go on and on.

D-22 is a music bar; nobody would go there just to have a drink; thus it's not a bar bar - so it shouldn't even have been eligible for this category of the TBJ awards. If judged purely as a music bar, compared with the city's other music bars, it's just a craphole - light years behind just about every other venue in the city (MAO Live? Better! 2 Kolegas? Better! Salud? Better! Jiangjinjiu? Better! Club 13? Better! Jianghu? Better! WuMing GaoDi? Better! What Bar? Better! New Yugong Yishan? Better - not much, but better! And these places - as well as having better sound and better bands - are all much better bars as well.).

That's Beijing readers, please take your heads out of your arses. Such unfathomable voting aberrations cannot be tolerated. If you do not make amends this year, I shall have to resort - like Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged - to vilifying each and every one of you individually.

By the by, despite a recent revamp, the That's Beijing website (now renamed www.thebeijinger.com) is still difficult to search and damn nigh unnavigable. Moreover, items on its most recent Bar Awards have so little prominence (I know there are several references to them on the site, but I can't find the main article listing all the winners - which must surely be there somewhere) that even Google fails to unearth them.... although, when you search for "that's Beijing"+"bar awards", it does point to the Barstool here and my own Beijing Bar Awards. Thank you, Google.