How not to do it (1): the sad demise of Huxley's

I dropped in on Huxley's with Dr Manhattan a couple of weeks ago. For the first time in ages. The place was pretty much dead. And the pair of charmless boneheads that have been running it for the past couple of years were doing nothing to improve their chances of attracting anyone in. They closed altogether at the indecently early hour of 1.30am. In fact, they started closing up - and unceremoniously pressuring us to finish the drinks we'd only just bought, and get out - rather before 1.30am. Not a very positive impression to give to customers. And not much of a help to the bosses' bottom line. The good Dr and I, when we have our drinking heads on, can be relied upon to drink three beers an hour, and the occasional spirit too. And we had at least another hour or two of drinking left in us. In the good old days, that place just about never closed. Not on the weekend, anyway. But things have changed in that neighbourhood. Maybe it's on its last legs as a bar street. Azucar, right opposite Huxley's, was also deserted - but was at least still serving. (They have a very good bar football table - 'foosball', if you must - but I don't think that's enough to entice me back there ever again.) The rest of the street was completely dark. Come to think of it, a few times I've been along there earlier in the evening, 10pm or 11pm, it's nearly all been dark. And I rather think that quite a few of the places that were trying to make it as bars or restaurants have closed completely. It's nearly all cafés and curio shops now. I gave up on Huxley's initially because it started attracting too much of a young crowd. And I mean VERY young. There was a period when there was a gang of American high schoolers who were hanging out there every weekend. One rather cute one who would flirt with me when she got drunk - but it was utterly indecent: she can't have been more than 15 or 16. That might have been just a temporary blip, but they drove me away.... breaking the chain of continuity, as prior to that it had been my regular neighbourhood drinking-hole - just about my only one - for the better part of two years. Then my friend, Jackson Bai, quit the place. He was the guy who'd set it up and run it for Huxley throughout those first two years or so, and made such an impact in the job that his loyal customers boosted him to the Runner-up prize in That's Beijing's Barman of the Year poll the following year (and he came within an ace of winning, despite the fact that the big hotels and cocktail bars have a lot of money to spend rallying votes for their people, and Jackson's surge was purely a grassroots write-in kind of campaign). He was a large part of the reason why I - and many other people - had gone there; and it was just never quite the same afterwards. Jackson has pretty good English (entirely self-taught), he's genuinely friendly (rather than awkwardly and exaggeratedly so), and he's put a lot of effort into learning what people like - OK, yes, especially what foreigners like - in a bar. There was some great music on the playlist while he was there, for example (he's still the only person I've ever heard play AC/DC in this town); and he was always amenable to you bringing in your own CDs or hooking up your i-Pod if there weren't too many people in. The new guys have a much more limited playlist, it's mostly very abrasive (I think I said in the Great Bars post that genres like gangsta rap are too divisive for a general bar); and nothing about these two is amenable - if you ask them to change the music, or turn it down a bit, they'll refuse, or ignore you, or comply only very slowly and with the maximum of complaint and ill grace. Jeez, I miss Jackson's days there. He's been an asset to a lot of other bars since. But Huxley's has never managed to find a suitable replacement for him. I don't think they've even tried, really. The place didn't turn to shit quite straight away. For a little while, a couple of new staff who'd been working with Jackson - an attractive girl called Lucy and a goofy young guy who was English-challenged but friendly - kept the old spirit alive. But they soon left too. And the new guys they got in - well, they've never projected anything but surl towards me. It seems they don't speak much English. It seems like they don't want any foreign customers. It seems, most of the time, like they don't want to be there at all. And yet they've stuck in the job for two years or more, while the custom slowly shrivels to nothing. (And, oh yes, as it became harder and harder to maintain their position at the budget end of the market with a dwindling clientele, they became less and less discriminating about the quality of their spirits. Jackson had always made at least a modest effort to ensure that most the stuff he sold was kosher, and would happily replace anything you weren't satisfied with. But these days, it's almost all poisonously fake and you really can't afford to risk more than one or two mixed drinks in there without seriously jeopardizing your liver.) It is a sorry turnaround indeed for what was once one of the great bars. I wonder, though, if this isn't partly a tide of history phenomenon. As I mentioned at the outset, the whole Yandai Xijie strip seems to be in the doldrums these days. I suspect that the rapid development in the last few years of the rival Nanluoguxiang strip less than a mile away (and, more recently, many of the hutongs to either side of NLG, and the main drag of Gulou Dongdajie also starting to show signs of trendifying, 'Westernization') has sucked business away from Yandai. Heck, I gave up on Huxley's almost completely when I discovered the much more alluring - and then newly opened - Pool Bar. And now other bars like Salud, Ned's, Amilal, and 12 Square Metres are dividing my loyalties. Even if Huxley's could magically return to how it used to be, I doubt if it could win me back. Even with Jackson, or someone similarly adept and appealing, behind the bar, I think Huxley's would have been doomed to a slow death - wrong place, wrong time, too much competition. Ah, it was good for a while, though.