Dark days

Dr Manhattan and I swung by The Drugstore (as we like to call Apothecary) last Monday, and found it CLOSED.

This seems an odd policy, especially when the place is new, fighting to establish itself. And it has been drawing reasonable numbers on almost every night of the week, from what I've seen. The Dr and I were not the only ones in a grump about finding the place dark on a Monday. (I suppose this is one of the drawbacks of only having one barman at the moment. The great advantage of the George & Echo double-act in their early days, at Midnight and so on, was that they could swap shifts around or take alternate days off in the slow first half of the week.)

Last Wednesday, the Bar Uno hotdog stall half-way down Nanluoguxiang - a rather too regular refuelling stop for me over the past couple of months! - was also inexplicably inoperative.

Shortly afterwards, I discovered that Salud had decided to discontinue its Wednesday live music nights until after the holidays. (Why??? They're still drawing in pretty fair crowds, despite the holiday absentees. Maybe it's that all the bands have gone away....)

Things get shit in this town around Christmas.