Remembering 101

The other day, a drinking companion suggested having a bite of supper in a Muslim restaurant just off Andingmennei. It's rather a good little hole-in-the-wall, but I hadn't been there for 4 or 5 months, had almost forgotten about it completely.

This restaurant had, for a while last summer, started to become a new favourite haunt - primarily because it was just around the corner from Room 101, my premier watering-hole for much of last year.

So, while enjoying my chuanr that night, I found myself getting rather wistful again about the demise of 101.

It was an odd combination of circumstances that brought this bar to such a position of prominence in my life - and I rather doubt if any other bar could now repeat the feat. No, even if Room 101 itself were to be resurrected in its original form, I don't think I'd be going there very much now. It was a transient phenomenon.

How did this phenomenon come about?

Well, in the first place, there happened to be a vacancy in my life for a new bar; or a semi-vacancy, at any rate. I had been going to the Pool Bar just a little too much at the end of the preceding year, and needed a little bit of a change of scene. And, much as I love the place, not having any draught beer is a serious handicap. When I renounced bottled Tsingtao at the beginning of last year, I was rather left without anything to drink there! Also, to be frank, there were one or two people there I was trying to avoid at that time.....

So, the Pool Bar's monopoly on my affections was for a little while broken, or at least weakened. And amongst my other favourites.... Jianghu compromised its charm with some renovations and some price rises (and by breaking its relationship with my two guitarist buddies who used to put on such a great show there every Thursday night), Salud was prevented from hosting live music for much of the year (bloody Olympics!!), and 12 Square Metres (then a very recent opening) was not yet on my radar.

So - somewhat unusually - I had space in my life for a new bar; particularly one that was hosting live music once in a while. And particularly one that was less than a 25-minute walk from my home. And particularly one that had good draught beer (my weakness for Stella Artois piled the pounds on me last summer) and reasonable prices. And particularly one that had such a beautiful, beautiful island bar. The 6pm-8pm happy hour was a big attraction too: I'd often be tempted to start the evening there, especially on a Friday (or a Saturday, or a Sunday), before going on to eat or play pool or listen to music somewhere else.

Even so, it still might not have entrenched its position so deeply in my routine but for the fact that I started a twice-weekly evening teaching gig nearby. Through the spring and early summer, every Tuesday and Thursday I was finishing work - exhausted and thirsty - at 8pm.... with the allure of Room 101 only 10 minutes or so away and - kind of - on the way home. I got into the habit of phoning ahead or sending a text message to get them to pour me my first Stella on the happy hour tariff at 7.59.

And then.... my old friend The Barman went to work there for a while; and that really sealed the deal for me: it's great to have a bar where you know there's always going to be at least one person you can hang out and shoot the shit with.

But now..... everything has changed. The Barman has moved on to pastures new. I am refusing to accept any more evening teaching jobs because they make me horribly grouchy. I've given up on my attempt to avoid the dratted Tsingtao completely (and anyway, the Pool Bar has recently started selling the far preferable Harbin beer at the same price), and I am containing my Stella craving with once or twice a week visits to a couple of promising new bars, Luga's Villa and the Stumble Inn. The Wednesday music nights are restored at Salud. I'm growing used to the new ambience at Jianghu. And best of all, 12 Square Metres is now established as my preferred spot for drinking alone - because you can always look forward to an interesting chat with the friendly owners or one of the constant trickle of exotic visitors who pass through the doors.

Yep, if Room 101 had opened this year, I think I might have spurned it. Funny how these things go......

The Froog Bar Awards - 2008

Time again for my year-end roundup of the best and worst that Beijing has to offer in the bar & music scene.

I find, in fact, that in many categories my thoughts are quite unchanged from last year. There have been scores of new bars opening in Beijing this year, but I haven't tried most of them, and am unlikely to do so. Most of those that I have tried suck most mightily. Perhaps I am a person of rather fixed habits (although I'd prefer to think of it as a case of my being a person of clear judgment and robust loyalty: once I've found a place I like, I stick to it.)

Anyway, to mix things up a bit this year, I've added some new or modified categories - highlighted in red.

Best Live Music Venue

Winner: 2 Kolegas


Runners-up: MAO Live House and Jiangjinjiu

(Last year I had a separate category for the smaller music bars, but that seemed a bit of an extravagant and superfluous distinction, so I've dropped it this year. Amongst the other contenders, Room 101, alas, did not survive the year, Salud and the Stone Boat were banned from having music for a number of months [bloody Olympics!], and - while I'm delighted to learn that it's still soldiering on - I haven't actually been to the tiny and obscure What Bar in 2 or 3 years. Jianghu, alas, is not what it once was. And Yugong Yishan, as I have bewailed often, is just shite. Club 13 is too far away to be on my radar very often. MAO is still far-and-away the best venue for rock'n'roll - great ambience, great sound system - but gets dropped from the top spot this year because of its overpriced beer and its infuriatingly haphazard scheduling.)



Worst Music Bar

Winner: New Get Lucky


Runners-up: D-22, Guitar Bar

(No changes here!!)



Best Gig Of The Year

Winner: Blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite and the Alex Wilson Band at Cheers in January.

(His Sunday afternoon spot at Jianghu was quite magical, but really more of an intimate fireside chat than a show. Cheers is an ideal space for the blues - small, dark, smoky - and the performance that night just rocked. I saw all their performances here in Beijing, and that was way the best.)


(Very close) Runner-up: The stonking 2 Kolegas 3rd Anniversary Show at the beginning of June (after which I lost the hearing in my right ear for a couple of days!).



Worst Gig Of The Year

Winner: A toss-up between the dire White show at D-22 at the start of this month and the Elevator Music Hell that was last week's Ruins/Zhou Yunshan gig at Yugong Yishan.



Best Bar Food

Winner: Luga's

(Last year's winner Saddle now re-branded, but almost identical; in fact, improved in many ways - the burritos are fantastic value and the burger is one of the best in town).


Runner-up: Luga's Villa

(I've found the food a bit spotty in Luga's new - much grander - place around the corner, and the 'authentic Mexican' dishes are mostly rather a disappointment. The portions, however, are HUGE: the burger and the fajitas are popular choices. I was reluctantly prepared to include The Den as a runner-up last year, but the place is in a nosedive, in my opinion: I never liked it much, but the booze, the food, the service, and the decor have all taken a turn for the worse this year.)



Most Overrated Bar Food

Winner: The Tree

Runner-up: There are no runners-up in this category. The Tree is the only place I can think of that has built up such a ridiculously overblown, undeserved reputation for its food. (Once again, no change this year.)



Best Place To Drink While Eating

Winner: White Nights

(Best of the cheap Russian joints these days, I think [though how I miss the old Traktirr!]: the food is hearty; they have an accepting attitude towards people who want to drink more than eat; the draft beer is usually pretty good and not too expensive; the bottled Baltika beer is exellent; and then there's the vodka....)


(Very close) Runner-up: BiteAPitta

(No changes from last year here. Kro's Nest makes the best pizzas in town, but the place lacks charm as a bar. The service is all over the place at the best of times, and on their "cheap beer Tuesdays" they get completely overwhelmed: you can wait an hour to get your food or a drink. I hear very good things about Pyro Pizza - but it's way out in Haidian, so I'm afraid it's highly unlikely that I'll ever go there.)



Best Place To Go For A Cocktail

Winner: Reef

(Especially if one of my friends has been allowed behind the bar to mix the drinks.)


Runner-up: 12 Square Metres

(I'm not really that much of a 'cocktail person'. Most of the places in this town that fancy themselves as 'cocktail bars' are outrageously overpriced, and don't in fact make very good cocktails. Q is the one honourable exception [on the latter point, at least], but it's still ridiculously f***ing expensive, and I don't like the clientele. If you want a decent cocktail that won't cost you an arm and a leg, you should stick to one of these cosy neighbourhood bars on Nanluoguxiang, I say.)



Best Place For Sitting Outside
(Category suspended - because of the bloody Olympics. Sitting outside on the street was banned almost everywhere in Beijing during the summer months, and that ban seems to have become permanent on Nanluoguxiang [probably a good and necessary thing, since the street is so busy these days]; Chen at Reef has got rid of his outdoor furniture, alas. Roof terraces were also supposed to have been banned, but that wasn't actually put into effect - or, if it was, it wasn't enforced. However, thanks to the over-zealous weather management by the authorities here, we had an absolutely dreadful summer in the lead-up to the Olympics anyway: there was not much sitting outside to be done this year.)




Most Pointless New Bar
(rather than Worst New Bar or Most Disappointing New Bar, as we had last year; so many of these new places are somewhere beyond merely bad, and have never raised any hopes to disappoint)

Winner: Lugar's

(A would-be 'upmarket', very expensive Taiwanese whisky/cocktail/wine bar - hidden away in an oscure, unfashionable hutong. There's dumb, there's unfathomably dumb, and then there's this. [Not to be confused with Luga's, of course!])


Runners-up: Nearby The Tree and Drei Kronen and Tsingtao Beer Palace

(Nearby The Tree tries to trade on the popularity of its parent bar The Tree, but is completely dissimilar - and conspicuously fails to draw any customers at all. Drei Kronen is a cavernous and charmless German brewhouse which conspicuously fails to draw any customers. And a Tsingtao theme bar?? What kind of monstrous, idiotic hubris is that??)




'Sign of Desperation' Of The Year

Winner: Nearby The Tree giving away FREE BEER for a month, and still not attracting very many customers.


Runner-up: Drei Kronen giving away scads of free beer vouchers, and still not attracting very many customers.



Foot-Shooting Of The Year

Winner: The steadily degenerating Rickshaw's batty decision to impose a (secret) 15% surcharge on everything during the Olympic month of August - a policy which resulted in it being almost entirely deserted that month.


Runner-Up: Any one of a number of daft and custom-harming ideas that contributed to Room 101's demise, though the leading contender would surely have to be the decision to scrap the enormously popular midnight-1am 'happy hour'.



Redemption Of The Year

Winner: Room 101, which made a pretty dismal start 15 months ago, but was a really great little bar for the first half of this year.

Runner-up: D-22 - which, despite still sucking rather as a music venue, has managed to transform itself into a pretty darned good bar (it's the staff that make all the difference).



Bar Which Has Deteriorated Most This Year

Winner: The Den


Runner-Up: Rickshaw



Worst Bar

Winner: Centro

Runner-up: Paddy O'Shea's

(D-22 and The Tree are so much improved this year that they drop out of contention in this category, allowing the foul Centro to reclaim its rightful - almost unchallengeable - place at the top. Paddy's is also somewhat improved, I found on a recent visit; but it's still appalling.)



Most Overrated Bar

Winner: Ichikura

(Yes, they have a very nice selection of whiskies. Yes, the head barman is very knowledgeable and helpful. But it's way too expensive. They serve the whisky in sherry schooners - what the fuck? And that business with sculpting your ice into a golf ball is just tedious. I've had at least half a dozen people recommend this place to me this year - but I just do not get the point.)


Runners-up: Centro, Q

(As ever....)



Most Sadly Missed Departures

Winner: Room 101

(My most regular - at times, almost daily - haunt for the first 9 months of this year.)


Runner-up: The Sunset Grill - better known as Sammy's, a true dive bar!



Party Of The Year

Winner: The Jack Daniel's Night at Room 101 in April


Runner-Up: My birthday party at Salud in October (only modesty prevents me from putting this first; we certainly had better music at this one!); also, the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Room 101



Best Barperson/Bar Owner

Winner: Li Mei, of 12 Square Metres

(A charming lady, who works with remarkable thoroughness and efficiency behind that cramped bar - and she mixes some pretty nice drinks too.)

Runner-up: That new guy at Salud

(I never get around to asking his name, but he's friendly and fast - and he always gives me the most ridiculously generous free pours of whisky. [Later, much later, I gathered that his name was Bo Wen - or "Bowen"?? - but, sadly, he quit the place half-way through 2009.)



Most Promising New Bar
(rather than Best New Bar, as we had last year; the jury is still out on these places...)

Winner: Luga's Villa

Runner-up: Ned's



Bar of the Year
(rather than Best Bar, as we had last year: my personal favourites are unlikely to change much year by year, so I wanted a category title that was a little more in touch with the shifting zeitgeist)


Winner: Salud

(I fear it is now in danger of becoming rather a victim of its own success: it seems to be becoming impossible to have a party anywhere else. And in this year of so many departures, it seems as though scarcely a week, scarcely a day goes by without a leaving party of some sort there.)


Runner-up: Room 101

(It would have claimed the top spot if it had survived: it was a central part of my life for 8 or 9 months.)



So, here we are once again: my picks of the year. Any comments, complaints, additions, suggestions?

Bed

It's the name of a bar in my neighbourhood - Bed.

The name is a cunning choice: the inevitable frisson of innuendo has proven to be a shockingly effective piece of marketing, making it a favourite 'date place'. Cheesy and obvious as it may be, "Do you fancy coming to Bed with me?" proves to be a winning chat-up line again and again.

It's not, in fact, a great favourite of mine. The Chairman and I quite liked it in its early days, when it was "our secret"; but as soon as it started building up some custom, that charm wore off. Despite its proximity to my apartment (less than a 10-minute walk; only half as far as anywhere else that I go), I go there very infrequently, usually only for parties. Let's see: I went to a wedding reception there with my friend DD a year or more ago; we had the after-party of my notorious Pyjama-themed house party there three-and-a-half years ago; The Chairman had a famous birthday party there four-and-a-half years ago (when the place was still fairly new). I've been no more than a handful of other times.

It is, however, pretty successful. I mention this mainly because I want to write more soon about the 'failure' of my favourite bar, Room 101 - which is, I think, almost entirely down to its location: isolated, far from any other bars or foreigner-oriented restaurants. Bed is the only place I can think of that has managed to prosper despite being in such an isolated position, the only place that has managed to make itself a 'destination bar' - somewhere that people will seek out specifically, regardless of the lack of other attractions in the immediate vicinity.

Nevertheless, Bed has considerable advantages over poor old 101. It's just off Jiugulou Dajie, which is a bustling north-south thoroughfare, adjacent to the historic Bell and Drum Towers - a big tourist draw. It used to be kind of hard to find, hidden away down a tiny hutong - but that became part of its charm, that you had to be 'in the know' about it. Since the dramatic widening of Jiugulou Dajie a few years ago, it's now only a few yards off the main drag, and visible from it. Also, since this redevelopment, the main road has become quite trendy, with a number of upscale bars and restaurants that are also starting to draw quite a number of foreigners (though Bed was the first of these, and was already starting to do quite well before any of the others appeared, I wonder if it could have survived and prospered so without this development of the neighbourhood). It's also probably some help that it's only a few minutes from a subway station. Andingmennei - the street on which Room 101 sits - has very little of interest on it at all, not even any major shops; and 101 is near the bottom end of it, more than 10 minutes' walk from the subway.

Bed is more of a nightclub than a regular bar, laying on DJs at the weekend - and can thus charge slightly higher prices. Although a fair size overall, it creates a cosy feel with its low lighting and traditional Chinese furniture, and the division of the space into a series of small rooms (some with the kang bed/divans for small groups to sprawl on - the gimmick that gives the place its name) and a small open-air courtyard in the middle. The tasteful decor, and the fact that it is renovated hutong housing, gives it a unique ambience which is the key to its success.

It also helps that it is just around the corner from Café Sambal, a quaint little restaurant, also in a traditional hutong courtyard, which was one of the first places in town to offer Malaysian cuisine. They're both owned by Cho Cheong-Yee, an affable Malaysian Chinese who's developed a strong following amongst the laowai community here. Sambal had a year or so head-start on Bed, and was starting to generate a good word-of-mouth buzz (it famously has the best Mojitos in town; the ones at Bed, though they ought to be identical, are somehow never quite as good) - something that the newer bar was able to build upon.

Cho also knows the importance of advertising (something the boys at 101 have been rather weak on), regularly placing small but eyecatching display ads for Bed in the laowai listings magazines, and lobbying hard to get the place nominated in annual bar awards (indeed, it's usually a winner). And he's been creative in finding ways to keep the place busy. It's only likely to draw crowds of casual customers over the weekends; but the space is amenable to other kinds of events, such as art shows; it's host to a huge number of special events and private parties.

Despite all this, I don't think Bed was anything like an immediate success. It was completely DEAD for its first few months at least, and pretty damn quiet for a year or more. It takes quite some time to become known and to build up a following, particularly in such an out-of-the-way location. The chaps at 101 should, I think, be a little more patient - but, alas, it seems their minds are made up: 101 as we know it will soon be no more. Very sad.

Marjorie Daw

The weather being again too miserably damp and rainy, and the air too heavy with pollution, for me to contemplate straying far from home last night, I dropped in mid-evening at my old stand-by, Room 101.

They were having a hastily put-together mini-rock festival, with 6 or 7 small local bands that I'd never heard of before playing 20 minutes or so each in quick succession. No door fee, so I thought I might as well give it a try. How bad could it be? (Actually, it ended up being pretty good. I'd just missed the first band, but the next four were surprisingly decent. Only the last two sucked - and by then, around midnight, after the excitement I shall now relate, I was about ready to go home anyway.)

Crazy Chris - who, in his short time in our capital, has become an even more notorious bar prop than me - is pretty much a fixture at 101 these days, so I'd been hoping I might run into him there. I had forgotten what a music snob he is: the level of musicianship we can offer here in Beijing is, apparently, beneath his contempt. Thus, he felt driven into exile from 101 last night, and was skulking around the corner in the Pool Bar instead.

Since there was no-one I knew in 101 (only a small crowd of Chinese rock fans), and I had no great confidence myself in the likely quality of the music to come, I entered into a series of text-message exchanges with Chris to try to divine if there was a livelier, more tempting scene at the PB.

Well, what I initially sent to him was the query:

"Any hot chicks at the PB tonight?"

"Man, it's full of hot women tonight." he answered.

Such a phenomenon is not unknown at the PB, but..... well, what with the weather being so lousy and all, I was a little sceptical. And I'm not sure that I trust Chris's taste. So I decided to seek clarification. "Tall, single, non-Chinese, non-psychotic? Any tall, thirty-ish, American redheads??" I fired back (I know what I like!).

"One 36-year-old, but not natural red," he teased concisely.

I have a big, big weakness for redheads (even if it's out of a bottle), but I was still trying to maintain my reserve and dignity. "They've got Creedence on the sound system during the changeover between bands. I'm a happy man here. You've got a tough sell on your hands!"

But the thing was, I was tormented by the thought that maybe, just maybe it was Target A, the focus of my ill-starred 'Plan', the woman who'd made my heart go flip-flip when I'd glimpsed her across a crowded bar months ago, the woman whose image haunts me still, The One. So I queried further, "She's not a schoolteacher by any chance, is she?" I believe The One is a schoolteacher.

"Yes, she is. How did you know?"

"Talk me up. Get her e-mail. Get a photo! (I bet Y [one of the Chinese 'invariables'] has a camera-phone.) Where does she teach?" I replied, immediately rather too obviously interested.

"All girls Catholic school," came the reply.

I was immediately deflated. I wasn't quite sure which school The One teaches at, or indeed if she really is a teacher; but I was pretty sure that there's no single-sex Catholic school in Beijing yet. And this did sound a little too much like one of Crazy Chris's own perverse erotic fantasies. "A tourist?? Disappointing! I was starting to think she was The One......" I commented.

"No, she lives in Beijing," he taunted me further.

This did not compute. I really was pretty damn sure there was no Catholic School in Beijing. But maybe it was very small, or very new. Or maybe Chris had just been confused on that point, or was making a joke.

I think he may have volunteered one or two more pieces of information. I fired off one or two more queries. (I wasn't able to preserve the entire correspondence on my phone, and my memory fails me now, after all the drinks that ensued.) I didn't think this could be The One. But then again, how could I be sure? If she were, then I couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity. Then again, if it were her, after all these months of anticipation and frustration, I'd be scared witless at the prospect of actually talking to her at last. Then again, perhaps this could be a new romantic interest for me. Tall, reddish hair (dyed, what the hell?), a teacher, the right kind of age - it sounded very promising. Very, very promising. Almost too good to be true.

I needed time to weigh my options and get my courage up. And I really didn't want to miss any of the bands, who were turning out to be surprisingly good. So I kept up the regular text exchanges with Chris, to try to make sure that he wouldn't leave, to try to make sure that she wouldn't leave until I got there. (We'd begun this nonsense around 10, and I was anticipating moving to the PB at midnight.)

"I'm talking you up! She sounds interested," Chris goaded me.

I confided some of my misgivings to Chris (only some of them, not really the most pressing ones): "The Catholic School thing bothers me. The fact that she's talking to you so much bothers me. The fact that I seem to be using you to chat her up bothers me!!!"

Then, at last, it suddenly occurred to me that I had a simple means of divining if she might indeed be The One. I had first seen her back in February at a gig in Room 101, so I asked: "Has she ever been to 101? Important question!"

"No," came the brisk and dispiriting response from my collaborator.

"Ah, then it's not The One," I sighed, digitally.

But heck, she might be playing coy about it (did she suspect who I was??). Or Chris might be yanking my chain. And, as I had mused just a few moments earlier, she sounded like the kind of person I ought to be interested in meeting anyway. So, I was still pondering heading over there to say hi. But the next band came on just then, and they were pretty good too. And I was getting in a bit of a funk about introducing myself to a potentially very wonderful woman - who'd been 'warmed up' for me by Crazy Chris!

I procrastinated a little longer about whether to quit 101. By this stage, I was feeling under some obligation to keep up my side of the conversation - or to help Chris keep up his side of it (I tried not to think too much about what he might have been telling this lady about the strange friend he kept exchanging text messages with!). However, I was starting to run short of inspiration: "Presumably she's a Catholic? Um, what does she drink? What's her favourite TV show? Have you tried her on the Live Underwear Challenge yet??"

Chris informed me that she was not a Catholic. I breathed a large sigh of relief - I don't feel comfortable with people who are too serious about their religion, and Catholics (well, Catholic schoolteachers, anyway) tend to be. He said he hadn't initiated her into his signature bar conversation, "If you absolutely had to wear underwear made out of creatures that were still alive, what animal would you choose?" I breathed a second, even larger sigh of relief.

The shit band came on. I decided I'd really better bite the bullet, summon up my courage (and my humour, charm, conversational inventiveness), and go and meet this woman.

It was at this point that Chris sent me the message:

"Sorry, man, I was just fucking with you."

"About what? The Catholic School? The red hair?"

"The whole thing. No hot women in here tonight. No women at all. It's all just Chinese dudes."

Dammit, Chris, you suckered me good. Well done.

It passed an evening, I suppose; an evening that at times threatened to be quite dull (his more so than mine, I suspect).

Does anybody get the title reference? You can find the answer here.

Game of the names

Someone happened to ask me the other day - a not uncommon question, but the first time in ages it had been put to me - what would I call a bar or restaurant of my own?


Then, by one of those odd little coincidences, the very next evening I discovered in an old wallet a scrap of paper on which The Chairman and I had written down some name suggestions in a drunken and frivolous moment a couple of years back. [I believe that it may have been inspired by the "competition" the Room 101 owners announced to find a name for their relaunched and rebranded business towards the end of 2008. I never heard any more of that, and don't know if their eventual name selection did come from a customer suggestion or if it was rewarded in any way. I suspect not. One of the many extraordinary faux pas those guys committed in creating their new place was choosing the deeply crappy name Ginkgo for it. Nobody really knows what a 'ginkgo' is; almost no-one can spell it correctly (it's one of those words that I keep on tripping up over myself); nobody knows what it is in Chinese; and it has absolutely no associations with anything whatsoever. For me, it might perhaps be suggestive of a health-food or vitamin shop, or a massage parlour - but not a bloomin' restaurant!]

A further preamble - I don't at all approve of the idea of a combined bar/restaurant; I believe such places seldom or never really work (another element of the great sequential foot-shooting that Ginkgo pulled off!), and they hold no appeal for me. Now, there's no reason why a restaurant shouldn't have a separate bar area (although I don't think it ever really needs one); and it's nice if such a bar is good enough to draw customers of its own, independent of the restaurant's food; but if the bar gets too good, too successful, it starts distracting from the restaurant, dilutes the focus of the business. It's not easy - or desirable, I don't think - for a bar and a restaurant to co-exist successfully. This applies somewhat even to places that just do 'bar food': if the food becomes too elaborate or sophisticated, if the food starts becoming a major part of the draw, then the place is morphing into a restaurant - and suffering as a bar (it's one of the main reasons that I don't particularly like The Den or The Tree as drinking hangouts: far too many people go there to eat!).

Having got that little gripe out of my system..... here are some of those names I dug up the other day. (I hasten to add that they are not particularly good names [though much, much better than Ginkgo!], being generated as they were by a drunken stream of consciousness, for a particular occasion. I'm still not sure how I'd answer that opening question: what would I call a bar of my own?)



Elysium
(I think that might have been one of The Chairman's offerings. Sounds more like a cocktail bar or wine bar than a bar bar to me....)

Winston's
(A natural development, of course, from Room 101.... which was in itself a fairly questionable piece of bar-naming ["the worst thing in the world"?!], but seemed to work out pretty well: it was simple, memorable, and those who knew the reference were prepared to treat it as intended ironically; and the owners elaborated on this quite cleverly - quite obscurely - by producing staff t-shirts with Winston Smith's citizen number on them.)

Elixir
(Another cocktail bar name....)

100 Flowers
(A very apposite reference for China - though not a very pleasant one. And perhaps a tad obscure for those who aren't au fait with their modern Chinese history.)

Agincourt
(A playful jibe at the French component of 101's original ownership syndicate! Ah, it would be a great name for an English restaurant.... if such a thing could ever exist!)

Cultureshock
(Hmm, I see this as being more of a studenty type of place up in Wudaokou - perhaps even a meat-market/disco like Propaganda.)

Rick's Café
(The only place I've ever come across somewhere that takes its name from Bogie's famous nightclub in Casablanca is Negril, at the western tip of Jamaica. Odd. You'd think that such a universally recognisable pop culture reference would have been exploited for marketing myriads of bars all around the world. I wonder if the Warner Bros. goons crack down on this kind of thing?? Not in China, surely?! I'd love to try and do a Rick's one day, somewhere; but I think my conception of the place - though it might include the jazz/cabaret of the movie - would be very different in lots of ways.)

Zebra
(This is the kind of name that is prompted primarily by the conceits of the interior design team rather than any other consideration: you can see that austere black-and-white theme, can't you? Not a completely terrible name; better than Ginkgo; but not great.)

The Workers' Flag
(".... is soaked in drink./ It's not as red as you may think...." Oh, how many times did I sing that in my far-off student days? An unusual name, but a very workable one, I think: fits in nicely with the locale in Communist China, immediately suggests a simple but catchy logo/symbol/gimmick.... and might possibly attract an amusingly outspoken clientele of would-be philosopher-revolutionaries.)

Destino
(One of my favourites from this little selection. For me, it would fit a restaurant better than a bar - but that was what Ginkgo was aiming to be. It's the Spanish for 'destiny' [the great golfer Seve Ballesteros used to invoke it a lot whenever his winning ways deserted him: "I feel I have many more victories yet in my destino."], so it might prove particularly attractive as a 'date place'.)

The Blackout Bar
(This was in fact a suggestion from my erstwhile drinking companion, the determinedly eccentric young American boozehound Crazy Chris - inspired by his experiences in Korea, where he was never able to remember the name of his favourite late-night drinking den.)

A-Train

(Now, this could definitely work! A New York cultural reference that will beguile the Chinese punters, and one that comes complete with its own - incomparably groovy - theme song. Oh yes, someone should do this.)

Oh, of course, I suggested Fubar as an ideal name for a bar in China on here long, long ago..... but someone has done that now. (I'm still waiting for my royalties.)

If you have any ideas for good bar names, I remind you that we already have a thread for that - please go and leave your contributions there.

The last days of 101

My local favourite, Room 101 on Andingmennei, is soon to close.

After a very dodgy start, it has spectacularly redeemed itself, becoming one of the best bars in the neighbourhood, one of the best bars in the entire city. Indeed, I would say that it is probably 'The Bar Of The Year' (the Pool Bar still retains a special place in my heart, and probably occupies just slightly more of my time, but it's not the kind of place you'd often recommend to anyone: it's only really a great bar if you're one of the 'regulars' - and if you like pool!).

Unfortunately, Room 101's overheads are high and its custom - most days - is very low. So, the owners have decided on a complete revamp: they're going to close down at the end of the October National Holiday week and gut the place, strip out the existing bar and stage to build new ones, completely redecorate and rebrand the place.

This is, I think, a grave mistake. The new incarnation will almost certainly lose as much money as the current one, perhaps more. I shall detail my reasons for predicting this in a fuller post at a later date.

For now, I just wanted to say - damn, I'm going to miss that place! And I suppose I'll have to make the most of the three weeks that remain.....

Highlights of my Olympics

As a balance or contrast to my recent Boyce-bashing, "Olympics? Bah, humbug!" post, I will now record just how much fun I had over these past few weeks.

The Elements of a Fun Olympics:

My Top 8 Moments of the Beijing Games

1) Watching the Opening Ceremony in Room 101.

2) Wading through ankle-deep torrents of water with The Choirboy during a stupendous downpour as we made our way to the judo venue on the USTB campus.

3) Watching the Lin Dan v. Chen Jin men's badminton semi-final with a gaggle of Chinese guys on the sidewalk opposite the US Embassy.

4) Watching the climax of the China v. USA Women's Volleyball match next to the chuanr stall by 2 Kolegas.

5) Watching a bunch of little Chinese kids ecstatically playing in the fountains on the Olympic Green.

6) Watching Usain Bolt's storming 100m victory on the little TV behind the bar at the Pool Bar.

7) Watching the thrillingly close final of the Men's Volleyball..... in the comfort of my own living room, with some chips'n'dip.

8) Watching the Closing Ceremony in Room 101.

Yes, that was about it. And alongside these moments of joy, there were many, many moments of extreme suckiness too: the absolutely undrinkable pint of Tiger I was served at Bar Blu, taking hours to get back home from the Olympic venues, CCTV failing to broadcast the bronze medal match in the Men's Football at all, the Holland House's outrageous decision to show hockey rather than athletics on the final night, the Goose & Duck cutting the athletics coverage just before the final two events, the local fans' tiresome devotion to basketball to the exclusion of almost all else.

No, not really a great Olympics experience, overall.

Bargain!

The Stumble Inn (a very promising new bar in every way, except being stuck way out on the east side of town) used to sell its Stella at 35 RMB for a 500ml glass. That didn't really tempt me away from the much more centrally-located Luga's Villa, where it is the same price. (I think it is the same price also in Tun, but that's too big and - on busy nights - way too crowded for my taste. And in The Rickshaw, at least on 'happy hour'; but I long ago gave up on that place.) There's no longer a 'local option' for me to indulge my predilection for this fine Belgian brew: Ginkgo (the former Room 101) keeps promising to reinstall a Stella tap, but keeps on failing to get around to it; and the Bell & Drum had one put in sometime last year, but seems to have given up ever actually stocking the stuff. Sigh.

Well, the Stella at Luga's Villa is 35 RMB until 9pm. Then it goes up to 40 RMB - which can be a bit of a nasty shock. 35 RMB is already quite enough: far more, in fact, than I have ever regularly spent on a beer in all my time in China. (I got into a Stella habit again last year on Room 101's early evening happy hour, when you could get TWO 330ml glasses for 20 RMB.) As I have mentioned in my What Makes A Great Bar? post and elsewhere, I disapprove of 'happy hours' that aren't happy enough or straightforward enough, that aren't simply an across-the-board 50% reduction. Rickshaw cemented its place in my disaffections by whittling its "happy hour" discount on Stella down to a miserly 5 kuai at some point last year. Luga's Villa has the same problem: the 'happy hour', though it covers a sensible 6pm-9pm timeframe, just ain't really all that "happy" - the discount on Stella is again only a poxy 5 kuai. I am more inclined to tolerate this with Luga, because I like the guy. And because I usually only go in there for a quick post-work gargle if I've been busy with something in that part of town, just one or two pints at 6pm or 7pm before I head off elsewhere. Oh yes, and because if I stay for more than two, Luga almost invariably comps me another one....

So, the good ol' Stumble was recommending itself heavily on principle, if not actually on cost-saving, by offering its Stella at the same reasonably keen price all the time.

But then..... the last time I went in there, they had a new promotion on Stella. It's being quite professionally advertised, and I thought perhaps it might be a new marketing campaign by Stella's distributors in China. But no, it seems that it is the brainchild of the Stumbling Crew themselves, Glenn and Shane.

It's beautifully simple: a mini 'loyalty card' on which the bar staff record each 'pint' as you drink it. Each one gets cheaper. The first is the standard 35 RMB. But the second is 30, and the third only 25. And the fourth is FREE. And then you start again....

Four 'pints' is a very manageable total for the 2.5 hrs or so that I'd typically spend on a visit there. And there's no hassle about you keeping your card and continuing next time, if you don't use up all four beers in one night.

Oh... my... god - that's 22.5 RMB per 500ml glass on average. That is, by some margin, the best deal on Stella currently available anywhere in this town. It's blowing Luga's Villa, Tun, and the rest out of the water. I look hopefully towards Luga to see if he will respond, but I rather doubt it.

Thank you, Stumble Inn. I know where I'm satisfying my Stella craving from now on.

The hour is at hand.....

The infamous 'Coven' Christmas Party (v. 3.0) will be getting under way in just a few hours.

I suppose I'd better start getting ready. A stodgy, alcohol-absorbing meal would be a good way to start....

And then, darn it, we finally have the official opening party for the re-born Room 101, which I suppose I will feel obliged to pay at least a short visit to. (By the way, chaps, word to the wise: nobody likes the name Gingko; everybody is still calling it Room 101 - this is not a good sign for your re-branding experiment!)

And I have to work tomorrow morning! Bugger!!

The very last days of Room 101

As I reported a fortnight ago, Room 101 is to close down at the end of this week.

It is to remain under the same ownership, and is slated for a re-opening after 1 or 2 (or 3 or......??) weeks. But it will have a new name, a new look, a new approach to the market. It just won't be the same, dammit.

The grand closing party will be this coming Saturday, October 4th - from early until LATE. Well, until whatever time the following morning the present inventory is exhausted - that's the plan, anyway.

It should be a good night. Although for me, it will also be tinged with sadness. I look on it as a wake, in fact. I may well cry at some point. I've really come to love that place.

The Smelly Bar

I mentioned a few weeks back that I'd had a pretty good first impression of a new bar over on Andingmennei (it's about a 30 or 35 minute walk away; but that just about counts as 'local' for me - I'm a big walker) - although that was mainly down to the embarrassingly generous measure of Glenfiddich the barman poured me.

Even if it was unlikely that that particular aberration (a "bank error in your favour", as it used to say on the 'Chance' cards in Monopoly!) would be repeated, that one incident was enough to give me some warm fuzzies about the place. And I'd heard some positive buzz about it from a few other people too. So, I had my hopes for it. And it is French-run...... which is not necessarily a bad thing. There do tend to be a few undesirable 'national characteristics' I notice in certain of the French bar/restaurant proprietors in this town (arrogance, lackadaisical service, disdain for Anglophones...) - but their joints are mostly well-run, attractive, fun..... and full of gorgeous French women.

This place is, however, conspicuously some way short of bar perfection. A poor location - on a drab street, quite some way distant from any other Western bar or restaurant. A floor-to-ceiling window at the front (although, since Chinese street-lighting is so minimal, you don't really notice this at night!). Rather overlit (especially upstairs - I may have omitted to mention this in the original 'great bar' post, but having an upstairs at all, or any kind of divided space, is generally a negative feature for me). The decor tends towards the airy and modern: all light wood rather than dark! And the weekend live music is not proving to be a huge draw (most of the musos I know who've played there say they dislike it as a venue: the 'stage' is tiny, crammed in the far corner of the downstairs bar, underneath a low balcony). Hmmm, yes, and the name's a bit dubious too - Room 101. Doesn't conjure up positive associations, does it?! And you will remember my view that numbers - and sci-fi references - in bar names are not good. (I bet a 'Room 101' is mentioned in 'The Matrix' somewhere....)

However, on the plus side - they have a very good selection of drinks, the prices are quite reasonable, and the staff seem pretty good. And they have an island bar (which does at least enable you to get a view of the postage-stamp-sized stage from almost anywhere downstairs). I love island bars - and I can't think of anywhere else in Beijing that has one (they are, of course, quite commonplace in Edinburgh - probably my favourite bar city on earth). And the staircase is rather imposing, an unusual shape (although this can also be a negative point, apparently: my very cool French friend, Nico, complains that - since the toilets are upstairs - you have to navigate this damned staircase rather too often of an evening, and with advancing drunkenness it becomes increasingly vertiginous and apt to induce accidents!).

I've also mentioned the eccentrically-timed 'happy hours', which are potentially quite an attractive gimmick - although I haven't been able to find the timing of these advertised anywhere! However, the 24-hour opening thing really doesn't seem to be working out for them - I have dropped by a couple of times in the wee small hours of the morning to check it out, and found the place utterly deserted.

Now, of course, it takes time to build up a clientele, particularly a round-the-clock clientele, and this place has only been open a couple of months. But, with all these positive things going for it, I suspect it is struggling to build up a strong base of regular customers because of the smell. My American buddy Big Chris (my poker guru, who happens to live just around the corner) had warned me early on that there was a weird chemical stink about the place - but that first time I visited, I didn't notice anything. On that night, it was crowded and smoky (and I had a cold!), so maybe the smell was being masked. On subsequent visits, when the bar was empty, or very nearly so, I found it so overpowering, I was unwilling to stay. Last Friday, I decided to give the place a try again (walking home from a concert at the Star Live club at the head of the next block east). Damn - can this chemical problem actually be getting worse rather than better? Or maybe I am just more sensitized to it now? This time, I caught a whiff of that darned smell even before I walked through the door, outside on the street; and inside, despite an atmosphere rich with garlicky French sweat and aromatic cigarettes, it was immediately very noticeable above this potent, but non-toxic, background bar smell. I had assumed that this was a 'new building syndrome' type of problem, the cumulative impact of all the paints, varnishes, and glues used in fitting the place out, and that it would soon dissipate; but, if anything, the problem seems to be intensifying. And it's not just unpleasant; it's a downright health hazard - I worry for the staff there, I really do.

Unless something can be done quickly to address this environmental health issue, I fear there is no hope for this bar. It is a pity, because I had really wanted to like it; I was giving it as many chances as possible. It has enough good features (and no really objectionable ones - apart from this poisonous air) to keep it off my 'Hate List'. I think I'll have to create an 'Unsafe' list specially for it. Oh dear.

How things change...

I think I date the beginning of my starting to become bothersomely overweight to the appearance of draught Stella in this town.

I think there had been intermittent sightings of it in upmarket bars or at special promotions since around '06, but it didn't start becoming at all common until '08; that was the year I started drinking it most of the time in the late, lamented Room 101.  And that was the year my waistline started to get "middle-aged" on me!

I think I date the beginning of my comparative 'poverty' to the appearance of decent bars in my neighbourhood.

In my first two or three years here, I scarcely went to bars at all: I had neither the time nor the inclination.  I wasn't a huge fan of the old Nanjie bar strip, and it was too far away from where I lived.

The Yandai Xijie Huxley's by Houhai was the first bar I started going in fairly 'regularly' - when did that open? some time in '05?  And even with that, I'd rarely go in more than once or twice a week; sometimes, not for a few weeks at a time.  The only brief period when I really became something like a regular there was the few months at the end of '05 when I was sorrow-drowning while going through my agonising on-again-off-again-what-the-hell-is-going-on-here? relationship with The Poet.

I liked my music bars - 2 Kolegas and the original (good!) Yugong Yishan and so on - but I'd only go to them a few times a month, and more for the music than the drinking.  I liked Reef, one of the first bars to open up on Nanluoguxiang (a relocation from the demolished Nanjie - so I suppose that must have been at the latter end of '05 as well).... but only when my waggish young friends in 'The Yacht Club' were convening there (which was rarely more than once or twice a month, and soon started dwindling to a handful of times a year).  I quite liked Salud when that opened up on Nanluoguxiang ('05, '06?), but it was a little too overpoweringly French - and a little too BIG - to woo me as a regular.

It was only when I discovered the Pool Bar early in 2007 that I started going out for a drink in my neighbourhood relatively frequently.  It was only when Room 101 briefly wooed me away from the Pool Bar in the first half of '08 (with its lovely, lovely little island bar - why, oh why did they ever remove that??) that I started drinking premium imported beers on a fairly regular basis.  It was only when I discovered 12 Square Metres in the autumn of 2008 that I finally recognised a place that was homely enough to attract me in more than a couple of times a week.  And it was only when 12 SqM expanded to triple the size this time last year (thus getting over the problem that it often seemed discouragingly full, even if there were only 4 or 5 people in!!), and then a little later installed a draught Kronenbourg tap (I don't like it as much as Stella, but it'll do), that I had a really attractive default boozer within walking distance - the kind of place that I might go almost any night of the week when I had nothing better to do, and felt bored loafing at home; the kind of place that I might conceivably go to every night of the week.

Yep, amazingly enough, I was not a particularly regular drinker (at least, not in foreign bars) when I started this blog four years ago.  I have only become even moderately regular within the last three or four years; I have only become really, really regular within the last year or so.  And it is all 12 Square Metres' fault!

I may need to try to readjust that 'lifestyle' again, because I'm just not making enough money to support it.

[The proliferation of cute little music bars around my neighbourhood, starting with Jiangjinjiu 5 years ago, and Jianghu 3 or 4 years ago, hasn't helped me either.  Nor has the appearance of good and underpriced malt whisky selections at places like The Bookworm and Amilal and El Nido...  But it's the siren call of a comfortable regular boozer that has really done for me.  I spent years complaining that I missed having somewhere like that in Beijing; and then I found one, and it ruined my life!  Oh, almost like a girlfriend.....]

Revenge of the Planet of Beautiful Women

Oh, god.

Last night, on the way home from an exploratory "Is there any Olympic atmosphere anywhere?" kind of wander around Sanlitun and Nurenjie (the answer was pretty much No), I looked in at dependable local, Room 101.

A new band, Bad Apples, were playing some decent classic rock, including some very passable covers of Hendrix.

Not a very big crowd, though - fewer than a couple of dozen downstairs. But slightly over half of them were women. And not a one of them was anything other than loin-tinglingly gorgeous. There was one, in fact, (Japanese, I suspect) who may just possibly be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

It shouldn't happen to an asexualist!

I have noted before, Room 101 is an oddly dangerous place in this regard. I should probably try to spend a bit less time there. It's not good for my equilibrium.

A plan of a different kind

No, not that Plan. That Plan is in tatters, ruined, abandoned. The headturning woman who was at the centre of it, with whom I was so smitten a few months ago, has quite disappeared: no new sightings in the past seven weeks or so. (Moreover, she is - I believe - a teacher at one of the international schools. And schoolteachers like to make the most of their long summer vacations by getting the hell out of the city the very instant that their term ends. Hence, I surmise that I am unlikely to have a chance to see her again for another two months. Damn! There's slow progress and then there's NO PROGRESS. This would be the latter.)

No, no, this is just an ordinary, innocent, run-of-the-mill 'What shall we do on Saturday night?' kind of plan.

Well, not perhaps all that "innocent".

My thoughts are tending in the following direction:

6pm Hit my 'local', Room 101, for an affordable pint or two of Stella on their happy hour.

7pm Taxi over to Nurenjie for a bite of supper. Several good eateries to choose from, but I tend to favour BiteAPitta because it has decent draught beer.

8pm Check out the nearby Afro Arena - a new contender for the accolade of our city's diviest bar. It is quite alarmingly basic, but I felt it nevertheless had a certain sleazy charm when I happened upon it for the first time a month or so back. It also has bottled Guinness for 20 kuai a pop, the best deal in town.

9pm Move on to 2 Kolegas for the second day of Tag Team Records' annual 'indie' festival: 6 or 7 decent bands, 4 hrs or more of music; hard to resist.

2pm Return to Room 101 for their wee-small-hours happy hour (now 3am-4am) and - with luck - a live screening of tonight's quarter-final clash between Holland and Russia in the European Football Championship.

5pm, 6pm (god, I hope it doesn't go to extra time and penalties again.....) Stagger home to bed.

It's not a very sophisticated plan, I know; but I think there is a virtue in simplicity. Wish me luck in bringing it to realisation. Damn...... going to be LATE for Step 1 - not a good start!!

So, farewell then....?

I hear Ginkgo has finally gone under....

Well, except that..... it appears to be still there, still open, still operating under the same name, and ostensibly offering the same kind of fare at the same prices.

But now, it's under completely new ownership (all Chinese, by the looks of it), and with an all-new staff (who probably haven't got the foggiest idea how to make any of the dishes or drinks on the menu).

I'm relieved - and amazed! - for the original investors that they managed to extricate themselves at last from that money-pit; but the place itself will not be much missed.

It was astonishing that this slow-motion train-wreck of a business limped on for as long as it did - producing one of the most spectacular and protracted failures in my recollection of the Beijing bar/restaurant scene. Even in the modestly promising opening few months of its original more-a-bar-than-a-restaurant incarnation as Room 101, it always looked like a doomed venture to me; and a stench of death has been hanging over it for more than two years now, since well before its ill-advised rebranding as the aspiring-to-be more-a-restaurant-than-a-bar Ginkgo around 20 months ago.

I may have a longer post in me some time on just why it was so much of a flop. But for now, I simply note its passing - and allow myself a little sigh of nostalgia for that brief spell in the first half of 2008 when, as Room 101, it was managing to be a welcome addition to my neighbourhood's bar offerings.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

In recent ambles down Andingmennei (now becoming a fairly regular event, as it is the most convenient route into the city centre for me since moving to my new apartment) I have been looking out for the site of the old Room 101 - which had been a favourite stomping ground of mine (and of a number of my other drinking companions: The Man In Black, The Weeble, Crazy Chris, Mr Sex), very nearly my 'bar of the year' back in 2008. Unfortunately the bar's too numerous investors had bickered endlessly over how to make the best of the venue, eventually opting for a daft rebranding as restaurant/bar Ginkgo - a characterless and directionless venture that died on its feet. It staggered on for 18 months or so, before finally finding some Chinese businessmen to take it over; they kept the Ginkgo 'concept' for a number of months more, without doing anything to advertise or otherwise trying to drum up custom. That may have set some kind of record for the least profitable business in the city: I really think it might have gone a week or more at a time without a single customer, and I doubt if it ever turned over 1,000 rmb in a month.

But then, this lame-ass Ginkgo Mk. II abruptly disappeared, some time around the beginning of last year - disappeared so completely that I struggled to remember where it had been.

But now I've realised it is here - this cookie-cutter Chinese restaurant.

The thing that makes it so difficult to recognise is that the new owners have tackled the thorny problem of the otiose second storey... by demolishing it. I suppose their plan was to create a roof terrace that they can use in the summer; but I didn't notice it being put into service last summer, and it's bugger-all use to them during the long months of winter here. Still, they got rid of the second floor entirely!!  That's a pretty radical re-design. I wish I'd thought to suggest it to the original Room 101 people; I'd always said the upstairs was one of the biggest problems with the place... but I couldn't get 'outside the box' enough to conceive of simply taking a sledgehammer to it.

Bravo to the new proprietors, I say. I must go and give this place a try sometime, to see if their cuisine is as innovative as their remodelling of the space.

A House Divided

I think I may somehow have omitted this point from my classic summary of What makes a GREAT bar? but it is an important one: unity of space.

I do not like bars that are divided up into discrete areas. I fear one of the biggest shortcomings of my demised favourite bar, Room 101, was that it had a spacious - and utterly irrelevant - upstairs room (complete with its own bar!), which they could rarely persuade anyone to use. I fear that one of the reasons why its replacement on the same site is doomed to similar failure is that the owners are planning to turn the upstairs into a restaurant while downstairs trying to retain 101's niche as a 'happy hour' drinking destination and weekend live music haunt. (It seems to me that that is a very uncomfortable marriage. Diners upstairs are likely to be put off by any rowdiness downstairs, by merely having to enter the premises through a bar which appears to have no strong connection to the restaurant above. Drinkers and music fans are likely to be put off by the swisher clientele having a drink downstairs before going up for a meal. Unless Yann & co. can accomplish some very canny branding with this new venture, I feel that either the bar must prevail and the restaurant fail, or vice versa. Well, no, in fact I would bet that, in that location, both will inevitably fail. Sorry, boys; I love you dearly, but I think it's a hopeless cause.)

My best beloved of Beijing drinking holes, the Pool Bar, is mildly stigmatized by division also. It gets away with it because its upstairs area (which I have scarcely ever used) forms an open mezzanine balcony, and everywhere up there - with the one exception of the snug little lounge directly above the bar - affords a clear view of the pool-playing area down below (and vice versa).

Most British bars, of course, are divided - or they used to be so, until the wave of modernization began sweeping through 15 or so years ago. This may be part of the reason why I hate the idea so much. It was a fatuous outgrowth of Britain's objectionable class consciousness that almost all of the country's pubs kept two distinct bars - the public bar and the saloon bar. The public bar was dark, characterful, and always smelt slightly of cigarette smoke and spilt beer and damp dogs. It had a wood or tiled floor. And, in the bad old days, it was for men only (there are still a few places in the less enlightened corners of the country where this custom prevails: it was still relatively common in the north-east when I was a student.... although that is some time ago now). The saloon bar was always lighter, more antiseptic. There would be carpet on the floor. You could take women and children in there. And you'd usually have to pay a slightly higher tariff on everything for the privilege (a policy calculated to discourage the riff-raff from straying out of the public bar, of course; but I have always been content to be numbered amongst the riff-raff - and I hate paying extra for anything!).

Of course, when I was going into pubs as a kid with my father, it was almost always the saloon bars that we would use. I hated them. No atmosphere, no mystique: it was just like being in your living-room at home, only with a half of shandy and a packet of peanuts. When, just occasionally, my father would take me into a public bar, I realised that this was a whole different world, this was the seedy glamour that conformed to some obscure inborn notion - my 'Platonic ideal' - of what a bar should be.

Over the years of my adolescence, as I started going to pubs more and more, and often unaccompanied by my parents, it began to dawn on me slowly, almost imperceptibly, that the pubs I liked best were distinguished by having tiny saloon bars that were almost invariably empty. A pub with a big saloon bar and a tiny public bar was much less enticing. A pub with no saloon bar at all was the nirvana I was searching for. The Traveller's Rest in Durham was one such; The Black Swan in Oxford another.

And then..... when I first started making regular trips to the States in the mid-90s, I discovered that the unitary bar is pretty much the standard template over there; and many, many of my favourite bars over the years have been American ones.

I think it all comes down to character: as I did say in the What makes a GREAT bar? post, a great bar needs a distinctive personality; it does not need a split personality - but that will almost always ensue if it has separate rooms.

One bar, good; more than one bar, bad.

Easy enough to remember, bar owners? Oh, I hope so.

The Grapevine

My music week last week panned out like this. Wednesday, I was supposed to be meeting up with my friend DD in Salud, but she cried off with a cold. I thought I'd trundle along anyway, since they usually have some live music there on Wednesday nights (I wasn't sure what because the lovely Mlle H was late getting out her weekly gig list): it turned out my old buddies Dan & Nico were on. And The Chairman happened to show up (despite having left his phone off all day and having thus been oblivious to my suggestions for a rendezvous there). As did Big Chris. And The Artist. And Tulsa. And a whole bunch of other people. A fine night.

Anyway, Dan informed me that they were playing a private party engagement on the next night, so wouldn't be performing their regular Thursday gig at Jianghu. Tired and penniless, I was grateful of an excuse to spend a night in. Tulsa went along anyway, to see what was happening - a loose little jam with the boss, Tianxiao (he plays a bit of tenor sax), and some of the Chinese regulars. Fun.

The next day, Tulsa reported to me that Tianxiao had invited her to a special gig there this coming Sunday afternoon. She hadn't clocked any details, thought vaguely the artist mentioned was "some laowai" but didn't recognise or remember the name (her musical knowledge is notoriously some way short of compendious). Sunday afternoon?? Hmm, curious - would be a nice change from the usual routine.

I bumped into Tianxiao at the show at Yugong Yishan on Friday night, and he was looking Cheshire-Cat pleased with himself - but the gig was already in progress, so we couldn't really talk. He just said, "Sunday, Sunday, must come!" Sure thing, TX, whatever you say.

Since it was, or had been, Tulsa's birthday, I skipped out of the Yugong gig a little early to meet up with her at Room 101 (fortuitously catching the last 30 seconds of their midnight 'happy hour' - which, T being a non-drinker, meant that she had to accept a pint of hot chocolate as her two-for-one....). And it just so happened that Dan & Nico were on there, jamming away with their new young guitarist buddy called Ben. They were having so much fun that they gave every impression of being likely to carry on playing until dawn (I finally dragged myself away around 3.15am). However, in one of the breaks, I quizzed Dan as to whether he knew anything about the mysterious 'special event' at Jianghu on Sunday afternoon.

"Oh, yeah," he said, "it's Charlie Musselwhite." What??!! Charlie Musselwhite at Jianghu????!!!! "Yes, that was the name he mentioned," nods Tulsa, belatedlly recovering the power of memory but still showing no inkling of realising the magnitude of what she has just said.

Charlie Musselwhite is A LEGEND. He is possibly the greatest living blues harp player. He has played with everyone. He's even played with my idol, Tom Waits. He is possibly the most important artist ever to play in China (no, I'm sorry, Wham! and Kenny G don't count). And he's playing in the bar that, over the last year (Tulsa, an obsessive-compulsive retainer of text messages, has determined that it was on January 19th last year that I first told her about the place) I have come to regard as my living room...... a bar that is, in fact, somewhat smaller than the living room of my apartment.

Oh my god.

So, yes, now I'm definitely going on Sunday afternoon, but...... extremely nervous as to whether word will get around too much. If more than 30 or 40 people show up, it will be unpleasantly crowded; if more than 60 or 70 show up, the show probably won't be able to go ahead.

After anguished consideration on Saturday afternoon, I nervously decided to notify three friends only - the three people that I consider to be the biggest music enthusiasts I know, and to whom I owe certain favours in this regard: Red T Ed, Mlle H (both music biz professionals) and my blog-buddy Jeremiah (a pianist himself, and a hugely knowledgeable music fan). I sternly reminded each of them of the tiny capacity of the venue, and begged them NOT TO TELL ANYONE ELSE.

I then spent a very jittery 24 hours, keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that the thing would go ahead...... trying not to get my expectations up too much.

Well, what can I say? We were not disappointed. Awesome.