A disturbance in the ether

A fine night of music and drinking at Salud tonight was rather spoiled for me by a sudden, startling, quite horrible suggestion (and from a most unexpected source).

Someone hinted to me that perhaps my beloved Pool Bar was not doing terribly well lately, and that the time might be ripe to attempt a takeover.

I do so very much hope this is empty talk. I think it is. The Pool Bar has had a bit of a slow summer (because so many of its regulars have left/been forced to leave); but everywhere has had a very slow summer. And there are signs that things are starting to pick up again now.

Doubtless, it could make more money as a different kind of bar. It could probably even make a bit more money as the kind of bar it now is, with some more aggressive promotion. But bars like this - most bars, in fact - have to accept the fact that they're going to be largely dead Monday through Thursday. The Pool Bar has seen some very good weekends. And it's almost never deserted (well, not after 9pm or so, anyway). It has a solid core of fiercely loyal regulars. And the pool table (a good quality pool table, one that regularly attracts a knot of good players to compete against each other) is a very strong draw, a distinctive attribute - nay, in Beijing, it might well be called a unique selling point, because the pool tables in every other bar I can think of are just CRAP (only the old Goose & Duck [demised a year or more ago] and Maggie's [in indefinite hiatus at the moment] have ever developed anything like such a reputation as a magnet for pool players). Apart from the core clientele who mostly live locally, the place also occasionally attracts people from all over town - it's amazing how many people I know have popped up in there once or twice.

No, I think that for a bar of its type - a no-nonsense neighbourhood bar of modest ambitions - the Pool Bar does pretty damn well. It may not be making anyone rich quickly, but I should think it's easily covering its overheads - even when business is a bit slow, as it has been over the past three months. It's probably one of the most successful bars in the whole Nanluoguxiang area.

My acquaintance tonight, the entrepreneurial vulture, actually had the temerity to ask me if I would consider taking a stake in an attempted buyout. I responded that I would sooner cut my right arm off with a hacksaw, sell my grandmother to vivisectionists, drop-kick a baby into a pit of fire.....

Hands off my Pool Bar! I like it fine just the way it is. It is, in fact, very nearly perfect.

The Froog 2007 Bar Awards

Some year-end recommendations for you (and a few brickbats too) from my year of intense bar-hopping around Beijing.....

Best Live Music Venue

Winner: MAO Live House

Runners-up: Er, there are really no runners-up in this category, I don't think. MAO is just head-and-shoulders above the competition for small-to-medium-sized venues now. Star Live is too big, Wuming Gaodi is too hard to find, 13 Club has too limited a roster of bands, and the new Yugong Yishan has an awkward layout and poor acoustics. No, MAO has achieved a near-monopolistic domination of the scene in the last 6 months or so. But I will have a separate category for the smaller venues that are really more bars-with-music...

Best Music Bar

Winner: Jianghu

Joint (very close) Runners-up: Jiangjinjiu, 2 Kolegas, Salud

Worst Music Bar

Winner: New Get Lucky

Runners-up: D-22, Guitar Bar

Best Gig Of The Year

Joint Winners: The Glorious Pharmacy reunion at Obi-wan in October, and the Xiao He solo show at the Dayaolu Workshop in May.

Runners-up: SUBS at the Midi Festival in May, and the "Let's Girl With Rocks" (sic!) show at MAO earlier this month (culminating in a coruscating performance from Helen and Ziyo).

Worst Gig Of The Year

Winner: Probably almost any gig at D-22 (down to the space and the sound system rather than the bands)..... but especially this complete shitfest from early October (not even redeemed by having the fabulous SUBS headlining!). No other Runners-up..... D-22 takes the 'honours' in this category all on its own.

Best Bar Food

Winner: Saddle

(Saddle isn't much good for anything else, but those burritos are fantastic!)

Runner-up: The Den

(There's a paucity of competition in this category, I fear. I admit the food at The Rickshaw isn't bad - but it's such a craphole of a bar in every other way that I refuse to nominate it. And this is why we are so often forced to do our drinking in proper restaurants - see later category.)

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.

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

(I love the food here - but the draft beer is also pretty good, and I often seem to find myself having 3 or 4 pints with a meal.)

[Note: The new Kro's Nest at Gongti Beimen is looking a very promising contender in this category, but is still unproven, having only been open a month or two.]

Best Place To Go For A Cocktail

Winner: Reef

(Especially if Jesse or The Choirboy have been allowed behind the bar - where else are you going to get such a killer martini for only 20 kuai?? But in general, you can always rely on Reef for friendly service, decent measures, and reasonable prices. I have just discovered that their White Russian is pretty damn good, and only half the price of anywhere else in town. And it is very nearly the only bar here [Salud is the only other one I know of] where you can get a hot toddy.)

Runner-up: Cafe Sambal

(They still do the best Mojito in town [even better than at sister establishment, Bed], and most of their other mixed drinks are pretty good too, I think. And it's quite OK to just go and hang at the bar for an hour or two without ordering food.)

Best Place For Sitting Outside

Winners: Bell & Drum (rooftop), The Stone Boat (terrace)

Runners-up: Reef (on the street), Fish Nation (Nanluoguxiang, rooftop), Jianghu (mini courtyard)

Most Disappointing New Bar

Winner: New Nanjie

Runner-up: Room 101

(Well, it was either this, or I'd have to create a category specially for it - Smelliest New Bar.)

Worst New Bar

Winner: Paddy O'Shea's

Runner-up: Rickshaw

(The recent opening of Paddy O'Shea's has reminded me that Rickshaw does in fact have several redeeming features - not enough to redeem it, obviously, but some.... rather than none.)

[Note: The utterly loathsome Block8 is really more of a nightclub than a bar, so doesn't even merit consideration here.]

Worst Bar

Winner: D-22

Runner-up: Centro

Additional Dishonourable Mention: The Tree

Most Overrated Bar

Winner: Rickshaw

Runners-up: The Tree, Centro, Q

Most Sadly Missed Departures

Winners: Yugong Yishan, "The Kebab Queen"

Runners-up: Nanjie, Bus Bar, Kebab Republic (the one on Sanlitun - formerly one of my favourite spots for drinking while eating)

Best Barman/Bar Owner

Winner: Luke, of the Pool Bar

Runner-up: Chen, of Reef

Best New Bar

Winner: The Pool Bar

Runner-up: Jianghu

Best Bar

Winner: The Pool Bar

Runner-up: Huxley's

(Though, it is, sadly, not at all what it once was, since Jackson Bai's departure.)

Those are my picks. Any comments, complaints, additions, suggestions?

Ball House

Tulsa asks me (in her comment on the preceding post) if I know of or would recommend this joint? Yes, and NO.

This is apparently what it's called, although there is no sign bearing a name - in Chinese or English - either inside or out, so it's all a bit hypothetical really. Is it a clever play on 'Bauhaus'.... or just another piece of inept literalism in the Chinese use of English? I think more probably the latter.

The place is pretty much impossible to find: behind an unmarked door down an unmarked alley - an unmarked alley that during the daytime is often partly blocked by the workbench of a neighbourhood carpenter. This 'hidden treasure' quality might be rather charming if the place were a treasure, if it were actually any good at all: it could be an "our secret" kind of place, where you feel glad of the privacy, the exclusivity.

In fact, it's charm begins and ends with the space: the space is great. It's a large, rambling courtyard house with high ceilings, bare wood beams, a mezzanine loft; discreetly decorated. Yes, promising.

Unfortunately, everything else about it sucks.

Its gimmick - not a 'unique selling point' perhaps, but certainly its main distinctive feature - is that it is supposed to be a pool bar. But it's not. It has 2 or 3 tables. They're all shit. Nobody ever plays there. (The main thing a good pool bar needs is a coterie of regular players to provide you with some testing competition.) The reason nobody ever plays there - apart from the tables being shit - is that there's a 25 or 30 kuai per hour charge for them.... which is just utterly f***ing outrageous! Bars do not charge for pool in this town. Pool halls generally charge barely half as much as that per hour; and they provide good tables. What's even worse is that this charge is not advertised (at least it wasn't the last time I went there), and is not mentioned by the staff until you finish playing. It is, quite simply, a con, a rip-off.

Pool is very dear to me. Thus a bad pool bar is something I particularly despise. And a bad pool bar that tries to extort money out of people retroactively for playing on its bad tables is just EVIL.

Not that the place has any other redeeming features either. The staff are grumpy and obtuse. The prices are high. They are reluctant ever to turn the air-conditioning on for you.

Tulsa wondered about the atmosphere on 'busy nights'. I think that was a busy night, Tulsa. Two groups of people at the same time?! I imagine they might sometimes go a month at a time without that happening.

I have heard of certain foreigners in the area forming a slight fondness for the place. They like the Starbucks-coffee-shop feel of it, and the fact they can have the place all to themselves.

Call me a curmudgeon if you will, but I ask rather more of a bar than a veneer of trendiness and a complete absence of customers.

This raises another question about the bar industry in Beijing in general. This place is next-to-impossible to find, does nothing to advertise, offers no appreciable service, often goes for days at a time without attracting a single customer, and rarely manages to collect its exorbitant pool table fee even when it does (I just flat out refuse to pay every time). It must be haemorrhaging cash. And yet it is now in its third year of operation. There are many, many bars like this in Beijing. The usual theory to explain this is that they are vanity projects of rich idiots who are more concerned with being able to brag to their friends that they "have a bar" than with actually making any money...... and/or that they are money-laundering fronts or extravagant tax write-offs for gangsters and other dodgy businessmen. An alarming reflection.

So, no, Tulsa. I don't like Ball House. It has been on my boycott list since shortly after it opened. I go back once or twice a year, to see if there has been any improvement. I usually judge that the place has got even worse. My least favourite bar between here and The Tree!!

The Long Way Home

Amongst the many wonderful things about the Pool Bar, its location is probably the key factor that has made it such an essential feature of my life this year. (It was brought home to me just how much of a regular I have become when Luke, the owner, took me aside last weekend to apologise for the fact that he would be opening late on Monday [he was taking his mum out to dinner for her birthday, probably wouldn't be unlocking the doors till 8 or 9]. I don't go in on Mondays, honestly. Not often. Still, it's nice to know these things....)

Location - yes. It is just so dangerously perfect in its location. It is on the way home for me. From almost anywhere I might happen to be.

It's at the top of Nanluoguxiang, the coolest little bar street in the city, and the main place I go to chill out these days. It's less than 5 minutes away from The Yacht Club (which is my other, older favourite bar..... but doesn't have quite the same party vibe). It's 10 or 15 minutes away from Jianghu (which is my other contender for Bar Of The Year..... although I really only go there for the music, whereas I go to the Pool Bar whenever......). It's directly opposite MAO Live House, these days the best music bar in Beijing. It's mid-way between my home and Gui Jie ("Ghost Street"), the city's famous 24-hour restaurant strip, which is the likeliest venue for dinner party engagements (nobody cooks at home over here - eating out is so much easier and cheaper). Even on those rare occasions when I have been out further afield, in the city centre, I will sometimes choose to walk home - or direct the taxi to go along that street...... and then not resist the temptation to stop off at the Pool Bar for "just the one", and leave myself with the now oh-so-familiar 25-minute stagger home.

Last night I was checking out a new bar on Andingmen Neidajie - half a block east, half a block north. If I had been seriously interested in getting to bed promptly, I would have gone north and then west. But it's such a boring walk along the 2nd Ringroad. No, I decided to walk south, half a mile out of my way.... just to have some more pleasant scenery along the way home, and a little more exercise, you understand. I really wasn't planning to go to the Pool Bar..... and get stuck there till 2 or 3 in the morning again.

[By the way, I loved that song as soon as I heard the Norah Jones cover of it. When I learned that it was a Tom Waits composition - well, I wasn't surprised; but I've never heard his version. If anyone is thinking of sending me a Christmas present this year (hint, hint), I don't have his Orphans triple album yet. I believe it's included in there somewhere. "Head full of lightning, hat full rain...."]

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.

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......

Elements of a fairly good Christmas Day

1) A BIG meal
Not quite as good as this year's Thanksgiving repast (very niggardly with some of the vegetables; and disappointing puds - and no stuffing: what happened to the stuffing??), but a very generous helping of turkey - producing an appropriate holiday bloat.

2) An unexpected piece of 'good luck'
I won a ticket (quite a high-value ticket) to an acrobatics show in a Lucky Draw at the restaurant. I'm not that enthused about the show (and it's a bummer that it's only one ticket - I don't fancy going on my own!), but just being lucky gave a needed lift to my sagging spirits.

3) A friendly welcome (and a cat)
This was the coldest Christmas Day I have known here, and my companions and I were desperate to find somewhere to shelter from the lacerating winds. Unfortunately, most of our regular haunts - like Amilal and the Pool Bar - aren't open during the day. We tried our luck at Treehouse - and Sophie, the owner, was kind enough to invite us in, even though they weren't really 'open'. Fondling her gorgeous cat for half an hour gave a further lift to the spirits (the emotional satisfaction made it worth enduring the slight allergy problems I suffered subsequently - I have, alas, become acutely sensitive to cat hairs over the last 10 years). Unfortunately, Treehouse is not well-heated, and it was absolutely bloody freezing in there yesterday afternoon (and also deafening, since someone was working with a masonry drill on the front of the house directly opposite); thus, regretfully, we soon moved on again.

4) An early start at 12 Square Metres
My 'second home' has just started opening in the afternoons again, so around 5pm we took refuge there. An hour or two later, they started rolling out their Christmas evening buffet. I was still feeling utterly stuffed from lunch, but.... the garlicky chicken legs smelled just too wonderful to resist.

5) And so to the Pool Bar...
Our favourite little bar was soon getting a bit too packed, so around 9.30 the Chairman and I decided to try and get in a game of pool at the Pool Bar. Our timing was good: the bar was fairly empty when we arrived, so we were able to get on the table almost at once; however, the place started filling up almost immediately after that - with the dreaded 'Rock Star' making an appearance (the guy who's so much better than everyone else that he plays one-handed most of the time, to give you a chance), as well as The Chairman's brother, Terrible Tes, and a couple of young Brits who proved to have very strong games. Ah, where did the next 4 hours go?? Always good times in the Pool Bar! (And, oh my god, Luke has recently bought a new table: well, it looks like he kept the old base, the legs, but it's a complete new top - slate, baize, rails, pockets, everything. And damn, it's playing well. It's rather discombobulating, in fact, to play for once on a dead straight table - no quirky drifts into certain pockets, no tricky variations in the speed of the cloth, no irregular bounces off the cushions. It takes some getting used to, but.... ah, pool heaven. And I think I'm getting my mojo back...)



The day didn't start out so well, but it just got better and better. Bars, I realise, have become not just my home but my family.

We done the bugger!

Hell, yes - The Great Nanluoguxiang Bar Crawl has been completed.

With no liver failures, and only one concern-causing extended disappearance into the loo. And only brief lapsing into Alabama Song.

About 10 guys and 5 ladies joined me at various stages of the endeavour, although only the Chairman's brother, Terrible Tes, stuck it out with me all the way from one end of the street to the other. There were also a few people who dropped by to say hi when it was all over (including The Weeble, who now risks being re-christened The Feeble).

After struggling badly to stay 'on schedule' early on, we gathered pace in the later stages, and made it to our terminus at the Pool Bar well before 11pm (having kicked off with lunch at the other end of the street just after noon). Of course, we did then stay there for another five hours or so....

We did not, in fact, drink in all of the circa 25 bars I had identified on my preliminary reconnaissance. Bad Company was closed (in a rather permanent-looking, we've-given-up-the-ghost kind of way). We'd always planned to skip Guitar Bar, because it represents The Dark Side of The Force and we all hate it. Sandglass we also decided against - partly because it seems to be repositioning itself more definitively as a coffee shop rather than a bar (we had the "Is this a bar or a coffee shop?" debate outside almost every venue on the street, and in a number of cases it was quite a tough call - in general, if it had the word 'bar' in its name, we gave it a go; Sandglass's new business cards describe it as a café), and partly as a protest against the Chinese owner who has rather unceremoniously ousted the amiable Mongolian pair who had made the place such a success over the past three years or so. I think we also passed over Log-in Pub, although I can't now remember why - perhaps just because it is so dire. There were two or three other bars at the northern end of the street that we skipped because they were charmless and deserted. And the Backwards Bar (which should have been our penultimate stop on the street itself - the reliable haven of the Pool Bar round the corner on Gulou Dongdajie being destination '+1', a treat for the survivors, an incentive to keep going) excluded itself with its ludicrous pricing policy - 40 kuai for mixed drinks and 25 kuai for a Tsingtao (nowhere else around there charges more than 15 for a Tsingers, and, as we discovered, quite a few ask only 10; and Backwards really has absolutely nothing to distinguish it from any of its more budget-friendly NLGX competitors).

Nevertheless, I think we covered around 15 or so bars on the street - which is a pretty impressive effort. There were inevitably certain problems with people drinking too slowly and/or out of sync - which meant that some of us ended up having additional drinks in some of the bars while we waited for dawdlers. Moreover, the nucleus of our group, my American pals Nick O'Pix and Animator Ben, both arrived feeling badly hungover from Friday night..... and decided that the best way to overcome that problem was to start the afternoon with whisky shots. Thereafter, we drank whisky instead of or as well as a beer in many of the venues (plus, of course, the "2 metres of happiness" selection of flavoured house rums at Salud). It was, therefore, a very seriously alcoholic afternoon and evening.

Amongst the worthwhile discoveries of this escapade:

Dida Café Bar (our first port of call, at the very south end of the street) is really more of a coffee shop than a bar and has very flaky service, but..... it has a nice roof terrace, and it sells Jack Daniel's (and a few other whiskies, I think) for only 20 kuai (and Tsingtao for 10 kuai - take note, Backwards Bar!). That was a refreshingly low-budget start to our adventure - and we were tempted to stay put there.

The place just across the street from there is now an engagingly sleazy little dive bar, again with very cheap prices (Jim Beam is listed at only 15 RMB, although the staff were unaware of this and tried to charge me 25!). It suffers rather from the stigma of an infamous bust for selling fake booze a year or so ago, but I think it's now under different management, and all the drinks we tried there seemed kosher. (A bit of a bewildering set-up there: what had been the main bar area, fronting on to Dianmen Dongdajie, seems to have been separated off and rebranded as a café; the bit on the other side has recently been converted into a clothes shop; and the terrace up top - with the bizarre slogan 'Tennis Care Life' on its railing - well, it's not clear whether that's still open at all, or which part of the premises might give access to it.) Worth a look another time, I think. I particularly liked the "graffiti" on the ceiling, with its oddly significant word pairings like "sex dirty" and "gin hazard". Unfortunately, I have no idea what the place is called, since currently there are only a couple of indecipherable Chinese characters above the door.

The hotel opposite the Central Academy of Drama has a fantastic roof deck and very reasonable prices (but again, I failed to clock its name!). A good spot for sitting in the sunshine during the coming summer, I think.

The American hotdogs at Bar Uno - one of the better recent openings in the middle of the street - were a life-saver in the early evening.

And the bar next to Salud (err.... again "nameless"!!), although it is a rather lame copy of Salud and pretty uninspiring in almost every way, is notable for serving its cocktails and mixed drinks in knickerbocker glory glasses which must contain a treble or quadruple measure.

And.... er..... OK, that's about it. Overall, the exercise chiefly served to confirm our preconceived prejudices that most of the bars on the street are pointless, charmless, and almost customer-free. But it's good to have identified at least a few new potential watering-hole options.

"Why don't we do this every weekend??"

Anxious Times

Anxious times at Jianghu

I have commented already on my disquiet at the removal of the rather fine, high, dark wood bar from the rear of the main room at Jianghu. This change has, as I feared, crucially affected the ambience of the room. In the past, anyone sitting at the bar on the high barstools would invariably face the performers on live music nights; and this would, I believe, help to concentrate the focus of other punters seated in front of them, at a lower level, towards the stage also. Now, the rearmost 'booth' of bench seats which has replaced the bar is rather too removed from the stage.... and people in this back corner, chatting and paying little attention to the music, insidiously encourage a similar attitude to spread through the rest of the room. The response of the musicians or the management seems to be to crank up the PA to painfully loud levels (I suppose they may also be trying to cater to the fact that these days very often people are trying to listen from outside in the small adjacent courtyard).

Even worse, there has been a significant hike in the drinks prices. It's still not too unreasonable (some of the measures are very generous: the hefty gin & tonic remains a bargain); but when you've got used to a place being one of the cheapest bars in the neighbourhood, a sudden 5 or 10 kuai increase on every item on the menu is quite a hard psychological blow. I fear this may be discouraging the Chinese patrons especially. There used to be a crowd of youngsters (including The Stylish Girl, The Chairman's and my Christmas crush) - students from the nearby Central Academy of Drama, I would guess - who were 'regulars' there, but now seem to have deserted the place. The last few times I've been, it has been almost all laowai in there. This may be good for Tianxiao's business, but it does considerably diminish the charm of the place.

It is, I sense, now becoming a little too widely known, and moving inexorably 'upmarket'. We have had a wonderful, wonderful year there - but I fear the really good times may now be over. Alas and alack.

Anxious times at The Pool Bar

Oh, please god, may the same thing not happen at my beloved Pool Bar. Luke is trying to drum up more custom. He has finally put a listing in That's Beijing. Another expats listings mag, City Weekend, hasn't yet added the place to its bar directory, but has just given it a modestly prominent plug via a featured customer recommendation extracted from one of its online discussion boards.

Now, I don't believe anyone really consults these directories when looking for a new bar to try. I certainly don't (a feature article might be different! Oh, no; please, no, no, NO!). But, oh, I hope we aren't about to get swamped. I want Luke to do well financially (and I am making my own, not insubstantial, contribution to that), but..... it's a small bar. The level of custom it enjoys at the moment is just about right. With more than about 20 people in, it starts to feel uncomfortably crowded.

The regulars are contemplating the need to mount a defensive campaign - perhaps having at least one of us on station in the bar at all times, ready to curmudge the bejesus out of any would-be new punters who venture through the door.

Really, people - move along, there's nothing to see here. It's not a good bar at all. Most of the time, it's just me and Crazy Chris propping up the bar here, talking nonsense, contesting The Barney Gumbel Award (or arguing, as last night, about which one of us would be Norm and which one Cliff....). GO AWAY!!!

The elements of a very good Christmas Day

A smooth wraparound from Christmas Eve

(Staying out till after midnight, staying up chatting even later than that....)

Making it out of bed early - but not too early - on Christmas morning

(Always a bit of a challenge if Christmas Eve has been too heavy!)

Setting the mood with some appropriate music

(I don't have any classic Christmassy songs - either traditional carols or pop songs [well, apart from Lennon's 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)'; but I've been hearing that a little bit too much in the Pool Bar this past week] - and I'm not at all religious, but.... I am a bit soppy about Christmas, and I am prepared to suspend my usual virulent religious intolerance for a while. The only thing in my vast and varied CD collection that really seemed to hit the spot was a collection of 12th Century plainsong by Hildegard of Bingen - a very mellow way to start the day.... and the gentlest of gentle wake-up calls for an obstinately comatose Chairman in the guest bedroom....)

A very good Christmas lunch

(Thanks to Frank Siegel at the Sequoia Cafe for laying on an excellent spread!)

A delayed start to lunch - allowing for extended drinking

(This isn't quite how I would have planned it - honestly! - since I was absolutely ravenous, after skipping breakfast; but one guest getting the rendezvous time wrong, another not being able to find the venue, and then some patchy service meant that we didn't actually start tucking in until nearly two hours after we'd arrived. Beer and wine make everything fine.)

Some good friends to share it with

(Many of my closest friends - even more than usual, I think - have gone home this year. And a few still here who had been intending to join us, dropped out for one reason or another. Both of The Chairman's brothers cried off. So, it was a small group this year - but nevertheless a good one.)

The continuance of a seasonal Beijing 'tradition'

The Chairman is my oldest friend in Beijing, and I think I have spent Christmas with him almost every year we've been here. And in our first few years, the favoured venue for our Christmas lunch [along with Big Frank, the third 'Amigo'] was always the old John Bull pub - now, alas, defunct; but the Sequoia is its direct successor, under the same management, occupying the same premises, and with most of the same virtues in its food.)

A good pudding at the end to induce food coma

(We were given a bread pudding, with just a drizzle of sweet custard. Delicious! Not exactly traditional, but appropriately stodgy.)

A bracing afternoon walk to recover

(A stroll through nearby Ritan Park - a brief pilgrimage to my favourite 'melancholy spot' in the city, 'The Dead Kite Tree' - and then a little shopping expedition with The Chairman was just what we needed to help the food settle, to work off the calories, and to deter us from just snoozing away most of the rest of the day.)

A proper session of pool

(The Chairman and I then returned to the pool hall we'd discovered the previous evening. We found it much less packed this time, and were able to get in a good 90-minute session. This place is quite a find: cheap and cheerful, with excellent, brand-new equipment. The only major [major!] negative point is the excruciatingly awful Mando-pop that they play almost continuously there - I may have to invest in some ear-plugs. I recovered the confidence and exuberance in my game that have been rather smothered of late by the bothersome eccentricities of the Pool Bar's table. I played some of the best damn pool I've produced in the last 2 or 3 years. It felt great! The Chairman wasn't quite on his game - but he still somehow managed to beat me 5-4. Oh, well....)

A 'Christmas Cocktail'

(After the pool, we looked in at the brand-new 'African' bar we'd recently discovered, and had a nice chat with the boss. He comped us a special Christmas drink of his own devising. I had guessed, unenthusiastically, that it would probably be a layered drink, and indeed it was - mostly red, but yellow on the bottom, with something more indistinct in the middle. And it had cream on top, which was gradually curdling and sinking to produce a 'snowstorm' effect. It was served in a tall, conical, knickerbockerglory glass; it was fruity and very, very sweet, and had almost no discernible alcohol content. Not at all my usual type of drink; and I found the curdling cream distinctly off-putting [I'm with The British Cowboy on that one!]; but we felt obliged to give it a try out of politeness. And actually, it wasn't half bad. Well, not disgusting, anyway - although it did take us rather a long time to drink. As The Chairman noted, it tasted like "a liquid trifle" - a remarkable achievement of drink construction! A second pudding for us!!)

A White Russian bar crawl

(Well, not so much of a bar crawl, really: we sidled past Jianghu, but didn't dare to go in for fear that the new siren of our dreams, The Stylish Girl, might be there again; we peered through the window at Salud, but found it closed for the holidays [lazy-arse bloody French!]; then we dropped in at The Yacht Club [which we hadn't been able to get through the door of the previous evening, but was deserted 24 hours later] for two or three of their beguilingly cheap and extremely mellowing White Russians; and finally, of course, we hit the Pool Bar, again.)

A little music to round the evening off

(OK, it was actually fairly terrible music, and I was disappointed that the billed Xiao He [my No. 1 'musical hero' in Beijing] failed to appear - but it was still rather fun, somehow. Maybe it was just all those White Russians making us giggly....)

A sensibly early night

(The Chairman and I both heading home around midnight - I don't think I can remember the last time that happened!)

A Christmas present to unwrap at home

(I only got one present this year - a DVD from The Chairman. And I had to wrap it for myself. But it was very cheering to have something to unwrap when I came home.)

A feel-good film to wind up the day

(The Chairman's gift was the cheesy but really rather good rom-com 'Music & Lyrics'; and nope, I couldn't resist watching it straight away. Damn good fun!)

Catching up with a few old friends back home in a spell of very drunken, late-night e-mailing

(What other way is there to end the day in these, our modern times?)

A LONG lie-in the next day to recover....

Anxious times at The Pool Bar

Luke, the genial owner of The Pool Bar, promised me last weekend that he was about to replace the pool table.

He has said this before and it did not come to pass. On that earlier occasion, I was desperately disappointed because the original table had deteriorated into a pretty ropey state, and it was undermining my game.

Now, however..... well, somehow or other, the venerable old table has come back: it's playing reasonably well again. And so am I. Maybe Luke re-levelled it. Maybe he gave the cloth a good brushing. Maybe it was an infinitely subtle interplay of environmental conditions that started warping the surface (or affecting the texture of the cloth or the liveliness of the cushion rails) in a positive way, counteracting some of those kinks and quirks that had rendered it for a time almost unplayable. Or maybe it's just that I've got used to all those kinks and quirks and am subconsciously making allowance for them - maybe I couldn't play so well on a flat table now?!

Then again, perhaps it's just a confidence thing. I was getting my ass whooped by some the regulars in The Pool Bar just too darned often, and, as my form went into a downward spiral, perhaps I was too inclined to look for excuses in the growing eccentricities of the table. My discovery of a good new pool hall on nearby Jiaodaokou Nandajie - with brand spanking new equipment, perfectly flat tables - just before Christmas may have been the turning point. On those tables, I suddenly found I could play like a god - I could even beat The Chairman pretty regularly. And after just a few sessions in there, I started winning at The Pool Bar again.

It's a mysterious game, all right.

Ah, yes, so now I face the prospect of the table being replaced with some trepidation. Even a very good table has its idiosyncracies to be learned. And however good the new one may be, it's not going to be the old one with which I have become so comfortably familiar.

And I'm really not sure the table needs to be replaced yet. There's only one moderately bad kink in the slate (well, it's probably not real slate, is it? And surely not in one piece?), and I figure we might be able to straighten that out by dismantling and reassembling the table. Just re-covering the baby would probably give it at least another year of useful life.

But perhaps these options are not available in China. Perhaps it's a new table or nothing.

So, I now find myself afraid to set foot in the place. I dread what I may find on my next visit there......

The elements of a near-perfect Christmas Eve

Some rare quality time alone with The Chairman, my oldest buddy in Beijing

(He lives a long way out of the city centre, works most weekends, and these days also spends a lot of time with one or other of the two [of his many] brothers who have now also come to work in China. So, I hardly ever get to see him on his own any more. One of the brothers was in fact threatening to join us after an early Christmas dinner with colleagues on the other side of town, but that plan misfired - and we were left to ourselves all evening. Bliss.)

A particularly good nang bao rou in our new favourite Muslim restaurant

(This is about my favourite dish in China, and something of a litmus test for Xinjiang restaurants. It's lamb and veggies in a spicy tomato broth, with a huge round flatbread submerged at the bottom of it. The interpretation of it we were treated to this night was distinguished by an especially thick broth [almost too thick - it was taking a long time to soak into the bread], an unusually fresh, fluffy naan bread, and exceptionally generous chunks of gorgeously sweet carrot [one of my favourite vegetables, but not much used in China, and not usually featured anywhere near so prominently in this dish]. Bliss.)

An improvised bar crawl, exploring a little outside of our usual well-worn patch

(This was necessitated by the throng in our favoured Pool Bar in the mid-evening, and was, to be honest, an indifferent success. However, I enjoyed the sense of adventure, of at least attempting to break out of our rut a bit. We did discover a new-ish pool hall [also packed out, alas], a brand new African bar [a curious novelty in this corner of Beijing!!], and what might just be the least charming bar in Beijing [it's in a basement, has stark decor, a high ceiling - which, in combination with the tinselly Christmas decorations, somehow put me in mind of 'The Poseidon Adventure' - and absolutely no customers, even on this party night of party nights...... we did not stay!]. Not exactly bliss, but a diverting walk.)

Chancing upon a particularly jolly party in another favourite bar..... and being smitten

(Our thwarted exploration of the surrounding streets had left us near to the lovely little Jianghu bar, my regular Thursday night haunt. It too was packed out, but mostly with familiar faces - just about all the non-laowai regulars! An assortment of local musicians were jamming away together high-spiritedly, and the boss's girlfriend was leading a karaoke session, encouraging people to follow her example and step up to the mike to sing a song or two [luckily, they all had pretty good voices]. I don't think I've ever heard 'Jingle Bells' played on an electric guitar before! It was a lovely atmosphere, and everyone was being very friendly to us, but we felt we ought not to get stuck there for too long. We had anxieties about getting up the next morning [I had arranged a dangerously early Christmas lunch for us]. We had anxieties also about falling too heavily for The Stylish Girl. She's quite a regular there - stunningly attractive [not classically Han Chinese; from somewhere out West, I'd guess], vivacious, and a very elegant dresser; I suspect she may be a student from the nearby Central Academy of Drama. I've swooned over her a few times before, but she was particularly eye-catching that night, and...... well, The Chairman's ogling and drooling was beginning to embarrass me..... I feared it was calling attention to my own..... Bliss. Well, blissful heartache, anyway.)

Stopping in for 'just the one' at the Pool Bar on the way home

(We found that by 11.30 or so, the young Chinese revellers were dispersing, and suddenly the pool table was free. Not only that, but M - the most formidable player there, the man I have long been trying to set up as 'The Challenger' to The Chairman - showed up at almost exactly the same time as us. Alas, he had not brought his best game with him - the responsibilities of being a new dad [perhaps that should be his blogname from now on] have been undermining his form of late. The Chairman came out ahead in this first challenge match. Heck, even I managed to beat New Dad once. Then I managed to beat The Chairman. That was some of the best damned pool I've played in a long time. Maybe it was the rather good White Russians Luke's dad was making for us. I might quite happily have stayed all night - but New Dad had to go home to be a new dad, and The Chairman was also a little off his game.... so, we were 'sensible', for once, and toddled home at about 1am. Bliss.)

Staying up late, talking of life and love....

(The Chairman crashed at my place. He decided he wanted a cup of Earl Grey before he turned in. I decided I wanted a stiff Jim Beam. We ended up chatting for another hour-and-a-half. Bliss.)

Return of 'The Nominator'

Despite roundly trashing the shambolic organisation of the poll last year, I have once again been invited to contribute suggestions in the nominations phase of this year's The Beijinger Bar & Club Awards.

As last year, it seems they're using this preliminary stage to run a few potential new categories up the flagpole. They are again contemplating a Best Cheap Drinks award, for example (an oxymoronic concept in my view; Best Value Drinks would be a better idea for an award), and Best Background Music (which Amilal ought to win hands-down, of course); I don't recall if they included these categories in the readers' poll last time - I think not. 

This year, they're also considering a Best Bar Outside of Sanlitun (which is a sorry indication of the predominance of Eastsiders in the readership these days; are there actually any good bars in Sanlitun???) and Best Hutong Bar category. This is, I suppose, a commendable effort to spread the goodies around a little more, to give some recognition to bars that receive a significant amount of support but are unable to generate the volume of business of Fubar or Paddy O'Shea's or The Den. However, the latter in particular gives rise to all kinds of definitional problems; I don't think anything on Nanluoguxiang or Wudaoying or Houhai should be eligible, since they are now developed into trendy tourism centres and are hutongs in name only. I reckon the concept of a 'hutong bar' ought to imply being based in a siheyuan property, and relatively hidden away on a quiet street - not in an established bar strip. If those criteria were to be strictly applied, there'd probably only be half a dozen eligible bars - which perhaps isn't quite enough to justify an award. (And if they do introduce this category, you can bet there will be a fair number of twats who will vote for one of those godawful places on Lotus Lane!)

There might also be a Worst Bar Award (that could actually be the most hotly contested category of all; though I imagine the dismal Danger Doyle's would surely win - however, it seems ungallant to kick a lame dog; and there is something of a problem here in that, since presumably no-one frequents bad bars, people would be voting on the basis of hearsay, or of one or two unhappy experiences of their own... not the most reliable grounds for deciding such a thing) and a Most Over-hyped Bar (a rather politically sensitive notion for The Beijinger, surely, since it is expat rags like them which are the principal conduits of such hype). I suspect that neither of these will make it into the final poll.

Also mooted is a 'Charlie Sheen' Award for the bar with the rowdiest crowd of regulars. I don't like the ephemeral gimmickry of attaching Charlie's name to it, but if there is to be recognition for a good crowd, I'd think this ought to be the niche where Shuangjing's The Brick could nip in for a prize. Their bar food deserves a mention as well.

Alack and alas - the dreaded Sexiest Bar Staff category appears once more; something which strikes me above all else as pointless (not to mention, of course, being puerile and offensive; although they're trying to insulate themselves against the deserved allegations of sexism this year by dividing it into two awards, for female and male staff).

The one positive development is that this year - in the wake of last year's furore about Paddy O'Shea's Karl Long winning the Best Barman gong, despite, as he himself admitted, not being able "to pour a pint of water" - a Bar Personality of the Year is to be introduced for Karl and Chad Lager to contest (although I nominated El Nido's Xiao Shuai for this), leaving the Best Barman category for people who actually mix and serve drinks. 


There's also to be a Hall of Fame award for a bar that's made a major impact on the scene for a number of years (I figure The Den will have to win that first time out; love it or hate it, it's the only major city centre bar to have survived more than a decade in the same location... Maggie's, The Tree, and The Bookworm should follow over the next few years).

If they have a Best Hutong Bar, it should be Amilal - although I suspect El Nido might pip it this year (but, frankly, I hope neither of them win anything, because they've got too much custom for my comfort already!). Perhaps Sand Pebbles might get a nod as well, although it's not - to my mind - a classic 'hutong' bar (and Wudaoying doesn't count!). I gave it a nom for its bar food; but I doubt if it yet has enough of a following to force its way into the nominations.

As last year, they've got a rather daft cut-off point for Best New Bar (but at least this time it's opening after the middle of 2010, instead of since the end of the year): if that were to be strictly applied, most of the likely nominees wouldn't in fact be eligible - including El Nido, which I predict is going to win. There isn't much competition: there haven't been that many new openings, apart from 1st Floor which is very so-so, and The Stumble Inn which is SHITE; Grinders and The Loop, I think, are too new, and too limited in their exposure way down there in Shuangjing. George's might be up there, I suppose; but it doesn't seem to have made many waves since its first few months; and I don't like including cocktail lounges in the 'bar' categories, anyway.

I think MaoMaoChong's got a very good chance in the Hidden Gem category this year - although I'd like to see bars like Fu and Tree House and Tao Yao and Zui Yuefang get nominated, just to make it a proper competition. I suppose the Great Leap Brewery might be in the running here as well - although from what I've heard, it's not exactly a 'gem', and it's so well hidden that not many people have been able to find it yet (I certainly haven't).

Best Music Bar, I say, has to be Jianghu on last year's showing. Yugong Yishan and MAO Livehouse both had very disappointing years; and the usually excellent 2 Kolegas was arguably even worse - mainly thanks to those ridiculous 6-foot-high speaker stacks they installed, which almost completely destroyed the view of their tiny stage (they have at last - after more than a year - got rid of the bloody things, I'm happy to say). Newcomer VA Bar was in contention for its music, but is fairly unlovely as a bar.

Best Cocktails I would give to Flamme and Paul Mathew - who should, logically, scoop Best Barman as well. I suppose he might get a nomination for Bar Personality too, although he's quite a dry fellow, not so flamboyant as the rambunctious Chad and Karl.

Best Bar, for me, would have to be Salud again. Yes, there are many bars that I like better (12 Square Metres, Amilal, El Nido, The Pool Bar), but Salud has broader appeal, has been around much longer, and has the space to accommodate fair-sized crowds. I imagine Fubar will win, again. And that wouldn't be wildly out of order.  But Salud's failure even to get a nomination last year was just scandalous; I hope that oversight is not going to be repeated.  And if the top prize has to go to a Sanlitun bar (and I suppose it does), I think The Tree probably deserves it (though I'm certainly not a big fan of the place myself, I have to acknowledge that it does a lot of things right, and consistently pleases a lot of customers - something which it's really not possible to say for very many other bars in this town).

Well, those are my prognostications. I wonder what bizarre picks 'the voters' will come up with this year??

So, farewell then...

Ned's - the cosy little Nanluoguxiang bar named after famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly - has closed its doors, after a little less than three years. I'm rather regretful that I didn't visit more often over the past year or two. I've always had a soft spot for it, and had been quite a regular when it first opened; but latterly I'd found it just couldn't compete for my affections with the likes of 12 Square Metres, Amilal, and El Nido... and the Pool Bar. The main problem, I think, was that it always seemed to be either deserted or packed out with raucous Aussie sports fans; it rarely achieved that happy medium of having just a handful of punters with whom one might enjoy a friendly chat. Nevertheless, I'm sorry to see it go. They had a wild closing-down party on Friday, with a 100 kuai all-you-can-drink deal to clear out the stock. Things got a little rowdy, naturally, with a large crowd spilling out on to the street - a fitting send-off.

Apparently, the new tenant is a moneychanger - such is 'progress' in the hutongs!

Bars on NLGX are thinning out; snack stalls and little boutiques selling scarves and knick-knacks are perceived to be where the money is now (although I'm relieved to see that small restaurants are making a bit of a comeback). The 10 Kuai Bar and the nameless Salud-clone next to Salud have both gone, redeveloped into much more upscale - but largely customerless - bars. The Guitar Bar has been replaced by a snack stall. Ned's is to become a bureau de change. And the bizarrely named July's looks to have shut its doors as well. Astonishingly, though, the indescribably awful Wiggly Jiggly's and the outrageously up itself Backwards Bar still soldier on; Backwards, indeed, appears to be one of the more successful ventures on the street - its high prices evidently appeal to the conspicuous consumer (of which China has rather a lot). Ain't no justice.

In other news.... I hear the All-Star Bar & Grill has closed. Presumably this means that the frightful "hip-hop nightclub" Bling, of which it was an adjunct, is also demised. All-Star made a half-arsed effort to pitch itself as a sports bar (something for which there is definitely an opening in Beijing!) but was really just an American-style diner. It was reputed to have rather good food, but its high prices and its location in the kiss-of-death Solana mall doomed it. I wandered by a half a dozen or so times last year - usually early on a Sunday evening, when you'd expect them to be doing quite well - and never saw a single soul in there. I recall a commenter on my 'Dead Pool' post predicted its certain failure two years ago. It's amazing how some of these places manage to hang on for so long. The egregiously dreadful Danger Doyle's and its criminally overpriced sibling Drei Kronen obstinately persevere as customer-free zones; as do the trio of awful little Chinese-run bars on that street round the back of Sanlitun SOHO, La Fite, Looking, and Camel Bar. Surely they'll have to close eventually??

The most surprising recent development on the bar scene, though, is the apparent closure of The Mexican Wave. It was a pretty awful bar, with so-so Tex-Mex food, and severely overpriced, but... it did pretty good business by virtue of its prominent location just up the road from the Silk Street market, and simply because it had been around for so long - getting on for two decades? The affluent mix of tourists and old-stagers it attracted seemed ample to keep it going indefinitely. I wonder what happened there??

I wonder which of our under-performing bars is going to give up the ghost next? Any suggestions?

Go and leave a comment at The 'Dead Pool' if you know a bar that deserves to fail...

Into the arena....

Luke at the Pool Bar has recently instituted a Monday night pool competition.

I'd felt a bit bad about failing to support the event in its first two weeks (for no other reason than that my metabolism, suddenly deprived of the 50% or so of its daily carbs that it usually gets from beer, slumps into catatonic torpor, and I struggle - for the first few weeks of a spell on the wagon - to find the willpower to haul myself off the sofa); and, since last night was to be the last of my current run of 'sober Mondays', I thought I ought - in a spirit of scientific enquiry - to test out my long-held hypothesis/superstition that I can't hit for shit without a few drinks inside me.

Last night, alas, furnished further evidence in support of the hypothesis.

Well, actually, no. Last night I was very relaxed, feeling reasonably confident, seeing the balls well. I was just woefully out of practice. I haven't played much at the Pool Bar this year (well, haven't played much anywhere - but only the Pool Bar really counts), and when I have, my confidence has generally been dented by severely disappointing performances. A lot of the problem has been a wrenched shoulder muscle (that I picked up playing Wii tennis with my nieces last summer!) which caused me persistent discomfort for getting on for a year, and was inhibiting my cueing action. I think - touch wood - I finally seem to be over that. Now - I just need to put in a lot of hours on the table to try to get my form back to what it was a couple of years or so ago.

I'm not sure that I'm ever going to make much of an impact, though, in this sort of company. And I don't want to be regularly reminded that there are least 15 players better than me in this city!! The Pool Bar has always attracted some very fine Chinese players, and this competition is starting to draw even more out of the woodwork (the two best players last night I'd never seen in there before). It seems we're already reaching the point where the 16 spaces in the draw fill up fairly quickly, and we may have to start signing up well in advance to be sure of getting a spot.

Next Monday - well, no, maybe not next Monday, or the Monday after that; but one Monday very soon - I'm going to see if I fare any better with a reasonable number of beers on board to take the edge off my nerves.

Dream Bar

I have been dreaming about bars just lately.

Well, not a whole bunch of different bars, but one bar in particular.

Odd thing is that it doesn't exist.

If I were dreaming about the Pool Bar or 12 Square Metres or any of the other bars that I like in Beijing, or any of the other bars that I've ever liked anywhere, I could understand it more readily. But here I am having a series of dreams about an entirely fictitious bar....

Not that I haven't had such experiences before, but.... well, usually, when I dream about a bar, it seems to be an idealised bar, a bar that I wish I did know in the real world. And usually, too, the dream bar is fairly recognisably an amalgam of certain not-quite-perfect bars I have recently been frequenting.

This latest 'dream bar' doesn't seem to be quite like that. Well, yes, perhaps 'idealised' in some ways, but in many others quite far short of an ideal; and not closely based on any bar I actually know in China, or anywhere else.

It's a music bar - but quite a bit bigger and better appointed than any of the music bars in Beijing. Sort of what we hoped the new Yugong Yishan might have been like, if it could have trebled in size while retaining the unpretentious grunginess of its original incarnation. Or sort of what D-22 aspires to be..... if only it were twice as big and had decent acoustics. Or what 2 Kolegas would have to be if they ever wanted a crowd of more than 200 people.

There was a door charge. This was non-ideal: dream bars should not have door charges, though in the real world we don't begrudge the bands and the venues making a bit more money off us. It has been a difficult psychological adjustment, though. Until a couple of years ago, most of the rock venues in Beijing had no door charge at all, or only a very low one. Having to shell out 50 kuai or more just to walk in and have a drink still draws a bit of a wince.

The door charge was supposed to include a free cocktail. But it didn't. Well, apparently that was some sort of 'ladies' night' promotion: girls got a free cocktail with their ticket, boys didn't. This had not been made at all clear on the door. The boss (English??!!) was sufficiently sympathetic with my companion's and my disgruntlement to offer us a taster of the special cocktail. It was a sweet and poisonous concoction of Blue Curacao and probably-fake vodka. We decided we were happy enough to have dodged the bullet of the 'free cocktail'.

The bar staff were all, or nearly all English too; or foreign, at any rate. And female. (Ah, so it was just a sex dream, was it?) Now, I don't think I'm getting impatient with Chinese bar staff as such (standards are very much improved over the past year or two, and there are plenty of perfectly decent barmen around now), but..... I do miss barmaids, I confess.

Was this a bar in England or America, then? Oh no. There were a number of Chinese around amongst the punters, and on the door, and all of the musicians milling about at the front waiting to go on stage. And everything was priced in RMB. And there were the all-too-familiar vagaries with the drinks list: a bizarre and overpriced selection of imported beers (Boddington's in a can!); cheap but probably poisonously fake basic spirits.

The bar itself wasn't at all bad, though. Properly dark, with a long, long serving counter, and reasonably friendly and attentive staff. Not unduly high prices.

Unfortunately, my friend and I had arrived early, and there was hardly anyone there.

And, although I've now gone through several fragmentary variations of this dream, always in definitively the same bar, I never seem to get beyond the difficulties at the door and trying to decide what to drink. Never yet had a conversation with anyone there (except the owner and one of his barmaids). Never yet heard the music start. Maybe tonight. Or the next night.

What does it all mean, Dr Freud?