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.

Highland fling

There was a rather fun little impromptu gig in Ginkgo last night, with Skerryvore, a young band of folk rockers from the West of Scotland, taking the stage.  Apparently they'd only just arrived in town - brought over by the Scots government to promote Scottishness for a few days, or somesuch - and had booked in the extra show at Ginkgo at just a few hours' notice.   Alas, they didn't actually get going until around 11pm, and then, after playing only a relatively short set, took a drink break so protracted that one began to doubt they would ever return to play more (it was getting on towards 1am when I gave up on them; well, I had been drinking for 9 hours by that point!).  I don't know if they did play on into the wee small hours, but apparently they made enough of an impression that Olly has invited them back tonight.  So, well worth checking out if you're in this part of town - Ginkgo from 10ish (or 11...).  They have a Pogues-y zest about them.  And a very good fiddle player.  And bagpipes (which, in a confined space, are just awesome: you don't need any amplification with bagpipes!).  FUN.

Top Five Unlamented Closures of the Year

A final teaser before tomorrow's bumper 'Bar Awards' post (nearly finished, nearly finished).....

There's been a lot of 'change and decay' on the Beijing bar scene this year; more even than usual.  But most of the casualties I was glad to see the back of.  Most of them, indeed, had become so moribund already that few people even noticed their final demise....

The Top Five Unlamented Bar Closures of 2010

5)  Poachers

About a year or so ago, a guy I met at a party gave me a 'Membership Card' for Poachers.  I thought that seemed like a sign of terminal desperation: loyalty schemes work fine if you already have custom, encouraging people who already use you occasionally to come more often, drink more freely, and bring their friends; but they have very little effect in bringing new people in when you're deserted most of the time.  Poachers was the bar that time forgot.  When I first came to Beijing back in the early Noughties, it was the only bar - well, the only cheap bar - in North Sanlitun; and one of the few international backpacker hostels in the city.  Hence, it had at least a small captive audience almost any night of the week, and would do a roaring trade over the weekends - even with the much smaller expat population we had back then.  Poachers was the original, orgiastic, dancing-on-the-tables, Friday night frenzy venue in the capital.  And many people, no doubt, have some fond memories of the place because of that.  But in the past 5 or 6 years, scores of other hostels have opened; and scores of other down and dirty bars have appeared too - all around Poachers.  And the owners/managers didn't seem to have any response: they just watched as their business leached away, and shrugged. [I never liked Poachers, but I had a bad first impression of it.  I went to check it out because I'd heard it so much talked about, but in the middle of the week in winter I found it completely dead.  The mysterious - and, I think, always spurious - sign on the plate glass window advertising Sichuan food proved to be misleading; when I asked about it, the staff just laughed in my face.  The vaunted cheap draught beer was also 'off' on this night; again the staff just laughed.  I think they also claimed to be out of Tsingers and tried to force an expensive Heineken on to me.  Rudeness and price-gouging I have zero tolerance for.  It was probably a year before I went back; and I think by then the place was already entering its decline.]

4)  The Rickshaw

The Rickshaw finally expired early this year, but it had been almost completely deserted for some months prior to that, and had been in 'living dead' territory since shortly before the Olympics 18 months earlier.  I had been meaning to start a series on the blog called "Does anyone still go to....?", with The Rickshaw pencilled in as the first subject - but I didn't get around to it in time!  Poachers and Ginkgo would have been next up...

3)  Ginkgo

Ginkgo was always doomed to failure.  If its predecessor, Room 101 (briefly a rather successful bar; certainly a great favourite of mine, and of several other people who live in this area of town), had been unable to turn an adequate profit, then there was no way this directionless, personality-free 'restaurant' incarnation was going to.  The basic problems were the location (no matter how much the nearby Wudaoying and Fangjia hutongs and Gulou Dongdajie may take off, Andingmennei is always going to be a dead zone), the divided space (there was never going to be a way to make the upstairs area work), and the 'too many cooks' phenomenon of having multiple investors with conflicting views on how to develop the business.  The grand rebranding of 101 always seemed just inept to me: they gutted the place of its main attractions - the warm decor, the low lighting, the generous and creatively timed 'happy hours', and the marvellous little island bar - and replaced it with.... higher prices, an ill-thought-out restaurant concept, and a silly name.  The place retained a hard core of fans from the 101 days, particularly amongst the French contingent (mostly friends of the owners); and I hear they had a pretty damned good New Year's Eve party last year.  But the place had been basically dead on its feet for 18 months; the end was inevitable, and we were just waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.  [Of course, it is in theory still there - new Chinese investors having taken it over and attempted to keep the name and 'concept'.  I used to think the place was dead before, but now it's... DEAD.]

2)  10 Kuai Bar

Now, in theory, I like the idea of a '10 kuai bar'; but this Nanluoguxiang dive was such a charmlessly executed version of the idea.  A long, narrow, claustrophobic space; fake booze; and - worst of all - perpetually bored, unengaging staff.  The place never built up any regular custom.  It never even seemed to attract much casual custom away from the almost-as-cheap and much cosier Salud-clone next door.  It reminded me painfully of what the Yandai Huxley's has become in recent years: almost completely spurned by foreign punters; indeed, almost completely spurned by discerning punters of any nationality - sparsely populated by unwary one-time walk-ins, or Chinese youngsters who really can't afford to pay any more for a drink.  Amazing that it survived for, what, three years or so.

Ah, but the winner, the least lamented of all these closures, the one that has me dancing a merry jig of celebration over its carcass, is....

1)  Guitar Bar

Again, I quite liked the idea of a 'guitar bar'.  And when this place first opened half-way down Nanluoguxiang, I had hopes for it.  So did a number of my muso friends; one or two of them, I think, even took their guitars along hoping to be able to jam - they were rebuffed.  Only the owner and his mate were ever allowed to play their guitars there.  And it was ALWAYS.... exactly.... the.... same.... set.  I kid you not.  You might appreciate that El Condor Pasa is a pretty tune; but, trust me, when you realise you're hearing it for the 10 or 12th time in a month (just because you always happen to be walking past at around 9.20pm), you start wanting to tear the wings off the freakin' bird!  The concept here was ELEVATOR MUSIC Played Live.  "Steady on, there, that was almost getting a little lively; remember, the tempo must always be plodding.  And can we not make the sound any brighter?  Does this Treble knob not go up to 11??"  It was just excruciating stuff.  Unsurprisingly, the clientele was exclusively Chinese; mainly Chinese tourists, at that; I used to fancy that they were probably mostly people who worked in shopping malls and found that they were suffering withdrawal from the canned music that surrounded them during their working life.  The service was comically awful as well (I gave the place a try a few times in its first year): on one occasion we ordered three Tsingtaos, and the serving lady brought them one at a time (with a minute or more gap between each one, despite the fact that the bar was so small that even she - tiny woman that she was - could easily have crossed it in only five or six steps); then she did an elaborate 'Oh, what have I forgotten?' dumbshow before returning once more in slow-motion to the counter to fetch the bottle-opener; our companion who had foolhardily ordered a coffee realised that he was never going to receive it.  (I kind of suspect they had an actively anti-laowai policy there, in fact.)  It's already re-opened - in much larger premises - on Gulou Dongdajie, near Amigo.  But the obscene noise pollution hazard (How did they get away with blaring their tinny muzak into the street at such screeching volumes??  Major kickbacks to the local police, I imagine.) on the middle of Nanluoguxiang has been removed within the last few days - and I am beside myself with joy!!

Food of the Gods

Olly Stedall over at Ginkgo has added pork scratchings to the menu - as a bar snack, at just 5 kuai (I don't suppose you get very many for that, but still....).

If they're anything like as good as those pictured here (and on the Ginkgo website, where we learn the interesting fact that the Dutch word for this tasty treat is knabbelspek - which, of course, sounds to me like a band name!), I'll definitely be giving them a go.

However, sceptic that I am, I was inclined to doubt whether Olly had snapped his own scratchings (fnnnarrggh, fnnnarggh) for the advertisement, and..... indeed not, no: the photograph appears to come from this food blog, along with the recipe. No matter - perhaps the Ginkgo ones look (and taste) even better??

Hmmm, just typing this is making my mouth water.....

Money for nothing

The chaps at Ginkgo decided to try and charge a door fee for the second appearance of young Scottish folk band Skerryvore there on Saturday.   I find that a very puzzling choice.  Door fees always cause a certain niggling resentment (they were a comparative rarity even at the mainstream music venues until two or three years ago, and still cause significant price resistance amongst the cash-strapped Chinese punters).  And the amount being demanded here - 20kuai - was too trivial to have made much of a difference to the management.... but still enough to be irritating to the customer.  Basically, almost any amount is irritating to the customer.  I firmly believe that, especially at a venue like that, attempting to impose a door fee will drive away some customers altogether, and possibly have an adverse psychological impact on those who do attend - perhaps even inhibiting their spending to a degree that wipes out the paltry 20kuai cover several times over.  It just doesn't make any sense to me.   Moreover, door fees can work at the dedicated music venues because they're relatively easy to police.  And because there's not much danger of deterring any punters who aren't interested in the music (most of these places are in sufficiently out-of-the-way locations that there's little chance of any walk-by custom; nobody ever goes there except for the music).  Ginkgo, however, is a regular bar and restaurant.  Many punters going to the restaurant portion upstairs probably have no interest in any music event downstairs.  Folks who might happen to be passing by on the street might fancy just popping in for a drink or two, and not be much fussed about a band that's due to come on.  These are the kind of customers Ginkgo is trying to build its business on; and these were the kind of customers they were turning away on Saturday.  Daft!   Ah yes, and the final insult was that..... there was no band.  I looked in at about 10.40pm - by which time you would have expected the gig to be in full swing; or, at the very least, to be obviously about to start imminently.  But the band were not even yet on the the premises, and there was no confident prediction as to when they might arrive.   Now, when your band has let you down, and they're not there on time, and you have no idea when - if at all - they will actually start to play, then it becomes a downright cheek to try to ask people for money, any money at all, to come in.   Sorry, chaps - serious loss of brownie points there.

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.

Swoonville

The Beijing live music scene is emerging from its Chunjie hibernation.

Last night, Salud had a new(ish) Chinese Celtic band, Iontach Banna (a plausibly Gaelic-looking name, but I do not recognise either word and have not been able to find them so far in any online dictionary!) - which features a nice combination of fiddle, flute, guitar, harmonica and bodhran. In addition to praising their fine musicianship, I would note that the flute player is extremely cute. [It would seem there's suddenly a bit of a competition developing in the Irish bands stakes in the run-up to St Pat's: my friends Nico Torrese and Zoe Wang - formerly of 'The Dublingers', a fine, if unfortunately named, ensemble which sadly dissolved last summer (I'm not sure if it's their fiddle-player who's now leading Iontach; she looks kind of famliar!) - have joined a new Celtic outfit, Blackwater, which apparently includes a singer [a singer, indeed yes: I discovered a few days later that it is none other than the Great Uncle Bulgaria of the Beijing music scene, Des McGarry - so they should be a pretty awesome show], and will be making its debut at Paddy O'Shea's this Friday.)

The heart-meltingly lovely Daisy Sweetgrass (who was sadly absent from The Redbucks' last day of normality show at Jianghu just before the holiday) is supposed to be appearing at Ginkgo tonight.

Then on Saturday, the gorgeous Marie-Claude Lebel - who's been absent, or lying low for far too long - makes a welcome return, again at Ginkgo (and supported by an interesting-sounding French singer-songwriter called Joris, a recent arrival in Beijing who will apparently be performing "folk-punk and rural blues").

And then, on Sunday, Lantern Festival Day (the grand finale to the fortnight-long bore-a-thon that is Chinese New Year), Helen Feng is doing a show at Yugong Yishan with her 'reinvention' of her old rock'n'roll band Ziyo - henceforth to be called Free The Birds. I will probably have more to say on that choice of name another time (awful! awful!), but for now we're all just grateful to see Helen and the gang back in action.

That's altogether too many crushes for a man to deal with in such a short space of time! My heart will be feeling wrung out like an old dish-rag by Monday morning.

Swooning again

A First Anniversary Party at Ginkgo last night, with chansons from The Sexiest Woman In Beijing - the lovely Marie-Claude Lebel (on whom I have had a hopeless crush for... oh, four or five years now...).   The music aside, I found little cause to celebrate.  Poor old Ginkgo is a bit of a car-crash of a business, a muddled and misguided concept of a bar/restaurant which succeeds as neither.  It's something of a surprise that it's kept limping on for a full year; I wouldn't expect it to make it to a second anniversary.

A sad day

I gather the group of Chinese musicians who've been playing traditional Irish tunes around the local gig scene for nearly a year are disbanding. In fact, I'm told that last night's short-notice show at Paddy O'Shea's was probably their farewell performance. Unfortunately, I loathe Paddy's so profoundly that I couldn't bring myself to go, much as I would have liked to see them off.

In recent months they've been going by the rather unfortunate name of The Dublingers (I think that was a passing joke by one of the guys at Salud or Ginkgo, which, sadly, stuck); I much preferred it when they were billed as just Beijing-Dublin; or the very early days when they had no billing at all, and were just "that nameless Chinese Irish band".

I will particularly miss their extraordinarily fine violinist (although I couldn't help feeling sometimes that she was perhaps just too darned pure of tone for a rowdy Irish pub band!), but they leave us many fine memories to cherish - not least their St Patrick's Day show this year at Ginkgo and my birthday party last October in Salud. I do hope we'll see them together again one day.

On a brighter note for music fans..... Alan Paul is back from America for a little while, and playing three shows this week with his popular folk/blues outfit Woodie Alan, to promote their debut CD. The Stone Boat on Thursday and Jianghu on Saturday are both very tempting, although..... well, those venues are both kind of small for the sort of crowd these guys usually attract these days..... and I do kind of have other plans. Well, we'll see. Plans are made to be changed.....

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.

Au revoir

This seems to have been a particularly bad year for departures amongst my friends.

Is it some kind of seven-year itch (or eight-year...) phenomenon, I wonder?  Or are there more specific causes starting to drive people away: a mounting sense of oppression, the ludicrous difficulty of obtaining visas, the horrendous traffic and pollution, the steepening cost of living, or the general Shanghai-ification of the once charmingly shabby and downmarket city we used to love?

It's not just the Anglophone expat community that's being decimated, either; some of my favourite Frenchies have been quitting too.  Just last week, I learned that the lovely Cecile - a regular among the Salud/Ginkgo/Café de la Poste crowd, and a rather fine singer on the rare occasions when she could be enticed behind a microphone - was about to leave us.  Then, only a couple of days later, the devastating double-whammy: Clément, the ineffably laidback barman from Salud, was off too.  He's been the main draw at that bar for two years now, and will be sorely missed.  His Chinese sidekick Justin is a top man too... but I'm not sure if he'll be quite so amenable in modifying the music playlist according to my preferences, or quite so dangerously over-generous in his free pours of whisky.

Bon voyage, Clément and Cecile.  Best of luck with whatever you're up to next.  And I hope we'll see you back for a visit some day.

Party choices

Ah, yes - one of those things that the Chinese political system is lacking!   (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)     The Choirboy has - somewhat belatedly and unconvincingly, I have to say - been trying to revive his proposal of a couple of months back to have an early morning cocktail party down at his place.  I fear this is simply unfeasible, since he's on the south side of Chang'an Dajie where the parade will run.  Beijing is split into two by these dratted 60th birthday celebrations, and movement between the north and south is going to be all but impossible for the next 24 hours.   Some of my girlie chums - the remnants of 'The Coven' - have taken pity on me and invited me over for a brunch party.... which is temptingly in the 'hood (although it will mean making do with a tiny TV, and the distractions of rugrats).   Some my blogger pals are threatening to have a 'live blogging' party - which is just sad.  Sorry, boys, I love you dearly, but it is.  It's likely to be a more committedly alcoholic gathering, though, so I may go just for that.   Tun, I gather, is one of the few bars that have advertised a screening of the celebrations from 9am (complete with a breakfast buffet and drinks specials).  I have no great love for the place, but that does sound as if it might be quite a fun occasion.  However, given that the city's public transport system is going to be almost entirely shut down tomorrow (and Beijing's notoriously cranky cabbies are already showing a marked reluctance to take any fares anywhere), I fear Sanlitun is just too damned distant a destination for an early morning walk.   I hear a rumour that Ginkgo may be doing something similar in my 'hood, but.... they don't seem to have done much, if anything, to publicize it yet, so I doubt if there'll be many people there.   I'm quite tempted to just stay up all night (in a bar, of course; probably the Pool Bar), and then wander down towards the centre of the city to see if it's possible to get anywhere near the parade (though I'm guessing NO; and the crowds will probably be horrendous).   Likeliest outcome, I fear, is that I wind up watching the TV tout seul at home with a few cans of beer.   No, no, the likeliest outcome is that I catch up on all the sleep I've missed over the past week or two and snooze through the entire show...

The Budget - an end of the month spending review

I know, not quite the end of the month yet - but I'm getting ready to quit the country.

And I have completed 4 weeks' of my 'back to basics' attempt at cheap, Chinese living.

So, how did it go?

No foreign bars?? Well, I did pretty well on that. I've only looked in at 12 Square Metres a scant handful of times, just to be sociable, and have usually only had a token one or two drinks. I've only visited the dear old Pool Bar once or twice, very briefly. Amilal has been my major temptation from the strict path of virtue: it has proven impossible to resist looking in there for a nightcap, especially on the weekend - in fact, it became established as a semi-regular 'allowable exception' to my regime, an almost invariable last stopping-off point whenever some special activity had given me sufficient excuse to abandon strict adherence to the policy for the night. In my notebook, I count 10 visits there, although a relatively restrained total expenditure of only a little over 1,000 kuai. Aside from that, there was only the impromptu closing-down party for the ill-starred Bad Company, a brief look into Luga's Villa for a Stella or two on a baking Saturday afternoon a week or two back, and a visit to the wretched Paddy O'Shea's for a book talk. Oh, and a couple of gigs. And a couple of quiz nights. And a freebie media junket (yes, FREE - although it did lead to yet another late-night session at Amilal afterwards). But not a bad showing, really.

No foreign restaurants?? I did much better with that one. Until this weekend, when I allowed myself to play along with The Mouthpiece Of Evil's sudden craving for Russian food, the only demerits on my record in this regard were one Subway sandwich at the start of the month and one cappuccino at Cafe Zarah. I've been to more than a dozen different Chinese restaurants this month, including quite a few novel ones.

No fast food?? Yay! Well, apart from that Subway sandwich lapse.

No taxis (other than when unavoidable)?? Well..... most of my taxi use was occasioned by the 'exceptional' nights out I allowed myself. For work, I was pretty good, using the subway most of the time, and even walking to places quite a lot of the time: I only took a taxi - genuinely unavoidably - about a half dozen times; and one of those a friend treated me, another couple were reimbursed by an employer. So, my total taxi spending this month was just under 250 kuai. I'd guess that's less than half what it is most months, maybe less than a third what it is in a heavy month.

No baby bottles of Tsingtao?? Well, I was doing really well on this until last night! I went to Yugong Yishan for a film screening; and there's really not much else worth drinking there.

Never paying more than 4 kuai for a beer?? Hmm. Quite a lot of restaurants (and the newly discovered No. 8 Beer Garden) charge 5 kuai these days, but that's not violating the rule too severely. And one of the 7/11's I use most regularly has recently put up its price for a large can of Yanjing to 4.20 - which is an irritation, but not a huge financial blow. No, the biggest problem I encountered was that the Hunan restaurant I rather like (a few doors up from 12 Square Metres) charges a whopping 12 kuai for its beers. Admittedly, it's the just-slightly 'premium grade' Yanjing Draft (though still served in a bottle); but that stuff should really be only 7 or 8 kuai in a place like that; good food, though....

Cutting back on gigs, and trying not to spend more than 50 kuai each time on booze?? Ah, well, there's been a dearth of tempting rock gigs lately. And even my old standbys have been getting a little stale: I've looked in on most of the Salud Wednesdays and Ginkgo Thursdays this last month, but have rarely been tempted to stay - and when I have, I've managed to limit myself to one or two drinks (or had a drink or two bought for me!). So, rather to my surprise, I've kept to this very well. Only last Thursday's trip to Jiangjinjiu to catch up with Panjir went over this budget (it was a very warm evening, so I found the need to quaff 4 or 5 pints of draught).

Since I was out and about even more than usual this month (house-hunting on top of everything else!), and the weather's been quite scorching, I spent a fair whack at xiaomaibu on things like water, coke, ice creams, and salty snacks - a little over 100 kuai all told. My total spending on beers - whether to drink on the street or at home - was more like 160 kuai.

I spent about 650 kuai on dinner (and drinks) in restaurants. When eating alone, I can usually keep below 20 kuai per time quite easily; but when accompanied, one gets tempted to try slightly more expensive places, and to over-order..... and occasionally to treat people.

I also spent about 550 kuai on groceries to eat at home (three major shops, one of them for expensive imported treats at Jenny Lou's; and a handful of sorties to pick up bread, pastries, crisps, etc. from nearby 7/11's). I think that's a bit less than in a typical month, but the summer heat helps to suppress my appetite - I've mostly been satisfied to snack on salads and sandwiches rather than cooking major meals.

My expenditure on public transport seems to have been 40.80 RMB.

I've only needed three deliveries of drinking water this month (low: I usually get through 1 a week; again, it's down to being out so much, I suppose), at 10 kuai per time. And I reckon I've spent about 100 RMB on my mobile phone (unusually high - because of the househunting).

So, gosh, yes, that's around 1,900 kuai in all - only a little over 60 kuai per day on average.

Ah, but..... then there was the unfortunate incident of the lost bar bet with The Mouthpiece - that set me back 115 RMB for a bottle of Jameson's. I had one little splurge at the DVD store, to the tune of 200 RMB (a fairly typical monthly average). And then the utilities (I've ended up paying two instalments of phone & internet charges, because I was late paying for May; and it's been a very heavy month of electricity usage, with the need to run air-conditioning almost every night): probably a bit over 440 RMB all told. Then I spent 85 RMB on special events (two art exhibitions and a film). And.....

..... well, even with the very limited 'exceptions' I thought I was allowing myself, I seem to have racked up nearly 2,500 RMB on such nights out (although fully a fifth of that went on my crazy night at Er right at the start of the month).

This is what happens when I'm trying to restrain myself??

Um, yes - I fear that figure would probably be twice as much in most months.....

Naming and shaming

Last week I cited three examples of shockingly bad service I'd encountered recently in trying to get a pint (well, a half-litre it usually is over here) of draught beer in Beijing.  And I challenged my readers to hazard a guess as to where each of these horror stories might have taken place (a number of friends responded in person, mostly correctly; but the comments have been deafeningly quiet around here for a while...).

Here are the answers.

1)  Where were my companion and I repeatedly presented (well, twice - over the space of about 40 minutes!) with an old glass of Stella that we had previously returned unwanted?

That was in Tim's Texas Barbecue.

I hope it's not 'official policy' there.  I rather doubt it.  But this illustrates how essential it is to maintain close supervision of your staff - otherwise they will start doing daft, reputation-harming stuff like this on their own initiative.  Many Chinese serving staff seem to live in terror of having to pay themselves for any mis-orders etc.  (I imagine it's quite common practice in Chinese-run establishments.)  It takes a lot of training to persuade them that mistakes are OK, that they're not going to have to pay for returned drinks themselves, that they're not going to lose their job over it.  Even if you can get this point across, there's still a danger of 'Chinese thinking' taking over at times: the typical Chinese business mindset seems to be one of maximising profit by cutting as many corners as possible, penny-pinching all the way.  Most Chinese people seem to find it inconceivable that it might actually be better business to just pour a drink away sometimes.  [Tim, your staff - or some of them, anyway - are attempting to re-sell stale beer by putting a bit of a fresh head on it.  Please put a stop to this!]

2)  Where did I struggle to get the Chinese staff to replace a pint of beer that had gone bad (and then get charged for a replacement which I had been promised would be 'complimentary')?

That was in the (new) Stumble Inn.

Oh god.  I think it was the fatuous (and almost certainly just outright dishonest) excuse for the overcharge - "not being able to work the computerised till" - that was the camel-back-breaker for me here.  I've only been to this place 4 or 5 times, and I don't think I'll be going back again.  It SUCKS in just about every way imaginable... but the service is some of the worst I've ever encountered here.

3)  Where are they still trying to sell a keg of Stella that is now at least a month (possibly two or three months) old?

That - of course - was Ginkgo.

Good grief!  The place was comically disorganised and unreliable under the old, foreign management - but now.....  AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.

Gig slut

I was going to go to a gig last night.  In fact, I was hoping I might be able to squeeze in two gigs.  Maybe even three.   And, as the plan started to go awry, and gigs started to be eliminated from that programme, I began to think about the possibility of trying for 4, 5, 6.... Checking out every music bar in the neighbourhood.   The original plan had been to check out the Joyside gig at MAO Live House.  I haven't been to a rock gig in quite a while, and Joyside are a pretty decent band - although nothing so very remarkable, in my limited experience of them (they have a little laowai fan club who represent them as the best thing since sliced bread, which is always a little baffling: are they talking about the same band?).  And this was billed as being their last-ever performance.  I'm not sure if I believe that.  They may not have overworked the "comeback" ploy quite as often as 'Ol Blue Eyes, but there have been so many rumours of breakups, and actual breakups, over the years that cynical observers are predicting a speedy reunion.  In fact, the very cynical suggest that the whole 'farewell gig' thing was nothing but a marketing ploy, since they haven't played much this past year or so and needed some kind of special hook to stir up interest in this show.   If that was the case, it worked.  This was the first-ever MAO show I've turned up to that was purportedly SOLD OUT.  (The security was so leaky that I probably could have found a way to sneak in, but.... well, without the Chinese skills to provide a supporting blag if challenged, it might have been awkward.  I didn't just want to play the surly foreigner and rely on size, determination, and an inability to understand the language to carry me through.  Crashing stuff is supposed to be a test of guile rather than bloody-mindedness; charming, persuading, or duping - but not just throwing your weight around.  I think not all of the excluded punters last night - Chinese or foreign - were feeling so ethically constrained.)  I was not desperately disappointed.  As I said, they're not that wonderful a band.  And MAO, when it gets that crowded, is unpleasantly sweaty.  So..... next!   Well, my old friends the No-Name Trio were playing in a new bar over near the Lama Temple a little later, so I thought I'd go and check that out.  I was not enamoured of the venue, however - an undistinguished bistro type of place, designed to appeal to Chinese yuppies - and although the mellow French jazz was as delightful as always (and benefitting from an unusually good sound system), I thought I'd move on after a few songs.   I had been planning to hook up with The Weeble to check out Scots band Skerryvore at Ginkgo, but.... well, he was vacillating.  And the band were absent.  Since I'd already got a fair flavour of their music the night before, and had also suffered their vexing disinclination to start playing promptly, or at all, I didn't feel disposed to wait around to see when/if they would finally turn up and start doing their thing.   It was at this point that the notion of attempting to check out every single gig in the neighbourhood briefly took hold.  I really fancied dropping in on Jianghu and East Shore Jazz to see what was going down there, but.... well, it was already nearly 11pm by this point, and those two places did represent a sizeable detour.  The Weeble had heard a rumour that there was a "Buddhist rock" act at Jianghu - which sounded interesting, rather than good.  Anyway, the much more accessible - well, much more on my way home - Jiangjinjiu was supposedly playing host to an American folk/blues outfit called The Redbucks, who I was eager to see.  However, the one thing you can rely on with 3J is that the programme is never as advertised, and in fact there was a Mongolian solo folkster on - throat-singing, traditional robe, acoustic guitar, the usual stuff; no idea what his name was, but he was pretty good.     Hmmm, so the great evening of gig-going peripatetics ended up being barely an hour of music at only two venues.  Well, that's how it goes sometimes (most of the time, in Beijing): "plans" can seldom be more than a guideline.   I got me plenty of exercise, at least.   I am now vaguely regretful that I didn't check out the "Buddhist rock"....

Improv

I'd decided against joining the foreign journalists' Christmas bash at The Bookworm on grounds of cost (and value). I'd run into Abigail Washburn at the Tag Team Records party on Friday, and learned that she was playing a Saturday night gig at Yugong Yishan. That was very tempting - but then I remembered the misery of the last time she played there: the acoustics are so poor, and the background hubbub from the bar/lounge area at the rear of the room so loud that acoustic bands (and even some of the quieter electronic ones) get drowned out; Abby performed there a couple of years ago with some Chinese traditional musicians, and they were struggling to keep playing over the din, they couldn't hear themselves. Wretched. I gave up and left. So.... I didn't fancy suffering that experience again (even though the sound system is somewhat improved at YY these days, the background noise problem isn't). Luga has been advertising another of his Chinglishly titled 'Football Watch' parties, since there are a number of big match-ups in the English Premier League this weekend. Again tempting - but no early kickoffs on Saturday, alas. I could have sworn Luga had published a programme of games spread throughout the evening - maybe he's showing re-runs on Sunday?? Ginkgo was having an "Arabian night", with a guest chef and belly dancers. That sounded like it might be fun (and it is a conveniently short walk from my home), but their erratic marketing may have let them down again - the place was near deserted when I wandered past mid-evening. So, I was rather at a loose end.... until.... .... I discovered that Mao Mao Chong was closing down (I'd met the owners a few times at 12 Square Metres; they're friends of the folks there). Well, moving out, I should say. They've found new, larger premises just off Jiaodaokou Nandajie, and are aiming to relaunch by the end of the week (so, another party on Friday....). Their initial venue has been on the aspiring-to-be-trendy Wudaoying Hutong; a curious concept - a t-shirt boutique that also has a small bar.... and a very fine selection of unusual spirits and imported beers. (Their new place, I gather, is going to emphasise the bar aspect more than the t-shirts, and is also going to be a pizzeria. Proper pizza, just off Nanluoguxiang??? Now, that I'm looking forward to.) Their idea last night was that it was going to be a pain-in-the-arse to carry all their stock over to the new place, so they would invite a few friends over to try to drink up as much of it as possible. Half-price (or rather less than half-price) on everything all night. Oh dear. Even I was feeling quite giddy, after 7 or 8 strong ales (one easily loses the knack of drinking proper beer in this country). One of my friends drank about two-thirds of a bottle of whiskey, and then forgot his own name. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..... Maybe I would have been better off with midnight football or inaudible folk music or belly dancers....

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.

Ooops!

There were two less-than-perfect moments in my recent (not-quite) love affair with a visiting businesswoman (well, apart from her not falling in love with me, and leaving after 6 days, that is...). The rest of the time we spent together was unbelievably harmonious and blissful; yes, yes, probably too-good-to-be-true. But our first and last meetings were tainted by moments of acute, though rather amusing embarrassment for me. And I can't help but wonder now if there was some kind of omen in this.

I met her in a favourite little bar down on Nanluoguxiang. She'd been poring over a map in the corner, so I had been politely ignoring her. Then she came over and asked me and the boss for some restaurant recommendations. I didn't want to seem too pushy (and I had, alas, already eaten that evening), so didn't suggest accompanying her to a restaurant. However, having ascertained that she was a visitor and unaccompanied (and drop-dead gorgeous), I did mention that there was a nice gig in the neighbourhood later in the evening (my jazzy friends, the No Name Trio, playing at Ginkgo) and that I would be delighted if she could join me there after her meal if she had time. She agreed that that sounded a very attractive suggestion, and asked me for details.

Now, Gingko was not so very distant from where we were, and not too difficult to find, but since she was a stranger, in Beijing for the first time, I thought it would be helpful if I could give her a card with the address and telephone number on it. I was pretty sure I had one of Gingko's cards somewhere in my wallet (I have dozens of cards for bars and restaurants in my wallet!). Yes, sure enough - here's one. Only as I was handing it over to her did I notice that there was a name and phone number scribbled on it. A girl's name! I honestly have no idea who that girl was, or how I came to have her number written on a restaurant's business card. (I suspect that the card had been given to me by someone else, Nico the manager, maybe; and that I'd never even noticed there was a personal phone number added to it.) No, this did not tend to show me in a good light, I fear; it suggested that I was some sort of inveterate lounge lizard who chats girls up in bars every night.... and subsequently doesn't even remember who they are. However, I managed to apologise, and make a joke of it; and I think my embarrassment and bewilderment were so obviously authentic that she was inclined to be amused by it too (although she did tease me about it later, rather charmingly, when she wrote her own contact details on the same card for me, and then added, "Don't give this away this time!").

Anyway, all smooth sailing from there on. Until her last night. She had decided she would like to see part of a festival of films on modern dance that was screening at the Ullens Centre in Dashanzi that week. I had to work in the CBD until early evening, and so was faced with a bit of a mad scramble to get out there in time for the start. I therefore told her I'd meet her inside the auditorium. Once I finally found a taxi, and got clear of the rush-hour logjam on the 2nd Ringroad, I made improbably good time and managed to arrive with 5 or 10 minutes in hand.

Ah, but then.... at the box office, I happened to run into a lady journalist friend - outrageously sexy, something of an old flame. We hadn't seen each other in ages, so she was being very chatty, very friendly.... insisting we walk into the show together. Oh dear. I'm going to look like a lounge lizard again, aren't I? I couldn't find a way of explaining to my lovely friend that I didn't want to sit with her, or even really to be seen with her, because I was kind of on a date with someone else.... but I did manage to detach myself from her almost as soon as we were through the door. And I don't think my New Romantic Interest noticed this fleeting 'infidelity', or thought anything untoward of it, if she did. Phew!

And so, the rest of our last evening passed as wonderfully as the previous five had done. But I really, really, really do not want that to be our last evening.

Anyway, those two slight misadventures turned out to be more amusing than disastrous, thank heavens. But I still feel these anecdotes would make a suitable first post for my long threatened series on Great Dating Disasters.

Annals of bad design (2)

For a long time I had had mixed feelings about The Den, but over the last year or so, I developed a real downer on the place after a couple of very bad experiences there (being served some egregiously fake whisky; and having them refuse to show a live football game upon request [which is supposed to be the place's raison d'être, for heaven's sake], and the manager was a complete arse about it on that occasion!). The draught beer has also gone through a very bad spell there, with the Tsingtao and the Tiger being quite undrinkable more often than not. And it didn't help that they lost several of their longest-standing members of staff - temporarily at least - because of the bloody Olympic crackdown on residence papers. I therefore declared it the Bar That Has Deteriorated Most last year in my 2008 Froog Bar Awards.

But for me, the worst thing, perhaps, was the remodelling of the decor. Yes, worse even than the shocking decline in the standards of the booze, food, and service! The one thing The Den always had going for it was a proper sense of gloom, a nice, dark interior. But, for the past couple of years, they seem to have been pursuing a general trend of trying to migrate slightly upmarket, and perhaps trying to become more family-friendly or woman-friendly. Hence - opening up the windows on the Gongti Beilu side, increasing the lighting, replacing the dark wood with light wood. Oiveh!

But, you know, it's been quite tastefully done. I can see that some people like this. I will go and weep quietly in a corner for the loss of the old bar.

No, the thing that really got my goat was the trio of (perversely interlinked) innovations that accompanied this revamp in the decor. They moved the kitchen upstairs (WHY? When the dining area is downstairs?? Makes no sense at all!). They moved the stairs into the front left corner of the bar (a slightly awkward location, surely?). And then they moved the front door from the middle to the front left corner of the bar!! That's right: they re-designed their bar so that you had to enter practically on to the bottom step of the stairs..... creating an interference pattern (or 'logjam', if you will) with the constant stream of waiters ferrying plates of food down from upstairs. Lunacy! Quite staggering: it is the single worst piece of design I have ever seen in a bar. Reason enough in itself to never, ever go there again.

However...... I am happy to report that The Den is pulling itself up by its bootstraps. They have recognised the idiocy of locating the door in that corner (or perhaps it was only ever "a temporary measure" anyway??), and have moved it back towards the middle. Lisa and Lily and some of the other more experienced staff are back. The food - which went through a very wobbly patch last year - also seems to be back on form, touch wood. Of course, the draught lagers are still SKANK - but you can't have everything, I suppose.

I went there last Tuesday for their St Patrick's Day promotion. In addition to the very inviting 'happy hour' deal of 30 RMB for a Guinness (and it's a good pint, too - I could be tempted to do this more often!), they were offering a bottle of Jameson's for 200 RMB - so we split a bottle between four or five of us. That was an ideal warm-up to the evening. Around 9pm we headed across town to Ginkgo, where they've also installed a draught Guinness pump (although it's at the slightly less alluring price of 40 RMB). My favourite Chinese "Irish" band (who, unfortunately, seem to have settled on the slightly crass name of 'The Dublingers' - I think I preferred it when they were billed as 'Beijing-Dublin', or as nothing at all) played some traditional songs, and drew a big, lively crowd. More Guinness and whisky were drunk; but, it being a 'school night', things wound down around midnight. And, since I was ravaged by a gastric 'flu bug last week, I really shouldn't have been out at all!

It didn't quite top last year's St Pat's experience - getting proper maudlin drunk while listening to The Pogues in a favourite, cosy bar with just a handful of friends and strangers - but it was a very good evening.

A fizzlin' St Pat's

Nobody seemed to be doing anything much for St Patrick's Day this year.

Ginkgo - which put on rather a fine party with music last year - could not be bothered to do likewise this year. Salud had failed to secure an 'Irish' band for the evening, and so drew only a relatively thin crowd. (The new Des McGarry-fronted Celtic band, Blackwater, bizarrely couldn't get a gig this night! However, they will be playing at Paddy O'Shea's tonight.)

Amongst the city's 'Irish' bars..... well, the tatty but surprisingly fun Chinese Irish bar Paddy Field's died a long time ago. Durty Nellie's might as well have done (it seems even the IELTS examiner crowd has deserted it, because, although superior to O'Shea's in most ways, it perversely refuses to run a 'happy hour'); if it was doing anything special for Paddy's night this year, it had entirely failed to advertise the fact. Danger Doyle's, the worst pub in Beijing even when its prices were vaguely competitive, has doubled or more-than-doubled the price of most of its drinks in its latest management shake-up (the recent lame concession of offering "half price" drinks throughout March is more irritating than anything else: hmm, so now your prices are merely expensive rather than absolutely f***ing stupid?!). Promising newcomer The Irish Volunteer is just too darned far out of the centre. Unpromising newcomer Mollie Malone's was, I gather, promoting some kind of event, but I doubt if anyone went; it is a charmless and expensive hotel bar with a somewhat half-hearted 'Irish theme'. That left the vile Paddy O'Shea's as the sole 'Irish' destination for the night; I gather it got so crowded that it was impossible to get served; I am not sorry I passed it over.

That left us with the 'happy hour' Guinness at The Den, and even that disappointed this year. The black velvet was not slipping down as quickly and easily as it usually does, and after three or four my tummy was feeling perturbed. A companion suggested that the blame lay with the rather hasty pours we were suffering as the place started getting busy, but I fear it was something rather more insidious than that - very unclean pipes, or some kind of contamination in the barrel itself. Not nice.

We transferred to 12 Square Metres - also rather quiet this night. Relief barman Big Nige had been promising when I was in on Monday that he would download some Pogues and surreptitiously infiltrate it into JK's resolutely Irish-free playlist - but it had slipped his mind. We had to make do with tracking down the scant allocation of U2, The Cranberries and Van Morrison on their i-Tunes selection. We were surprised and disheartened to find no Irish music at Salud. And Amilal likewise disappointed: the estimable Alus has just about everything in his music collection except Irish (The Weeble had been promising to burn a CD for him to rectify this omission, but discovered late in the day that he didn't have any blank CDs left).

Oh well - much drinking and some good company in familiar, friendly bars: not such a bad night. Just not a very Irish one.