Weekend Walkabout

I love Bus Bar more than life itself, so it pains me to relate this anecdote. One of our staff was there last week. A few minutes after she had a pair of whiskey cokes, something went wrong. She felt all amped. Her heart was racing. "Wanna running and scream ... I felt like I couldn’t breathe," she said later. Terrified, she faked a graceful exit and rushed to a hospital. The doctor didn’t find anything sinister in her blood. The final diagnosis was something like alcohol poisoning.

I swung by the Bus on Saturday. All the regulars were there. Skinny Andy and his girl Lulu were drunk at a table. A group of international school brats had occupied the VIP sofa. DJ Andy, the Nigerian owner, told me about a new promotion he is doing for the famous Bus Bar Long Island iced tea, served in the same mug as the zhapi (every Monday, RMB 25 all night long). Fisherman Paul was dancing with the wall. He assured me once at the old carpark Bus Bar that he can outdance anyone at Mix. He can, too. One of the City Weekend guys was there. He didn’t like the Bus Bar review in our November issue. "You called this place classy?" he shouted. "Classy? No. But get this. I walked in here with my lady. She’d never been to the old Bus Bar. She walked in here and the first thing she said was, 'The walls are too clean.'"

My lady was out that night too. She hunched by a window, silent and grim. "I can’t breathe!" she whispered. "Bad air." True to the sign on the tree growing through the mini-bar (NO DRUGS ALLOWED / NO FIGHTING ALLOWED / PIS), no forbidden scents hung in the air. It may have been a problem of ventilation. I remembered my co-worker’s story, so we took off for Tongli Studio.

Tongli is cursed. I am a diligent nightlife editor, and some questions needed answering. Was Bar Blu still closed? Did Kokomo have electricity running yet? Luga, the giggly and slightly imbalanced barman from the old Saddle, had taken over the space and was having the “grand opening” of Luga’s Place (functionally identical to Saddle). Would anyone go?

So I was climbing the stairs to Bar Blu to investigate when I ran into Leo Y. F. Ng, the bearded boss-man and resident artist of Cheers, holding court with some Malagasy musicians at the door of his bar.

"How you doing?" I said.

"How am I doing?" he asked, pointing inside. "This is how I do."

The place was bouncing. Pikar, the bass player of the house Iberian-Xinjiang fusion band was at the front of the stage in a stocking cap with the eternal cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He leaned back like he was in a recliner, eyebrows up, eyes down, slapping out a funky solo. Parhat, the rhythm guitarist and singer, rattled out a series of machine-gun tresillos when Pikar stepped back. The conga master and guy behind the kit traded licks, and then the whole group hammered back into the chorus. The folks there were nuts for it. They were drinking and dancing and happy. The band mirrored the chummy energy that filled Cheers patrons, rocking extended solos and slipping jokesy blues riffs beneath the Latin chords.

Upstairs, Bar Blu was still closed for fire code violations. "When we have a problem here," Leo Y. F. Ng told me, "I go down to the offices personally and talk with the people involved." Cheers has two exits, emergency lighting in case of power failure, and fire extinguishers. "Bar Blu sent a Chinese lawyer to try solve the problem. So they’re still closed."

Carpeted in bad press – the dead Australian, increased police presence patrolling the streets, China Doll's change in management, Kokomo operating on candlelight, outdoor seat-swiping and nightly brawls – Tongli can feel like a rough neighborhood. Cheers proves the stereotype wrong. With a consistently diverse crowd of all types and ages, the joint oozes friendliness. Saturday night, I fell into the black hole of good music and happy people, and couldn’t escape of my own accord.

Then my girl told me that she still felt sick from Bus Bar, and dragged me home.

Links and Sources:
Daily Telegraph: Did heroin kill Big Brother star Gordon Sloan?
The Beijinger Forum: Aussie dies after drink spiking
The Beijinger Forum: Dead Aussie in BJ Hospital, any more details?
tbjblog: The Saddle has Split
tbjblog: Weekend Walkabout
The Beijinger Gallery: 2007 Bar and CLub Awards