Give the Gift of Useless Crap with These Gulou Presents

Hello, my friends! Joyous times are here again! ’Tis the season for brotherly, sisterly, and otherly love once more, and what better way to register your general indifference to your friends, family, and co-workers than with some pointless bauble wrested off the shelves of a Gulou Dong Dajie vanity boutique? The answer: There is none more a better way.

Nothing says “I’m here; you’re here; a binding sociocultural contract dictates that we must acknowledge this fact by exchanging some horseshit trinkets,” like horseshit trinkets from The Dong.

Gather around, holiday shoppers. Your Beijinger correspondent blitzed the entire street of Gulou Dong Dajie looking for potential holiday gifts for you and yours for this holiday season.

A quick note on the route: We started at the intersection of Gulou and Andingmen, on the south side on the street. We walked all the way up to the tower, stopping in any interesting stores, and then all the way back down the other side. 

Strap yourself in. We’re gonna have a time!

***

Well! Think we found out where in the sweet goddamn world Carmen San Diego is! 

(She’s on The Dong. In the window of an indie boutique, right at the start of Gulou.)



There’s a really good – nay, bold – eyeglasses store at No. 60 Gulou. Been there about a year, I guess. Anyway, they’ve got some really nice and hip frames, if you’ve got someone on your list who’s vision impaired but fashion forward. Prices are like RMB 500 to a zillion, but they’re all real. Gucci, Tom Ford, Bape, Moscot, Elizabeth and James, and more.



Snazzy.



A couple doors down from the glasses place is a boutique called Lawless, which is one of the newer and better of the 9,000 vintage-rock-everything-we-have-has-a-skull-on-it type of stores. They have rockabilly porn shoes …



… neat-o socks …



… and OH SHIT TOO SOON.



Picked myself up a pair of these and I’m wearing them right now – they’re the ONLY thing I’m wearing right now, incidentally, besides glitter. Go ahead and lock that image in your brain for the rest of this thing.



This place called Future Secret has this super luxe Harry Potter bag, if you have a Harry Potter fan for a co-worker on your list who also happens to be a huge asshole.



And it’s already time for a lil’ present for yourself. Street mojitos. By divine right, I declare that street mojitos shall hence for forever be known as “Mo-STREET-ohs." So I have decreed it, so shall it be done. Also, if you don’t already know, Sanlitun Village shall hence forth be known as “M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village." Please do your part to popularize these terms for the two-oh-one-six. Let’s move on this, Beijing.



Man, check it out: It’s the full Constructicons Transformer! The DEVASTATOR. Wow. It’s the whole thing. This is one of those guys that you have to buy like 10 of them separately to make up the giant robot. I got around two or three of them and then Pearl Jam 10 came out and I never looked back. Probably for the best because I’m glad I didn’t turn out like the guy running this store. Just a big, frowny ball sweat monster perpetually waiting for delivery for 60 years until his heart explodes out of his oily chest like SPLOOOSH.  



Shoes for babies that scare the bejeezus out of me on the bus.



We’re up on NLGX now for a quick detour because it’s such a rad street with great things to eat and buy, and I love spending time on it. Went by the Zippo store, which is still selling Zippo lighters for my guitar teacher from 1986. Dunno, bros, think he gave up the dream.



… as well as the be-all and end-all Christmas present of all time. Damn. How bad did I want one of these. You’re basically sorted for every situation, always on the verge of becoming a huge national hero if called upon to perform an emergency tracheotomy or something on the subway. 



Across from the Zippo store, there’s a lady selling custom wax figurines. 







Pretty good Christmas gift idea: Get a picture of one of your friends, get one of these wax figures made of them, and then just leave it on their doorstep in the middle of the night with no explanation. No note, no card, no nothing. Do that every day until December 24. And then on Christmas morning, break into their apartment, and fill their living room with them, with all the eyes stabbed out. That’s called giving the gift of sheer terror for the holiday season. Good times. 

The store next to the wax lady had remote control drones for sale, which looked like a pretty cool gift idea. The owner of the store wouldn’t let me take a picture, even though I said Deng Xiaoping himself said I was allowed to take a picture. You’ll have to take my word for it.



Back out of NLGX and back on Gulou Dong Dajie. There’s a new soap store thing there. Got one of these for my mum. She always wanted to smell like a whore from Shanghai in the 20s. 

“Morgan!” She’d always say to me. “Get me some of that Shanghai whore soap the whores in the 20s use!” Kay, mum. Jeez.



Holy Christ Almighty, the Beijinger isn’t paying me nearly enough to go in there. Nightmare.



Here we are at Kodolife Home Deco Shop (186-ish Gulou Dong Dajie), which is the most Grandma-core store in all of Beijing. 





My grandma just stockpiles this shit like there’s a nuclear war coming and there’s gonna be nothing left to store small mints in on coffee tables. 



Oh, here we go. Now we’re cooking with gas. Now we’re playing with fire. Here we are at 666 Rock Shop at 230 Gulou Dong Dajie A.K.A. center of the universe. 

Iron Maiden clocks? They have.



Bad Brains shirts? They have.



A giant SATAN patch for your sweet denim vest? They have. They have, they have, they have. In all seriousness, someone buy me this stuff. Not joking. F*ck it, I’m not growing up any time soon. Just f*ck it.



272-2 Gulou Dong Dajie sells SONY PS4s for RMB 2,450. Games RMB 200-300 each. A Wii U is RMB 2,050. You’re welcome.



There’s a pharmacy right there as well. Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, Paxil, Serafem, Luvox – or as I like to call them, “stocking stuffers.”



Sooo ... booze always works right? Newsflash: Cheers at 245 Gulou Dong Dajie has booze. RMB 95 for two bottles of “Champagne." They’re also selling Olivia Jones Cranberry Secco for RMB 108. I was eyeing up this bottle and the store clerk goes, “ppppsssst … you know … that’s a MAN.” 

Huh, you don’t say!



Time for another present for yourself. Cheers lets you drink in the store so why not get a bottle of wine and drink the whole thing upstairs, while you make them plug in your cell phone to listen to a little Neil Young, as one does? 



Check out this Christmas tree they’ve got upstairs at Cheers. It’s like the Christmas tree at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Like everyone’s going through the shakes so damn bad and here’s this green focal point of total depression and misery, laughing. Laughing at your failure from the corner.



They also have inspirational slogans all over the walls that don’t really mean anything. The scene at Cheers is for-real like if someone was at an AA meeting and thought, “hmm, wouldn’t it be great if we could get really cheap wine here?” And Cheers was born.



Enough of that. Back out into the streets. +86 Design Store at 245 Gulou Dong Dajie is your go-to shop if you're looking to pick up something mildly "neat" for someone on your list. They have tons of shit that's just really, really “neat." I was tipsy from the wine and only managed this one blurry picture of desk lamps. Journalism.



Here we are at Vampire in Beijing, the goth-y gift shop at 243 Gulou Dong Dajie.

Ahem.

They’re selling a stuffed rabbit with a huge cock.



Yeah, it’s a rabbit with a huge cock.



Really makes you stop and think about the true meaning of Christmas …



What is the real meaning of Christmas? Is it a kind word to friends and neighbors in the streets? Is it presents under a twinkling tree? The joy and satisfaction of giving and receiving to and from the ones we love? The smile of a child unwrapping gifts? Is it mistletoe and crackers and stockings hanging from the hearth and great turkey dinners with family? 

What is the real meaning of Christmas?



Or it’s it something more … something ineffable ... something intangible …



That’s right. It’s hats! And we’re back down at the start of Gulou again at Fraicheur where they sell hats, hats, hats!







Happy holidays, my lovelies! Stay safe! Be good!

Photos: Morgan Short