Beijing Boyce

Cellar Rat rules: Whatever you do, he gets the next seven shots. ((c) stockvault)

Whizzing along the Third Ring Road, you might have passed the rainbow of lights that is The Pool Bar sign. Things are no less eye-catching inside the place.

Imagine six people got together, opened a bar, and each designed a portion to their liking. That kind of sums up the decor of The Pool Bar. The entrance, in B1, is fronted by a huge door that is one part bank vault, one part submarine hatch and one part Buck Rogers in the 21st Century. A whoosh of air to suggest decompression upon opening would be perfect.

I won’t go into all of the details of the décor, but some of the features include:

- Pool tables down the bar’s left side, which is carpeted and topped with a white ceiling of exposed piping and strings of Christmas lights. The odd thing is the designer added fake pipes. As The Cellar Rat noted, “The artificial pipes didn’t do me to well. You see pipes, you think effluent.”

- A bar with space for about a half-dozen people.

- A grand piano.

- A separate area with seven old-fashioned wing chairs faced by a kind of psychedelic wall covering broken up by strips of electric-blue fluorescent lighting.

- An area of high tables and high black-leather and chrome chairs.

- A strip of three computer terminals.

- An area of simple diner-style booths that each seat four to six.

- A sort of Winter Wonderland area with tree branches decked in tiny white lights.

- TVs

And so on. As they say, you have to see it to believe it, and it is certainly worth a look.

Pool is RMB69 for the first hour and a staff member is on hand to rack the balls and watch as people, like The Cellar Rat and I, make fools of themselves. A bottle of 1998 Lafite is RMB20000+; Jacob’s Creek is more wallet-friendly at RMB250 or so. We stuck to Corona at RMB35 per bottle.

“The place has good tables and strange décor,” said The Cellar Rat. “It’s not bad.”

It’s especially not bad if you play by The Cellar Rat’s rules. These include: 1) each of my mistakes mysteriously resulting in him getting three free shots; 2) the requirement that I cross myself three times, do twenty pushups, wear bottle caps over my eyes, and call the pocket when shooting the black ball or I automatically lose (I may be slightly exaggerating here), and 3) no penalty for him creating unfair distractions.

And there was one such distraction: The Cellar Rat moved his coat and RMB8000 in RMB100 bills spilled out of it and onto the floor (he had been to the bank but had no time to drop his cash at home).

He could pick up that coat a thousand times and never duplicate the ensuing mess. It was if every bill in the pile hated the others and wanted to get as far away from them as possible. Given the difficultly of picking up paper on thin carpeting and my laughing, he did a good job of gathering the money together in, say, 45 seconds. It broke my focus, but you know what, some things are worth it just for the memory.