Beijing Boyce

For each of the 88 days until the 2008 Olympics, I will [try to] strip-mine my brain to unearth a thought related to Beijing and The Games. That’s one thought per brain cell. It’s called teamwork, people!

In honor of the five Fuwa, today’s post on the bar and restaurant scene features five thoughts for the price of one.

13.
After the Olympics, our overcrowded bar scene will stand at a crossroads. One path will lead to too many bars holding out as they chase too few patrons. The other will lead to many bars quickly closing and then an equal number of bars opening and holding out as they chase too few patrons. Let us pray we pick the right path.

14.
Diners will have pressing questions after The Games. Among them: 1) Why is there a Michelin-star chef on every street corner but a decent burger is nowhere to be found?; 2) Will millions of workers in the scorpion on a stick sector go jobless now that the tourists and journalists are gone?; and 3) Is it just me or does The Legation Quarter seem like the city’s biggest food court?

The answers: 1) Try Chef Too, Tim’s, or The Den; 2) Yes, and we’ll see skyrocketing unemployment for scorpions, who sadly have no social safety net; and 3) No, It’s not just you - I came up with that ‘food court’ quip months ago!

15.
Drinkers will also have serious questions. Among them: 1) What is this new term “soft opening redux” I keep hearing?; 2) After being spoiled by a month of free-spending tourists, will every Beijing cabbie, bartender, and waiter expect me to tip?; and 3) Do Q Bar’s George and Echo have any fingerprints after making an Olympian number of cocktails?

The answers: 1) It will be a new PR tool for bars that have failed once and plan to go bankrupt again; 2) Not all of them - I think 10 to 15 percent is a fair amount; and 3) Prints? They’ll be lucky if they haven’t ground their fingers to the second knuckle.

16.
The most popular pre-Olympics sport in the bar business has been the free-standing premeditated back stab, usually performed by a short-term thinking foreigner on another short-term thinking foreigner. As they say, a well-placed knife is one way to make a killing (and burn calories). But what happens after The Games?

The optimist in me says that those who stabbed will see their folly (i.e., they did not make a killing), ease out the knives, and use them to carve nourishing Peking duck for their victims as a way to heal the wounds. The pessimist says China’s recyclers get the cutlery first (have you seen the price of base metals?).

17.
Finally, consider this case: “Three weeks ago, my roommate was bawling because her Olympics event deal fell through, two weeks ago she was bragging because she found a new business partner, one week ago she was bumming because she got shafted by the guy, and today she is back to bragging because the original event deal might come through. How should I deal with her?”

Your roommate has a common pre-Olympics business condition known as extreme ego fluctuation (it is similar in theory to that of a rapidly contracting and expanding universe). Your best bet is to make audio and/or video recordings of her temporary insanity in order to gain post-Olympics concessions in areas such as guest sleepover rights and toilet cleaning duties. Trust me: arrogance tolerated today is arrogance exploited tomorrow.

Previously
Thought 1: If they build it, we may come
Thought 2: “Whether or not” in Sanlitun
Thought 3: Living the lowlife on Lotus Lane
Thought 4: The F&B scene takes a pre-Olympics breather?
Thought 5: Flaming Fuwa
Thought 6: Continental drink
Thought 7: The Parallel Bars?
Thought 8: No kangaroos, and other guidelines
Thought 9: A few good men
Thought 10: Someone call programming
Thought 11: Going, going, gone
Thought 12: Think globally, drink locally