One minute we love something, the next minute we don’t. Many a love song has been dedicated to this fact. In 2012, Taylor Swift sang about a dude (Harry Styles) who was crazy for her one moment and indifferent the next in ‘I Knew You Were Trouble.’ In 2014, I pulled a Harry Styles myself, except that my Taylor was a very skinny Australian guy named Gavin, whom I dumped before we even went official.
Dramatic? Yes, but such is life. Hearts are fickle, minds change, and Gavin, thankfully, does not read this magazine. He’s in Australia. As for Old What Bar (pictured above), I have no clue where that went. The Beijing live-music institution shut abruptly earlier this month citing business license issues (which could be code for anything from bad landlord to cranky neighbors).
But Old What Bar isn’t the only spot to shut this month – just, rather fittingly, the oldest. It’s with heavy hearts we say goodbye to The Smokeyard, perhaps the only place in Sanlitun where you could get a good steak for under RMB100. Fans need not fret, though – the team that was behind it is working on a massive food hall, slated to open this fall. Hatchery also shocked us with an abrupt closing (and we mean abrupt – they announced it one day in advance), but that team is also looking for new spots to pop up. If you've got a hankering for Oaxacan food, Buena Onda will actually be popping up at White Tiger Village on Saturday September 4 (click here for details).
Cu Ju, meanwhile, is somewhere between closed and taking a break – owner Badr Benjelloun is closing the space this month to “bring something new and equally exciting to Xiguan Hutong.” (We don’t know what that means either.) In the meantime, you can still catch Benjelloun at Caravan.
And you can catch Gavin, probably, in Adelaide.
0 User Comments