Posts Tagged ‘ alcohol ’
To celebrate Alex winning another bike in the Shanghai Alleycat (and because it was halloween) we smacked it in C’s with a brummie Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a guy who’s freckles bleed one day every year and a Teletubby.
The result, a pretty hilarious night with pretty much everybody in the place taking it in turns to don the Teletubby outfit and bust out a few moves as the crowd cheered.
The iconic ‘bottle opener’ that is the Shanghai World Financial Centre looks pretty good from afar, especially good from up close (sat atop a flush plinth of grey stone) and particularly magnificent from the wrap-around windows of the Park Hyatt, occupying the building’s top 14 floors.
It’s a badly kept secret that for the price of an observation-deck ticket you can sip on a cocktail in the tranquillity of the Hyatt’s lobby bar and soak in the view without a kid smearing an ice-cream on your experience.
Here’s a couple of not-so magnificent shots from aside a well mixed whiskey sour. I definitely need to go back there at dusk (or even better – dawn) to capture the real magic.
We dropped by for a drink or two on the rooftop of The Waterhouse. It’s certainly rather spiffing (not least because it’s by Alex’s firm), essentially peeled back to the raw concrete and given a lot of attention with some mega furniture and marvelous sight lines and [zzsszzzzhhh, white archi-noise].
Good to see a Yorkshire boy done good, Jason Atherton (middle photo) keeping an eye on his kitchen. When the service picks up we’ll be heading over there for some of Shanghai’s sure to be finest gastro-fayre.
Under the elevated highway near Changning’s da-go-c triangle, Yuyintang is amongst the rare breed (of two) of shanghai’s rough and ready music venues. A good place to sit in the park ‘backstage’ with a couple Xinjiang sticks and a 30RMB whiskey sour and soak in some experimentation.
Was I the only person who enjoyed The Inspector Cluzo?
Wow – £13 for a steiner of Pauliner. All time high. Kind of makes me wish I didn’t have so much work to do and could’ve paid £20 for unlimited beer and food. They must be banking on people having less than 1.5 steins on average! I’m sure the band was in on that! awful.
Accidentally attended the Shanghai Hash House Harriers meet today. The premise is not terrible, a group of runners follow pre-prepared signs (flour markings) along a 10-15k route around Shanghai’s streets and back alleys. Slightly irritating is that the the markings are sparse and often purposely misleading including dead ends and split routes with the intention of keeping forerunners back-tracking and the group loosely together.
More alarming is that the whole event seems an excuse for expats to ridicule each other. Post-run drinks include embarrassingly compered announcements (“drew is new and must down a beer from a potty”), event results (“Alex wore the tightest pants and must down a beer from a potty”) and club songs (“we like big tits we like big tits”) followed by spraying beer at everybody’s knees… and downing beer from a potty.
We made our excuses and left. It reminded me of a Paul Merton in China episode where he attended a simlar club meet. It was the Guangzhou branch of today’s group – which it turns out is a pretty big deal for expats the world over. Shame.
