SPO: An All Star performance

Sometimes, especially back in high school, Sunday meant waking up at 9:30 and rushing to Mass at 10, coming back for a leisurely lunch, reluctantly helping my mom out in the garden, doing homework or during football season, watching TV all day, eating take-out pizza from Newton Highlands, then calling it an early night after pointlessly surfing the web. This Sunday meant spending the entire day in various stages of inebriation looking for a good place to watch the Olympics.

Things change, and you may find yourself on the other side of the world. So, in what was originally the brainchild of Vivian Chen, we spent the whole day searching for the Perfect Sports Bar. Like good Georgetown students, we had done our research and had found the All-Star, which I had mentioned in my last post. It was supposed to have an absurd number of TVs, good food, drinks, dance floor etc and be open 24/7. In comparison, Lush might as well be a drink stand, with its pathetic 1 small screen. Armed with such valuable information, we strolled out of the Dongzhimen subway stop with confidence and excitement. I guess the first sign of bad news was when 3 consecutive cab drivers did not recognize the place - and Vivian speaks fluent Mandarin so that wasn't the issue. All-Star is located within a chic mall that was opened just before the Games, but as we found out upon arrival, those two qualities had spelled financial disaster. This mall seemed well designed in theory, but so did the 2004 USA men's basketball team, and it appears that neither will ever strike gold. Solana (sic?) as it was called, could have been airlifted from Orange County or Tampa Bay. It had that reddish clay Moroccan-esque architecture that seems to accompany warm-weather malls, a gigantic fountain (with too many fountain offspring scattered around), a large poorly-laid complex, a wealth of moderately classy stores and a total ghost town feel. Considering we visited on a Sunday afternoon, Solana was creepily unoccupied, and both Vivian and a total stranger remarked on the creepiness of this abandoned mall. I guess when you throw an American mall into the middle of a poor neighborhood in Beijing, open up during the craziest times possible, you might not instantly get a huge following. There are other established malls in Beijing and there was nothing special here that would draw an average local to it. Nonetheless we arrived at All-Star, only to find this 24/7 super club would be open at 5pm. They apparently needed to train their workers, who were incidentally all sitting down watching the Olympics on their many TV screens. Well that was a bit of a letdown, but the club looked cool so we decided we would return, at the very least for the US-China uber match.

We found another bar in the same ghost mall containing a few bored-looking Caucasians. It was around 2:45pm in Beijing, but 11:45pm Pacific so I decided it was safe to start drinking and ordered a Singapore Sling. A near TV showed women's gymnastics and we oohed and aahed at American female strength, while a far TV showed women's synchronized diving and we gaped from afar as Guo Jingjing and her partner figuratively lapped the field. Then a lone white guy dressed in a Hawaiian shirt who had been fiddling on his laptop on a table next to us asked us whether we wanted to watch gymnastics or diving in accented English. I guess I said something along the lines of I'd prefer to watch gymnastics but whatever. He then asked the other table, which contained two white guys and 1 Chinese girl first in Mandarin, which got blanks, then in English, we got intrigued blanks, then finally in German, which got a response. That encounter alone interested me as trilingual conversations are rare even in Beijing, so I asked him if he was from Germany. He responded yes, but that he had been in China for 3 years and would soon be moving to Macau. And this was where things got interesting.

Macau eh? Who moves from Beijing to Macau? Macau is a Cantonese-speaking former Portuguese colony that now makes more gambling revenue than Las Vegas, and incidentally on the list of cities I want to (re) visit. Already suspecting an answer, I asked him what line of work he was in. Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback when he unabashed replied, "Professional poker player." Although he refused to tell me how much he had won, he said that he had gotten started played 30/60 blinds online a few years ago, and described how he would start at 8am with a cup of coffee, while Americans would be starting at 8pm with a glass of whiskey. That combo apparently allowed him to rake it in. Further along in the conversation, we learned that he had just gotten married 2 WEEKS ago, that he was a year ahead of Dirk Nowitzki at the same high school, that Dirk was rather unpopular as a freshman cause he was so gangly, that he thought I looked mixed (who doesn't in this town?) and when I told him about my Dutch heritage, that I looked like Marco Van Basten, a Dutch football coach whom I'm currently wikipedia-ing. All fascinating stuff, but it took the entrance of his wife to really cause Vivian's jaw to drop. His wife was really Chinese, probably speaking English as well as he spoke Chinese (decently) and at least 7 months pregant. She could have dropped right there in the bar. As Bjorn, as he introduced himself, told us that he and his wife were going to watch diving, I could feel Vivian concentrating with all her might not to disintegrate into peals.

As he began to leave, I asked him, "Have you heard of Stanley Ho?" Bjorn answered, "The Macau casino owner? Yeah. What, is he your father." Me, "No, my uncle." You can imagine that he was interested in this - I think Vivian may have slipped off her seat and collapsed onto the floor at this point. I talked a little bit about how he was related to me, how he had like 25 kids with 4 wives ("He really got the most out of them didn't he," was Bjorn's clever response) and how I also dabbled in sports betting. He gave me his business card, or more specifically, Dr. Eldo Radon's card. Dr. Radon is a partner / poker coach at Asia Poker Academy, which you can reach at www.asiapokeracademy.com. I'm looking at the card right now...you cannot make this stuff up. Bjorn explained how when playing poker in China, you never use your real name. He did not explain why he invented a name as ridiculous as Dr. Eldo Radon - I mean radon is a freaking radioactive gas - but some questions are best left unanswered. I gave him my number so this may not be the end of the story.

I downed my Sling and we bounced. We weren't 200 meters away before Vivian cracked up, saying that this was all too much too soon for a Sunday afternoon. We got a cab and left this ghost town for the more traditional party locale of San Li Tunr. Unfortunately we didn't know where to go, and failing to find Paddy Oshea's, I walked several blocks on my hobbled ankle to the Saddle, where July 4th had been spent. The Saddle was a little bit less lonely, containing several tables of Westerners, but unfortunately just 1 TV showing women's weightlifting. I don't want to bore you with the details, but let's just say I don't think I want to watch women's weightlifting for another 4 years. Vivian also displayed her ability to get totally wasted by a sole margarita, despite claiming to be from Texas, so we hopped across the street to a bar that was showing basketball on the big screen. Argentina was playing Lithuania in what would turn out to be the game of the day, yet I would read about that on ESPN because lightning cut out the feed for a while, and when the TV did come back on, the bar could not find the channel again despite my constant pleas. While watching swimming re-runs, I killed another beer and then proceeded to go to the Rickshaw, a very popular San Li Tunr bar for Westerners.

If I had a belt for sparsely populated bars, the Rickshaw would be another notch on it. To be fair to all these bars, we were visiting from 2-7pm on Sunday afternoons. But then again, it's the Olympics, and we were constantly asking, "WHERE IS EVERYONE?" If you haven't gotten the sense yet, Beijing is a very large city and I couldn't understand why all the popular bars were devoid of rabid sports fans. I guess the Rickshaw was nice because from 5-9 pm drinks are half off, and a Hurricane and a Tsingtao only cost 40 kuai. But once again, there were only about a dozen patrons, 3 of them hardcore pool hustlers, and nothing good on TV so we decided that the time had come for our return trip to All Star.

All Star looked like a totally different site upon rearrival, outfitted with sharp lighting and squeaky clean tables. All of the tables were reserved but we were lucky to get 2 seats at the bar. The club was just starting to get crowded (it was probably around 8, with the USA-China uber match set to begin at 10) and seats would be gone within half an hour. We had to endure high prices and a long China-Belgium men's soccer game that saw more Chinese red cards (2) than Chinese goals (0). Why is soccer the most popular sport? Give me a game of Ultimate any day. Finally, after eating myself sober, Yao Ming entered the TV and basketball coverage came on. Now All Star was absolutely hopping, with at least 4 times as many people as seats, but for such a successful venue, the place was hilariously flawed. The place was supposed to open on August 1 but instead was delayed to August 9, missing out on the 8/8/08 bonanza, although they reportedly sold out of food and booze the first night, and things were still shaky, first exhibited in the 5pm opening time. Among the defects: the material underneath the table came off like chalk, only the first page of the 20 page menu was relevant, there was NO BATHROOM in the bar but we had to walk outside in the rain (they provided umbrellas) to the dance club on the second floor (co-owned by not actually attached to All-Star), and get this: ALL the TVs HAD to be tuned into the same channel. They literally could not change our TV from soccer to judo or whatnot, the technology had yet to arrive. You may ask the question: what's the point of having so many TVs then? Yeah, we did that too - loudly and rudely to the fuwuyuans - but apparently an answer does not existed.

Come 10 o'clock this was not a problem, because everyone was there to watch the Uber Match, the most watched basketball game in history, the most hyped first round match ever, China - USA, aka World War III. There were over 1 billion viewers worldwide - count me in there. We all knew for a long time the game would be overhyped, after all it was ordained to be a first round blowout, but the atmosphere was fucking awesome. China and USA were both lustfully cheered and both sides knew players from both teams. The pre-game commentary mentioned Yao Ming at least once per sentence, to the extent that when he was shown on screen, a Canadian behind me jokingly asked, "What's that guy's name again?" And when he opened the game with a freaking 3 point swish (reminiscent of Roy Hibbert vs. UConn), the house roared and buzzers blared. Literally, the club had buzzers that flashed orange and shrieked whenever China scored a nice bucket or an American had a thundering dunk. The first quarter was painfully sloppy for the 梦队,Team USA, but enough throwdowns from Dwight Howard and LeBron James gave us something to cheer about. Yi Jianlian shat the boat until his incredible dunk on Carmelo Anthony off a Yao Ming miss that hopefully will be replayed 1000 times when the Nuggets enter opposing arenas. My favorite player on this team (and my pick for leading scorer), Dwyane Wade, was absolutely phenomenal, going 7 for 7 from the field, 5 for 5 from the stripe and dropped down a sweet reverse flush and a rare contested fadeaway jumper. The only mini-story from a rather predictable, if thoroughly entertaining, story was the performance of Sun Yue, China's 6'9" shooting guard. Sun was drafted by the Lakers (Phoenix totally dropped the ball on that one) in the second round of '07 and he has recently signed with them so we'll see him in the NBA. He's pretty silky smooth with a good handle and a great shooting touch, and hit a nice contested 3 pointer to tie the game in the second quarter. The Chinese think he's their second best defender after Yao, but his weak-ass frame was bowled over one time he was accidentally matched up with Dwight Howard. If he's quick enough to defend other shooting guards though, he may be fine, although he'll definitely need to bulk up either way. In addition, word on the streets was that Sun Yue had dunked on the US in international competition 2 years ago and the US team had put out a bounty. If anyone dunked on him, they would get like $20,000 from the rest of the team. If anyone got dunked or on blocked by him, they would have to pay $50,000 (something like that). Amazingly, Sun Yue stuffed Dwight Howard. I don't know what the outcome was there, no English news source that I read reported anything about this, but hopefully I'll run into some basketball players and ask them.

I'll have more to blog about later. I missed Michael Phelps and the US swimming team's incredible 4x100 relay this morning, which is already the highlight of these Games, but will catch live wrestling Wednesday morning and then ping pong that afternoon. Btw, Marco van Basten kinda does look like me, maybe I should visit the Netherlands in the fall.