Two days ago we introduced the 1st annual Beijing Cream Bar and Club Awards (image credit Katie), with 22 questions divided into five categories. Yesterday, Piper Fisco and E examined the first two of those categories, Dross and Repugnance, and earlier today, Kevin Reitz wrote about the Alcoholism category. Kevin purported to not be an alcoholic though; this evening’s columnist makes no such claims.

By Scott Grow

At the request of my good friend Tao, I am taking precious time out of my busy day of multiple failed attempts at finding Season 2 of Game of Thrones online while at work to bring you my reasons for which bar or bars should be named “best of” under the category of ALCHOHOLISM in the currently running Whatever Competition it is that Tao’s Cooked Up For Us Now (say that ten times fast). But before I begin, I feel it necessary to give my expert opinion on what it means to be an alcoholic.

Being Irish, Scotch, English, Welsh, German and just a wee bit Austrian, drinking runs in my blood. Add to that the fact that I’m a US Marine and you pretty much already have a perfect recipe for alcoholism. But what does that mean? Honestly, I don’t know. So shut the fuck up, stop asking so many damn questions and do another car bomb with me!

OK, hold off on the car bomb, we have more pressing issues at the moment. Now, if you’re thinking, “What could possibly be so fucking important as to hinder my impetus on a perfect night of binge drinking?” then I need not explain what it means to be an alcoholic. However, if you fall into any other category (to clarify, that means you feel like it’s okay to hold off on the car bomb), then please read on. Otherwise, you can skip to the next paragraph.

(Oh shit, its already the next paragraph. Maybe it was a good idea to hold off on that car bomb after all. Oh well, just keep reading). So basically, being an alcoholic means taking every opportunity to enjoy a good man soda, as my buddy Brent so affectionately refers to beer. It doesn’t have to be beer, though. It could be whiskey or tequila or even a cosmopolitan if you’re a girl. You get my point. But there’s more! It’s not just that you enjoy the drink. In fact, you may not enjoy the drink at all. It might taste like a Long Island Iced Tea from Wu Bar in Wudaokou, which, for those of you who don’t know, tastes like shit. But you drink it anyway. Why? Because when you went there on Thursday, the Chinese girl you went with got five tickets for free drinks but she’s a cheap date and only needed two of them so she ordered drinks for you too. So they were free. Which meant the hundo in your pocket was gonna be just enough for you to get eight more Tsingtaos and have enough for a cab ride home. That and the Long Islands there do have a fairly remarkable ability to get you buzzed. So anyway, being an alcoholic means you pretty much never say no to alcohol. (Unless its baijiu.)

Let’s take a gander at the questions posed under the ALCOHOLISM category of this… competition thing. First up: Most Reliable Place to Get Shitfaced, Followed by Overwhelming Regret For Two Days. Wow, this is a tough one. The choices are Juicy Spot, Nanjie Bar, Pure Girl, Salud, Smugglers and Tun. Now, ya see, all of them are good choices because the liquor at all of these places is fake and will give anyone a hangover fit to beat Jesus, provided one were to consume an appropriate amount. But ya know, I’m gonna have to go with Juicy Spot on this one. Because when you drink yourself to oblivion at Juicy Spot, you stand a pretty fair chance of being dragged back to the lair of some lagoon creature. Or worse yet, you bring her (or him, as the case may be) back to YOUR place. THAT is not a fun thing to deal with when you have ten minutes to get to work the next morning.

Question 2: Safest Place to Throw Up. Honestly, in this Marine’s not-so-humble opinion, any place is a safe place for alcohol poisoning. But as far a nice bathrooms go, I’ll have to say Punk/Mesh. I only say this because I almost went to LAN Club once, but the entrance fee was, like, 150 kuai, so I went to Juicy Spot instead, where I proceeded to get alcohol poisoning and ended up being dragged back to a lagoon creature’s lair. So I’ve never had the opportunity to destroy my liver in LAN Club. I’ve never been to Enoterra either, or if I have, I don’t remember. And believe it or not, I’ve never used the bathroom at Migas before, but I do like the giant egg things. Might be nice to get falling-off-the-world shitfaced and pass out on the bed-like things inside, but I think I might advise against the spewing. Never heard of Flamme. I’ll remedy that tonight and report back later. For now, the bathroom in Punk is the place to get obliterated and loose spew.

Question 3: Worst Place to Go if You’re Feeling Mildly Suicidal. Ok, let’s see here. Our choices are: Brussels, Glen, Great Leap Brewing, Nashville, Siif. To be honest, I’ve never been to any of these places. They all sound depressing, so maybe any one of them is a good one to steer clear of if you don’t actually wanna voluntarily check out early. But ya know… I’m gonna have to go with Nashville on this one. I mean, really? There’s a bar called Nashville in Beijing? C’mon, dude! I get that you’re homesick, but for fuck’s sake, give me a break. Moving on.

Question 4: Most Likely to Physically Injure Oneself. OK, if you’re being a good little alcoholic, then you’re likely to injure yourself no matter where the fuck you go. But let’s be real here. The fucking stairs at Haze are ridiculous. I’ve almost killed myself going down the fuckers sober. It’s a goddamn miracle I’m here writing this article right now. So there you have it. The stairs at Haze are murdering mother fuckers!

Question 5: Oh, there is no question 5. OK then. That’s it. These bars should get their respective recognition because I say so. You have the right to have opposing opinions. And I have the right to punch you in the fucking mouth if I disagree. That having been said, enjoy your evening, don’t drink too much (or do, I don’t fucking care) and be safe. Good day to you, Sirs and Lassies.

Scott is a certified alcoholic living in Beijing. He can be found onWeibo or reached at scott.grow@gmail.com.

You can vote for the bars in the Alcoholism category and the four others – Dross, Repugnance, Meta, and Sex — right here:

[Ed's note: Drake's been ill this week, so he apologies for not submitting a column. But one needn't look far around these parts to find stories of expats behaving badly, as you'll soon see.]

By Scott Grow

So no shit, there I was, balls fuckin’ deep, bodies everywhere. (OK, so maybe only one or two bodies – probably alive.) It was 04:30 or 05:00, or whatever time it is when you know you’ve been in Sanlitun well past bedtime, and I was trying to find a cab home. But of course, as is always the case, there were people in front of me that kept snaking every open cab that came by. Having had enough of this, I decided to walk against traffic until I got clear of everyone else and then snake the next one from them.

During the course of my intrepid journey, I encountered a dude, da ping in one hand, cigarette in the other, with his…

No, wait, wait, wait. Lemme start from the beginning.

OK, it’s not the beginning, but a little before all this happened. I started in Wudaokou, where I met this guy, maybe German, really friendly, and he bought me and my buddy a drink and we proceeded to talk first about how much we loved (and/or hated) being in Beijing, and then of course, naturally, sex, then politics, then religion, then sex, then finally how much we loved (and/or hated) being in Beijing. By this time it was only about 22:30 and I got a call from a friend I hadn’t seen in ages who was in Sanlitun and offered to treat me and my friend to alcohol poisoning. The next day being a day off for me in combination with a severely impaired decision-making paradigm led me to the conclusion that this was a good idea, so I agreed, and my buddy and I left the friendly German with a handshake and a promise to see him again.

So we got to Sanlitun at about 23:30 (we stopped at 7-11 for a couple of burgers cause I warned my friend of his impending death by baijiu), and soon after, just as my alter ego, Nostradamus, predicted, we were on our way to being very drunk. I think it was around 01:00 when who showed up but The Friendly German Guy. He joined us at our table and we continued to drink and smoke and invite girls over and, well, you know, the normal shit you do in a club with your friends in Sanlitun.

Eventually we had to leave, bringing us back to the beginning: balls deep, a couple of bodies here and there, unable to catch a cab cause other assholes keep snaking them. So we take off and Friendly German Dude says, “I gotta piss!” So my friend says, “There are trees over there,” to which Friendly German Dude says, “Fuck that, I’m in China, bitches!” I was like, “C’mon man, what the fuck, don’t do that.” But he was havin’ none of it. So, with a da ping [big bottle (of beer)] in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he stands on the curb and starts pissing. Then a cab with people in it comes by and he tries to arch his golden stream onto the cab.

“Holy, shit, dude! Did you see that, I nearly got ’em!” Then another cab, but having seen the diabolical scheme underway, this driver got into the far lane to avoid Friendly German Guy’s assault. But Friendly German Guy, with a steel resolve, was determined to piss onto a moving target. So he hunched down and slight back to add arch to his indirect fire, and half-walking, half-trotting, advanced on his prey. But he missed again. Then another cab, but since he was in the middle of the fucking road at this point, he figured all he had to do was turn and face traffic and the motherfucker would just drive right into his piss.

Meanwhile, I’m standing there trying in vain to convince Friendly German Guy to get out of the fucking road, put his dick away, and go home and sleep it off. He either ignored me or was way too focused on the mission at hand. The car coming directly at him swerved and sped up to avoid being urinated on just as Friendly German Guy went dry. I swear, I’ve not seen such disappointment on anyone but a child whose summer ice cream has just fallen to the ground. Walking back to the curb, not even bothering to holster his sidearm, he flicked his cigarette, took a swig off his da ping, threw it away and said, “Fuck it. Who wants a jianbing?”

I chuckled at the asshole and said, “You’re buying, motherfucker.”

Well it was fun, and it was interesting, and in retrospect quite funny. But really! This isn’t the first time I’ve seen such behavior. Maybe it would be in our best interests to tone it down a bit, yeah? Maybe put a little effort into not making total asses of ourselves? What do ya think?

Scott is a certified killer living in Beijing, slowly killing himself with alcohol. He can be found on Weibo or reached at scott.grow@gmail.com.