Cozy Taipei bars retain their '70s allure

TAIPEI - Shuangcheng Street has seen its share of fighting.

In the 1970s, US soldiers taking leave in Taipei from the Vietnam War would go to its cluster of boy-meets-bargirl nightclubs on holidays from the frontlines. They joked that the boisterous pubs were the only fighting they could find in pre-modernized Taiwan.

"Back in those days, just about the only places to go for just drinking were the girlie bars," recalls Dirk Bennett, an American who lived in Taipei for more than 30 years. "So, it was natural for the first pubs to open in this area."

After soldiers faded out with the end of the war, Shuangcheng and the narrow alleys around it have weathered a steep drop in business, noise complaints from residential neighbors and an ill-fated civic effort to reinvent the strip's seedier side.

Instead most of the bars closed, leaving boarded-up holes and just 20 or 30 hardboiled survivors, fewer than half the former total.

It's no wonder the Shuangcheng bar district is best known as Taipei's combat zone.

But a cluster of cozy yet international neighborhood bars has emerged from the rubble. These are places where hosts and their repeat customers from anywhere in the world take pride in knowing one another's names.

Granted, the seedier side persists in doing combat with customers. Women launch themselves from places such as the Volcano and the Miami Pub at passing men, who if captured may lose US$20 or US$30 buying drinks for them.

But some of the longer lasting tenants of the zone's narrow alleys that come alive around 9 pm are wholesome watering holes where the same crowd of expatriate North Americans, Europeans, Filipinos and Japanese go every week or even every night.

Often just off work, they sit bottle-to-bottle with locals and the occasional tourist from the Chinese mainland as the zone lights up in neons of all colors and music from the Beatles to disco beats issue from inside.

"Wild it's not. Relaxed it is," said Richard Vuylsteke, a Hong Kong-based business official who visits one of the bars when in Taipei. Barkeepers remember his name from when he lived in town.

"Over the decades the area has shrunk in size and precipitously declined in boisterousness, but it still remains an oasis for expats and locals alike who can find good Taiwanese snack food nearby and share a few beers and relaxed conversation in an economically priced environment," Vuylsteke said.

At My Place, an indoor-outdoor restaurant-pub combo, bartenders chat with solitary drinkers. Across the street at the Manila, the Filipina manager memorizes the orders of repeat customers and keeps the free popcorn coming all evening.

Hosts at one-room bars such as Peace Jazz and Malibu West also make efforts to get to know the customers, even cooking special meal requests.

"This is a bar where people never get ripped off, never get cheated, no girls you have to buy a drink for. People feel comfortable," said William Gan, manager of the 14-year-old, 58-seat, wood-paneled Malibu West, which is known for its Californian and Mexican foods. "The foreigners, they just keep coming back. They sign their names on the ceiling. We're running out of space up there."

The zone also remains cheap and down-market - the upholstery may be torn or the air-con misses a few spots - compared to bar districts in newer parts of Taipei.

Happy hour beers go for as little as $2.50. Bars that open after 9 pm still allow smoking, a thing of the past elsewhere in town. The music volume increases as the hour gets later, unless crowds are drawn to sports on overhead television screens.

What's left of the zone, which is located just behind the landmark Imperial Hotel, often rages late into the night as repeat customers just repeat and repeat. Crowds fill the friendlier bars on weekdays as well as weekends.

"It is the way we serve customers. That's one reason why they keep on coming," said Jackie Sotelo, floor manager at the ever-packed Manila Bar, where beers are cheap, snacks free and barmaids remember just about everyone's name.