"Oh yeah, sorry"

Last night I went out of my apartment for the first time all week save for food runs and plain old runs. I started at the 麻糖/Hemp House, where there was a hip-hop DJ show, which turned out to be pretty dry. However, I did run into one of the owners of beloved French bar 巴黎咖啡/Cafe Panam(e), who asked if I wanted to check out a bar that was opening that night with him.

The grand opening of 巴黎魔术/Paris Magic Bar had been minimally hyped and sounded from the descriptions like some sort of hokey weird gimmicky thing (alcohol + magic shows = ???), so I had skipped the show. We arrived there around 1 a.m., when most people had already left. When I started having some serious trouble understanding the French-accented slurring that was coming out of my friend's mouth, I realized he was pretty drunk; then, when a few what-appeared-to-be Northerners swaggered in, they greeted him (I guess as the owner of a bar, you're pretty high-profile), and he came back to me and said, "Hey, Chinese people talking to me in perfect English--American or Canadian, I do not distinguish accents--more fluent than mine!"

I looked at him and said, "Maybe they're not Chinese."

He looked at me and said, "Oh yeah. Sorry."

A few beers later, upon my raised-glass-toasting gesture, he says, "Hey, you're becoming Chinese."

"Dude, I am Chinese," I said.

He looked at me again. "Oh yeah. Sorry." Pause. "I'm Polish!"

At any rate, the bar was actually a cozy little spot, and it's right smack in the middle of what can only be described as a dance-club emporium featuring the ever-popular BABI II as well as Sugar and TaTa, which attract clubgoers into the whee hours of the morning, so I could see it becoming a nice chilling spot for those who are too tired to keep shaking their booties. Unfortunately, the bar owner/magician is no spring chicken, and by 4 a.m. on his first night in business he was already passing out on the couches. I hope he pays his employees well.