A friend pointed out the other day that I haven’t talked very much about Daegu nightlife on this blog. This is partly because I’m not all that active a part of the nightlife scene but it’s not really fair to a city which has plenty going on, particularly over weekends.

In fact, many people apparently also go out during the week, although after our experience of trying to find somewhere to have dinner on Tuesday night, I’m not sure where they go. I had arranged to have dinner with a friend after work, so we met at the Samdeok Fire Station taxi drop-off point as usual. It was a chilly evening and downtown was strangely empty. I’m used to the area throbbing with crowds and noise on Fridays and Saturdays, so it was odd to see the alleys dark and the streets almost deserted. At one point, on our way to try and find a Mexican place we’d been told about, we walked past a waiter (he was wearing an apron) and a friend playing badminton in the street outside an almost deserted coffee shop – one of the few with lights still on. We contemplated stopping there but it looked more coffee shop than restaurant and we were hungry, so we went on to The Holy Grill. I’ve seen ads for the Holy Grill all over since I got here. It’s run by foreigners and serves ‘comfort food’ (according to the menu). Until this week, I hadn’t actually eaten there. The place is divided into two levels – a second-floor restaurant and a third-floor sports bar (with snack menu). It sounds like this (the two levels) is a fairly recent development. The menu definitely a wide range of what many Westerners would consider comfort food – from Burgers and Steak-rolls (Philly Cheese Steak for the Americans) to a Tex-Mex section and even good old Macaroni and Cheese. In retrospect, I probably should have had the Mac and Cheese. I ordered a burger and it wasn’t bad but I wasn’t overly impressed. I suppose I assumed it would aim to taste like a burger back home, forgetting that what is normal for me is probably not normal for the Americans who are the biggest customer group of this venue. My friend had something Mexican (a burrito?) which she seemed to enjoy, although they didn’t have guacamole, which is a disappointment if you’re going to be a place that serves Mexican food. Not a bad place to go if you’re looking for specific things but I don’t think I’ll be spending all my evenings there.

Oddly, the entrance to the Holy Grill is right next to the spot where many evenings downtown start: Gogo Vinyl. I like cocktails. Living in and later visiting Joburg with friends who are significantly more sophisticated and trendy than me, I was introduced to the wonderful world of cocktails at places like Bar Six in Melville and became quite fond of them. One of the things I secretly love about cocktails is that they’re so sophisticated in their elegant glasses with garnish and, because I am a fan of margaritas in particular, things like salt around the glass. Gogo Vinyl goes in for a whole different style of cocktail. This, along with Viniroo just down the road, is where you get ‘bag-drinks’. Bag-drinks are cocktails over ice in a ziplock-type plastic bag, with a straw. They’re also, from these particular places, cocktails with a ‘alcohol-to-taste’ twist – all at no extra cost. Gogo Vinyl has apparently now opened a proper bar a few doors down but the original Gogo, apart from a tiny number of seats inside, is really a tuck-shop type window onto the street where people buy their bags and then stand around, or sit on the odd benches scattered in the road and drink them. In the heat of summer this is great, although I imagine people may start drifting indoors as the weather cools. Viniroo and Gogo are in direct competition but there isn’t a huge difference in price or variety of options. The cocktails themselves are not fantastic but they’re not bad for the price (around 5000 won).

Along the street from the bag-drink places is one of the few restaurants I’ve sampled downtown (as most evenings start rather later than I like to eat, I generally have dinner before going out). Italy-Italy (or Italy & Italy as it’s apparently actually called) is a little pizza/pasta place where you can create your own pizza/pasta from a list of options. When you sit down, each person is handed a check-list style menu where you fill in your name and then start choosing. There are three portion sizes, named something along the lines of hungry, very hungry and starving (that’s not exactly right but something like that) and two options: pizza or pasta. Once you’ve chosen your size and type of food, you choose sauces, pasta-type, toppings and for pizza, the shape of your pizza (heart-shaped pizza anyone?). The food is tasty and the range of options are not bad, even if there are little things missing that you’d find in Western countries and which we all lament every time we go there. I had dinner there a while ago and had a lovely Alfredo Pasta, although the wine wasn’t great, but that may have been our choice of wine. That particular evening, we also went to a lovely little Martini Bar (which was completely empty and had a remarkably uneven wood floor – quirks to remember places by) but I didn’t see an English name at the time and I keep forgetting to ask what it was called.

This block of Rodeo Street – where Italy-Italy, the bag drink places and Holy Grill are – seems to be the most common meeting place and where most people start their downtown evenings. From there people scatter to various bars, clubs and other restaurant/drinking places. I haven’t been to all that many but I have spent a little time in Organ Bar and Who’s Bob. I’ve avoided  dance clubs so far, partly because they charge cover and because I have yet to walk past a place and be sufficiently excited by the music to want to go in.

The place that ends many evenings – and the place that sometimes shows rugby and therefore makes me happy – is Communes – variously also called ‘Commune’s’, ‘The Commune’ and ‘Commune’s Lonely Hearts Club’. It’s a somewhat dark basement bar, with walls painted black with designs and pictures in white, photos of famous rock stars, a drum-set and PA system in the corner and a few tables set around the room. A lot of people do not like this particular bar and talk about it as dodgy and dingy and generally unpleasant. I don’t find it that way at all but I think my perspective may be a little tainted with nostalgia, partly because the atmosphere (and sometimes the music) reminds me a little of CJs, where I spent so many happy nights in during varsity, and partly because this is the first place I went out downtown, so it feels familiar. It probably also appeals less to those who are used to (and like) the sparkly-new, colourful world of the much younger bar-crowd. Some of the other places feel a little like a kindergarten classroom to me in terms of the range of  and the atmosphere – in comparison to Commune’s anyway. My friend and I actually stopped at Commune’s on our way home on Tuesday and the place was deserted except for the barman sitting quietly behind his bar and playing good song after good song – it was odd to be in Commune’s without anyone else there.

All of the above tend to be the haunts of the rare Saturday night when I actually make it out (and all other Saturdays for the rest of the crowd). Fridays are a whole different experience. Near one of the other branches of my school (where a good friend works) is a restaurant/bar called The Hut. At least, I don’t know if it’s actually called that or for that matter if it has an English name at all. Or any name. To us, however, it’s The Hut and it is where people generally gather after work on a Friday. Given that most of us are teaching at Hagwons, ‘after work’ tends to mean somewhere around 10 or 11pm but when that time rolls around the two back tables are pretty much reserved for the foreigner teachers. The place itself apparently used to be a restaurant specifically for men to take their mistresses, which is why there are absolutely no windows. It also appears to be the reason that the wooden poles and decorations carved around the place are somewhat… um… obvious. The main drinks of the place are Dongdongju, Soju and Beer (in large pitchers). These evenings vary in terms of who is there but some things are constant. Like the topics of conversation – school, where everyone is from, things that bother people about Korea and comparisons with home. And the fact that the Ajummas who run the place will bring out a variety of free nibbling-foods at some point. These include cucumber sticks, kimchi (unsurprisingly), other bits and pieces and, which always gets everyone particularly excited, a plate piled with salty fried eggs. There is also an actual menu and they serve all sorts of Korean food, including kimchi pizza. They also do a platter of chickens’ feet – which was ordered by one of the Koreans in the group the other day and thoroughly grossed out the foreigners. It was quite funny to watch.

I have yet to experience one of the karaoke clubs which are apparently so common here. They’re called Noraebangs. I don’t mind karaoke but these sound a little different from karaoke experiences back home. I’m used to karaoke evenings involving a sound system set up in a bar where everyone who wants to puts down his or her name on a list and picks a song and then sings. Here you apparently pay for a room where you pick songs and sing as a small group, just you and your friends, in your own room. So a little different but on my list of things to try at some point.

Ultimately, I still prefer going out to dinner at a good restaurant and an evening of good conversation and laughter to ‘real’ partying but sometimes it’s good to venture out into the somewhat unreal world of Daegu nightlife with some of the other foreigners and relive some of the crazy nights I remember from places like Grahamstown and Stellenbosch, the kind of times that only youth (or the borrowed youth of friends you’re out with) and a transient existence can create.