Bar-hopping in the name of 'research' and PR

The new interface of hiphongkong.com is transforming from a disk of photoshop images into an actual working HTML site. It's so exciting to see an idea, a vision- materialize right before your eyes. Creating the new hiphongkong.com is no mean feat. There have been many a sleepless night- creating, revising, designing new icons, making sure links work, developing new content, writing press and media kits, doing market research, trying to build the facebook group, trying to get bloggers to link to the site, picking fonts, contacting and meeting with potential collaborators.... Not to mention the social storm associated with doing PR for the website.

Luckily, it's not always drudgery work and often times it's alot of fun! For example, one weekend I was doing research for the bar review section and figured out it was actually possible to party from Mexico (Tequila Bar Old Bailey Street), to Moscow (Balilaika Ice Vodka Bar) to Africa (Makumba) all in one Hong Kong night. After that tour, we bumped into guitarist Jose Gonzalez at this cool new place called the Cristal Bar. He was doing a show the next day at Grappa's Cellar and invited me to come. The show sent chills down my spine! 

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frVaquQ2fMo On another PR night, some friends dragged me to D-I and the Cuban Brothers were performing. The Cuban Brothers are a troupe of flashy Cuban comedians/musicians who do 70's and 80's covers interspersed with Latino bongo playing, breakdancing, stripping- even down to the Full Monty! It was highly entertaining but I think some of the Chinese girls at the front were a bit shocked. Some people, including myself thought it was brillant, but some thought Hong Kong was starving for culture when a group of chubby middle-aged men stripping naked could be thought of as 'quality' entertainment.  On yet another night, I did a pub crawl with one of my writers. Pubs are not my scene but it was all in the name of research. We drank beer, watched sports, threw peanut shells on the floor and played music on the jukebox and sang along. It was almost like being at a karaoke. Tonite I'm going to check out all the seedy and surreal bars in Wanchai- just for camp value. And the research continues... The experiences associated with creating the content for the website is invaluable. That's what gives hiphongkong's content it's personalized soul. For me hiphongkong is not just a job, it's my passion for bringing authentic Hong Kong experiences to my readers.