some guy in lebanon

*welcome internet – this is my most trafficked page, largely because people want to know about BO18. This post was a fairly trite review, meant for my grandparents… perhaps you’d be interested in some of my better posts about Lebanon and the Middle East:

• A Thousand Words and Some Discussion
• The First 87 Days in Lebanon
• Eight Months in Beirut
• “Why I’m Here” and Other Beirut Stories
• Springtime in Beirut, or “*sigh*… c’est la vie…”
• My Dear Lebanon: Epilogue
• Captains Cabin: “Where the Present Catches Up to the Past in a Glass”

Hope you enjoy! Now, to the post…*

BO18  – for the un-initiated, it’s sort of the peak of Lebanon’s “stay out as late as possible while really not having a care in the world” culture. Designed like a coffin, it’s below ground, but with a roof that retracts up ‘on the fly’ so that the cramped and claustrophobic atmosphere suddenly transforms into an incredible outdoor nightclub. And we’re not talking about some little carbon-fiber roof – we’re talking about an enormous steel-girder thing.

This is a picture of what it looks like “above ground” that I found on Google – imagine walking down into that thing… filled with people and ridiculously loud music and expensive vodka, and those middle panels just suddenly “psshhh” lifting into the sky! It’s nuts.

This is the roof retracting/retracted (again, not my pics – they’re from Google)

BO18 is also the Lebanese way of deciding that, “it being only 4:30 in the morning, let us leave this expensive club with all these people… and continue on our way, in order dance to the loudest imaginable music at the expensive club with those people.” In other words, “let’s go.”

Turning our attention to last night, the evening was spent traipsing around Achrafiyeh, Downtown and then out the highway to the infamous BO, first at dinner at I think a restaurant called “Champagne” or something… then to White on top of the Nahar building where I got the following photos with my phone (which is why you can’t really see anything in the second picture, but luckily the first was snapped just as a strobe light went off):

Definitely a crazy night… Happy Birthday to Omar – I don’t really go out and hit the town very often but last night was definitely a good time.

…And then next weekend will be a return to the equally swanky Music Hall when Nick’s sister Kaiulani arives. Will be sure to take lots of pictures for the folks back home.

Another another note – I’ve resolved myself to start writing more often… even if it’s boring non-political posts about the occasional late-night crazyness.