Beijing Bar Review: Sidd Finch's Pub
By Noelle Mateer
Image by Charles Turner
Your first week in Beijing probably sucked. This is not an easy city to figure out. It’s hard enough just to check off all the major sights without getting ripped off or scammed. It’s even harder to find a decent place to eat or drink after a long day of sight-seeing, not least because some of the best spots in town are down tiny hutongs. To really figure out Beijing, you need a friend. Sidd Finch, a fictional baseball player from the 80s, wants to be that friend.
We can explain. Adam Gottschalk, owner of Andingmen bar Ron Mexico, has a thing for naming bars using semi-obscure American sports references. Sidd Finch, meanwhile, was the subject of a bogus article in the April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. What started as an April Fool’s Day joke by an editor at a New York-based magazine is now a backpacker bar just south of Tiananmen Square.
According to sources (who are definitely not real), Sidd Finch was a freak-of-nature Harvard student, yogi and New York Mets trainee who could pitch at 168 miles per hour (that’s impossibly fast, if you’re not familiar with baseball). But according to us, the editors of That’s Beijing, Sidd Finch is a welcoming bar beside a Dashilar hostel.
It’s this very location that makes Sidd Finch’s so special. Qianmen is an area traditionally devoid of pubs, but nonetheless full of would-be drinkers – backpackers, who are lured to the area’s hostels by the prospect of staying near the Forbidden City that they’ve come to visit. The bar hopes to cater to this crowd with its friendly English-speaking staff, generous drink deals and a white board denoting shots taken per country (or, rather, by visitors representing their home countries).
Sidd Finch, 33 Meishi Jie, Qianmen, Xicheng 西城区前门煤市街33号(6313 2369)
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