Sunday, September 23, 2012

Checking Out The Indie Bars


There're so many indie bars, dives and hangouts in Hongdae and Itaewon. Oddly, many of these bars have no web presence, not even in Korean. Some that do, don't even bother to update events in English, making it quite a challenge to find out what's happening for the week. For now, we depend on Groove Korea.

We knew that the 7th 2-day rock festival nicknamed 'Live Day' held earlier in the month at Nanji Hangang Park was quite awesome. Thought about going, but dates didn't fit to make that happen this year. Next to the Busan Rock Festival, I guess there's always another reason to hop back to South Korea. It'd be really helpful if we could read Korean and find out for ourselves the gigs going on in the city. Ah well. For now, we depend on our friends who are versed in the language.

There're plenty of bars doing live music that are trying to head out of typical indie area of Hongdae, and towards Yongsan-gu, like Jeonju Salon, POWWOW and Union. Had a friend who was also in Seoul for a lightning work trip. Hadn't seen him for yonks! Between crazy schedules, we somehow engineered impromptu drinks. We dragged him out of sanitary Myeondong, away from the fancy bars, and into a hole-in-the-wall Ccott Dang in Yongsan-gu off the end of Itaewon, where we chugged beers and oddly friendly shots of Jameson 12y.o.

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