Daily Blog
Friday, 04 September 2009 04:09
Written by Justin Fischer

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You're not fooling anyone. Every single one of you has been to at least one of the bars on this strip. Maybe you just moved here, needed a cold one and didn't know any better. Maybe you stumbled in on a drunken lark at blue o'clock in the morning. Maybe you were a regular at Goodfellas during it's golden age, when Tony Zhou ran the place and kept the riffraff out. Or maybe you knew damn well what you were looking for when you crossed the threshold of Nice Time or Pretty Woman. Whatever your excuse, after that first visit you either subsequently shuddered in disgust every time you passed this seedy little enclave or you became entirely too comfortable in its environs.

But it's with a heavy heart that I report to you this morning that the Julu strip, as we know it, is no more. Those five or six neon-spangled hovels are now nothing but hollow shells wallowing in clouds of asbestos dust. Look closely at the picture and you'll see that some of these establishments did not go down without a fight. I asked the migrant workers who were gutting Goodfellas what had happened and they weren't much help. "They just pay me to haul stuff away, don't ask me," one of them told me. But my guess, this has something to do with Expo-related initiatives to 'clean up' the city. Either that, or rival seedy bar strip Tongren Lu conspired against them somehow in an effort to corner the pathetic old sexpat market.

 What the future holds for the Julu strip is anybody's guess. An all new slew of slightly less seedy bars perhaps? Not likely. My guess is it will become a row of DVD shops and perhaps a few clothing boutiques named after Hollywood movie stars.  

Julu Lu is survived by Velvet Lounge which appears to be unaffected by the loss, if not completely ecstatic.

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