A combination pool hall and bar lounge with dark and sleek decor, Racks is an impressive space. The mechanical bull by the DJ booth and bar is definitely a nice touch, but getting to the hidden-in-the-wall restroom brought back nervous People 7 flashbacks. As it is, Racks is located across the bridge from the G-Plus nightclub at the south end of Shanghai’s XinTianDi, where the old CK Why Not nightclub use to occupy.
Yeah, “why not name our club CK?” That’s a real forehead slapper.
Like Volar, Racks has a sister venue in Hong Kong and also promotes a certain members-only exclusivity. But if Volar Shanghai’s experience is of any indication, that’s a policy with its obituary already written.
The China Business Network and The Shanghai Business club hosted a “Joint Happy Hour” at Racks this past Wednesday, and Elliott suggested that I attend after twittering a pseudo-invitation out of the event organizer, Christine Lu. After an afternoon of plotting world China domination with the Regional Director of admanGo, Herman Yueh, I managed to convince him to come along. After all, we’re looking for a few good men and these sort of international-minded/expat professional mixers just might be a good place to do some network recruiting, especially after one gets fed up with local talent (more on this in a future interview piece).
We arrived fashionably late. Greeted by the vast and empty black expanses of Rack’s, we almost walked right back out the door. To be sure, a splatter of people for the event were lounging in the corner, but the relative emptiness (and vastness) wasn’t particularly inspiring.
I’m glad I forced us to stay.
We ended up spending about a couple of hours there, and while we didn’t meet an army of people, I did get to network with a handful of great individuals across different fields (FMB, international trade, publishing, expat services, logistics, chemicals, contract manufacturing, architecture headhunting, etc.). With that came ample discovery and discussion of various potential business opportunities, both for admanGo and my own travel start-up, adex360. As far as I was concerned, that made for a productive evening.
I never did end up meeting Christine Lu, which I felt would’ve been common courtesy due to her and Elliott’s twittering relationship. I recall recognizing her (from her Facebook picture) early at the event but later she was nowhere to be found, ostensibly busy interviewing for her video profiles. Too bad, quite a few of us were curious to meet her.
One last thing, and I hate feeling compelled to ask this but, did anyone at the event catch those two (questionably) stunning ladies? Someone tell me those two dolls were, uh, professional models (yeah) and not, uh, the stereotypical gold-digging Chinese huntresses that prowl Shanghai wherever relatively affluent foreigners with the scent of money can be found (of which XinTianDi is not unknown for).
