Beirut's nightlife is back - and not everyone is happy

16 June 2008

BEIRUT: Saturday nights in this vibrant city are a spectacle, an all-night display of Lebanon's hospitality, liberalized culture and astonishingly cosmopolitan people. The different neighborhoods and various clubs and bars that populate them present something for almost everyone.

Nejmeh Square, in the heart of the reconstructed city-center, is a great place to start the night. The surrounding cafes offer a relaxing, family-friendly atmosphere, where tourists from around the region (particularly the Gulf) sit observing and embracing the unique ambiance of Downtown Beirut.

Locals young and old sip beer or coffee and smoke narguileh. On this particular night, the excitement of the 2008 European Football Championships engulfs the square, with several big screen televisions set up outside. Children play soccer next to the clock tower as people, mostly couples, walk hand-in-hand and admire the large and lively crowd.

While Nejmeh Square offers a more tamed setting, wilder versions of Beirut's nightlife are also to be found.

C-Lounge, located on the rooftop of the Hard Rock Cafe on the Corniche, was transformed into a one-woman table-dance show on Friday. A customer explained that it was her bachelorette party.

The Corniche offers several rooftop bars and lounges, most notably Bubbles and C-Lounge. These venues are relatively upscale establishments that offer breathtaking views of the Mediterranean, and the hills of greater Beirut, which at night shimmer as though populated by thousands of fireflies.

Every Saturday night, the narrow and scenic streets of Gemmayzeh and other parts of Achrafieh fill with energetic young people, eager to hang out and socialize until light beckons a new day.

For many Lebanese living abroad, it is the distant echoes of their laughs that bring them back every summer.

"I live in London but always come back to Beirut for the summer," a female partygoer said at Skybar in Downtown Beirut. "This is still the place to party," she added.

"Even during the [2006] war [with Israel]," she adds, " many people moved to the mountains and brought the nightlife with them. On Saturday night we still went to the village to dance."

She believes this type of resilience and defiance is what fuels Beirut's incredible nightlife.

On Monot Street in Achrafieh an endless stream of people meander down the road, gradually diverging and dispersing into the various nightclubs that are located on it.

Of course, not everything about Beirut's nightlife is positive. In Gemmayzeh, Beirut's answer to New York's hip Alphabet city, the reveling has infuriated many residents.

Fed up with late-night noise spilling out of bars and clubs and infringing on their sleep, they have started a small uprising, complete with water bombings of bar patrons and even the occasional egging.

This has not deterred loyal partygoers, who last Saturday night were out in full force, mingling on Gouraud Street and blasting their car radios louder then the bars they were parked next to.

When asked which is the best bar in Gemmayzeh, a group of rowdy teenagers conspicuously rattled off the names of three clubs believed to be owned by the same shareholders.

However, they quickly added that no Saturday night in Beirut is complete until you've headed to B0-18.

This remarkable coffin-like structure is submerged into a cement lot in Karantina.

The club stays open until 7:00 am and is therefore highly descriptive of the capital's nightlife: never-ending.