Bottoms Up Club

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Bottoms Up Club
Bottoms Up Club
Address14 Hankow Road (1971–2004)
37–39 Lockhart Road (2004–2009)
Hong Kong
China
Coordinates 22°17′48″N114°10′16″E / 22.2966°N 114.1710°E / 22.2966; 114.1710
Type Nightclub
OpenedMarch 1971 (1971-03)
ClosedJuly 2009 (2009-07)

The Bottoms Up Club was a girlie bar in Hong Kong. The bar became notorious for its appearance in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun . [1] [2] The interior of the club evoked the interior of the club as seen in the film.

Contents

History

The Club opened in the basement of Mohan's Building [3] at 14 Hankow Road [4] in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, in March [5] or May [1] 1971. One of its early managers was Pat Sephton, [5] [6] a former Windmill model. [7] A 1994 court ruling requested it to remove its naked-buttocks neon sign, and to have its naked dancers wear bras or negligees. The Tsim Sha Tsui location closed in April 2004. Rising rents were cited as possible reasons for the closure. [1] [5] The Club re-opened at the first floor of David House, 37–39 Lockhart Road in Wan Chai [8] [9] in May 2004, [10] this time mainly as a sports bar, with one of the original bars being recreated in a back room. [5]

In July 2009 the club closed down.[ citation needed ]

At the time of The Man with the Golden Gun, the club was located in Tsim Sha Tsui, on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. This gave rise to a movie blooper when Bond, played by Roger Moore, is picked up outside the club by British agents posing as police, and is told he is being taken to a police station on the Kowloon side (of Hong Kong Harbour), when he is in fact already there.

According to a former employee, while the film features footage of the exterior of the Club, the scenes inside the Club were actually filmed in a studio in the United Kingdom, where it had been recreated. [5]

The club also appeared in the 1994 Wong Kar-wai movie Chungking Express . Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin have drinks there before going to a hotel room.

The club appears also in the book Zero Minus Ten by Raymond Benson (1997) where James Bond meets Sunni Pei (consume girl and striptease dancer), a member of the Hong Kong mafia "The Triads".

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Hong Kong's most famous strip club Bottoms Up to close". AFP. 22 March 2004. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013.
  2. "Hong Kong feels like a movie set because it is". The Boston Globe . 15 July 2007.
  3. "Mohan's Building (1963–2013)". gwulo.com.
  4. "Around Kowloon: Bottom's Up". traveldk.com.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Night School". TIMEasia. 19 July 2004. Archived from the original on 23 July 2009.
  6. "Jittery City – Hong Kong now the party's nearly over". The Sunday Times Magazine. 19 October 1986. Archived from the original on 23 November 2008.
  7. "DK Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide: Hong Kong". Financial Times . 2003.
  8. "James Bond in Hong Kong". Archived from the original on 23 October 2009.
  9. "Smokefree Hong Kong". Smokefree.com.hk. Archived from the original on 20 October 2008.
  10. "Bottoms Up toasts its new location in Wan Chai". South China Morning Post . 21 May 2004.