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Once up there with some of the best-known pleasure zones in Asia, today, Lan Kwai Fong is a shadow of its former self. Rocketing rents, cash-cow convenience stores and coronavirus have ravaged business in the district. Can Hong Kong's former party-central ever get its mojo back? Adam Wright investigates.
Lan Kwai Fong was one of the world’s great nightlife areas when I arrived in Hong Kong in 1995.These were the heady years before Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, and the drinking and dining district that had sprouted up in two run-down Central backstreets was at its peak.
Tourists and locals alike thronged bars such as California, Club 97, Yelts Inn and Le Jardin. And they came in such huge numbers that on New Year’s Eve in 1992, a stampede on the jam-packed streets left 21 people crushed to death in a crowd estimated at up to 20,000 strong.
Now, the district is a shadow of its former self and the roaring ‘90s a distant memory. A visit to the district during happy hour on May 1 – two days after bars were allowed to re-open after a five-month shutdown – found about a quarter of ground-floor venues shuttered and the survivors lucky to have more than one table occupied.
The loss of business caused by the double whammy of the 2019 protests and the government-ordered shutdowns during the ongoing pandemic were the final nails in the coffin for many venues, but Lan Kwai Fong had been losing its lustre for years before that.
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What went wrong?
Many former venue operators and industry veterans we spoke to recently all pointed to the same problems: the proliferation of 7-Eleven outlets, competition from newer nightlife areas such as SoHo, the construction site resulting from the redevelopment of California Tower from 2011 to 2015, the anti-government protests and the pandemic – plus, the endless increases in rent.
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/05/16/is-the-party-finally-over-for-hong-kongs-lan-kwai-fong/