30 years ago the Hong Kong was my hangout, and it hasn’t changed much since then. The dining area was downstairs and completely unknown to our crowd, The popular competitive drink, of course, was the Zombie. When the occasion This I tended to avoid these juvenile drinking contests and usually sat quietly Of course, eventually I got busted. Maybe it was the 35-foot bright So Friday night should be full of memories for me, as I try to order The Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square, site of the sure-to-be fabulous kick-off party for BloggerCon, has a long and storied past as a dark and private rock under which Harvard students can creep when they need to disappear without … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/restKong.jpg\")
The
\n Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square, site of the sure-to-be fabulous
\n kick-off party<\/a> for BloggerCon, has a long and storied past as a dark
\n and private rock under which Harvard students can creep when they need
\n to disappear without leaving campus, as well as a bottomless bowl of
\n greasy faux-Chinese cuisine and high-octane, bizarrely garnished rum-based
\n drinks.<\/p>\n
\n who either ordered take-out or, more often, retired to the bar at the
\n top of a narrow, smoky, multiply-twisted stairway lined with red velvet
\n and gold gilt. I remember that during my undergraduate days my regular
\n refreshment was something called a
\n "Virago
\n Smirk",
\n which consisted of
\n 4 kinds
\n of Rum mixed
\n with sugar
\n and coconut milk and served in a seemingly real split coconut. I went
\n there often enough that I was considered a regular, and if Jimmy the
\n bartender was working my Smirk was on the bar before I had time to sit down.<\/p>\n
\n called for a macho drink-off, rounds of Zombies were ordered. The trick
\n was to drink fast, in which case you could get quite a few of the little
\n suckers down before the motor control began to fade. For the truly ambitious,
\n assaults on the legendary Scorpion Bowl Record were not unknown. <\/p>\n
\n amazing piece of work was designed to be consumed by a MINIMUM of
\n 4 functioning
\n adults, and featured chunks of suspiciously difficult to identify fruit
\n floating in a huge bowl of rum, clever ceramic miniature palm trees
\n and grass-skirted hula girls watching the action from around the rim,
\n and a small reservoir of 191 proof rum aflame with a cold blue chem-lab
\n glow in the cone of a tiny ceramic volcano in the middle of the rum pond.
\n Although
\n most
\n people
\n could
\n finish one of them, I believe Howard Kaiser is the
\n only
\n person
\n I saw
\n finish
\n a second,
\n and
\n Howard
\n was
\n a 350-pound
\n speed freak, so he hardly counts.<\/p>\n
\n at the bar with my Virago Smirk. At the time, I was working part-time
\n for the University, driving one of those cute red Harvard Shuttle Buses
\n on its appointed rounds around campus. Almost every night I would take
\n my "dinner break" at the Hong Kong, sucking down Virago Smirks and chatting
\n up Jimmy about the issues of the day. After three or four of the delicious
\n coconut drinks it was back out on the mean streets of Cambridge to finish
\n my route.<\/p>\n
\n red Harvard Shuttle Bus continually parked askew in 3 or 4 of the resident-only
\n spaces on Bow Street outside of the restaurant that gave me away. I responded
\n to my removal from the Shuttle Drivers Corps with a shrug. More time
\n to spend at the bar, I figured.<\/p>\n
\n my first Virago Smirk in 25 years. I hope some of the other attendees
\n will stop me if, after a few of those delicious suckers, I try to drive
\n home in a Shuttle Bus.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"