Check Yourself Before You Rec Yourself at the Rec Room on Sanlitun Houjie

Rec Room is attempting to throw down a little Dada-esque flair in the dirty Sanlitun Houjie area, known for seedier dance clubs like Kai Bar and the ever-so-sinful Kokomo. They have kicked off their stint in a cleaned up space on the fourth floor, having house and techno nights in a building known for the most detestable EDM music imaginable.

So the big question is: Can you polish up this turd of a space enough to make it a desirable option for people wanting the contemporary cool of Dada? This is the location where Beijing’s nightlife was born, even though the years have led this zone to descend slowly into a chaotic whirlwind of fake booze and cheesy tunes.

The space has been renovated nicely, with cool visuals on the walls. The videos being projected reminded us of the scene in Hackers when Angelina Jolie is implanting a virus somewhere in a system’s mainframe. Lucky for them we think Hackers is a pretty rad movie, but the look is still a little dated. The sound system is good for the venue size, and we believe the plan is to offer a mixed genre program of electronic dance music and it’s great they won’t be complete fascists about the type of music they’ll be blasting.

The drinks are all pretty standard, but tagged with lame prices in our opinion. The mojito (RMB 48) was way too sweet, probably because the bartenders here haven’t evolved beyond the backpacker tastes of 10-plus years ago. We felt the whole concept of the club to be a bit lackluster, but we are eager to see what they will do in the coming months to prove us wrong.

Rec Room
Fri-Sat 8pm-4am. 4/F, Tongli Studios, Sanlitun Houjie, Chaoyang District (6413 1019) 
朝阳区三里屯后街同里4层

More stories by this author here.

Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com

photo: Kipp Whittaker