SmartBeijing.com Shutters After Three Years

SmartBeijing.com suddenly shuttered its website Tuesday morning after three years of coverage of music, nightlife, and other hutong hipsterdom.

A message on the site cited "the cool circumstance of modern love, warfare, and business is you've got to make money to survive. And we didn't really make any."

The duo of Morgan Short and Josh Feola made the Gulou area and the Beijing inner city's entertainment scene their own personal journalistic fortress. Their coverage of the local music scene was unrivalled. And you were guaranteed to laugh out loud on just about every visit, whether it was Morgan's description of Pangu Plaza's free-flow Boston lobster brunch, or his rundown of participating in Great Leap Brewing's Karl Long Challenge from just last week, or columnists like the Vagitarian, it was always worth the visit.

Short had no further comment beyond what's posted on the site. Here's the full text:

"For the past three years or so, it's been our pleasure at SmartBeijing.com to cover Beijing music, culture, nightlife, dining, drinking, esoteric noise art, and giant fucking hamburgers.

"Today, we say goodbye.

"Regrettably, the cool circumstance of modern love, warfare, and business is you've got to make money to survive. And we didn't really make any. Alas. Maybe we should have tried to sell ads? Damn. Hindsight, 20/20.

"Of course, we'd like to extend our thanks to our sister site SmartShanghai.com for taking a chance on the project here in Beijing and letting us write about whatever we wanted to write about. They could have inflicted more editorial control on us and they didn't. They could have turned the tap off long ago but they didn't. Respect.

"So this is it then. Words of love and thanks: Thanks to all the freelancer writers past and present who helped Josh and myself pad our voices out a bit -- Ross, Kendra, Connor, Dann, Maya, Aurelien, Ian, Phoebe, Jonathan, DJ, Zhu Wenbo, Shanti, Jessica, Jay Mark, and anyone I've else I've missed. Thanks to the indomitable Velvet D., who was a big reason why we lasted as long as we did.

"Finally, thanks and love to our readers. Speaking on behalf of Josh, we hoped we made a bit of a positive impact on your cultural life here in Beijing, whether it was through Josh's brilliant music and arts coverage, myself eating gross things, or any of the aforementioned freelancers who lent their experience and voice to the mix.

"Thanks and goodbye. 'Twas an honor.

"Morgan
("Editor")

"P.S. If you see me in one of Beijing's fine, fine drinking or dining establishments, feel free to say hi and buy me a drink. Lord knows I'm not getting them for free anymore, riding that lifestyle journalism teet. The indignity. Oh, the indignity.

"P.S.S. You can get in touch with me if you want at my private email (AyatolahShakira@gmail.com) or Josh at his (LeanTimes@gmail.com)."

Beijing is a poorer place without a hard-working, hardcore, niche site like SmartBeijing.com. Brothers, we'll miss your fine work. The article archive is here. Parent site SmartShanghai.com will continue, but we don't give a shit about Shanghai anyway.

Image: SmartBeijing.com