Bottoms Up Club

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.

History

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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]

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At the time of the film, 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

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  1. ^ a b c AFP: "Hong Kong's most famous strip club Bottoms Up to close", Mar 22, 2004 (full article here Archived May 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine)
  2. ^ The Boston Globe: "Hong Kong feels like a movie set because it is", July 15, 2007
  3. ^ Mohan's Building (1963–2013) at gwulo.com
  4. ^ traveldk.com – Around Kowloon: Bottom's Up
  5. ^ a b c d e TIMEasia: "Night School", July 19, 2004 (archive)
  6. ^ The Sunday Times Magazine: "Jittery City – Hong Kong now the party's nearly over", October 19, 1986 (archive)
  7. ^ "DK Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide: Hong Kong", 2003, reproduced on Financial Times website
  8. ^ James Bong in Hong Kong Archived October 23, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Smokefree.com.hk Archived October 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ "Bottoms Up toasts its new location in Wan Chai". South China Morning Post. 21 May 2004.
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22°17′48″N 114°10′16″E / 22.2966°N 114.1710°E / 22.2966; 114.1710

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