The expectation would build with each stair. As the music grew louder. Entering it all midstream. Darts, cards, kibitzing. Like one long conversation. Just grab an oar. Try and keep up. An endless summer. A daily etch-a-sketch. A fresh palate. Kino Eye was the stage. Our wardrobe to Narnia. We couldn’t get enough of it. Or of each other.
“Uhsuh ohseyo!” the bartenders hollered in chorus every time one ascended those last holy steps and entered Valhalla. Striding off the luminous and humming side streets and up the dark laminated cherrywood stairs to the second floor bar…… something would always be happening. Gyu Ho would be pulling at the taps like slot levers, smiling to himself and wearing his navy blue cub scouts shirt. The air a familiar mix of lemon polish, cheap beer, and whatever was cooking in the downstairs restaurant.
When therapists ask the author to describe his “happy place” from earlier in life, he always imagines the experience of walking into that room, with a familiar crowd already formed by the foosball table, talking intensely, darts in one hand and a tentative plan for the rest of the evening in the other.
It is said that shared proximity + discretionary time is the best formula for building meaningful long-term relationships. Hence the lengthened shadow of the university years. By the time Kino Eye came around there was more to add to the equation. South Korea wasn’t Plan A or even Plan B for most who were there. The crew that assembled in Busan had crash landed. They were nearly a decade out of college and had been blessed with the first stomps of misfortune. There were failed marriages, failed professions, failed families and failed gods. We arrived with an axe to grind and in need of a sharpener. Fork tongued and cynical — searching for the grace to rediscover forgiveness and ease. We’d acquired a few of the spare parts needed to begin the reclamation process. But there was still much to do.
Everyone’s favorite bartender’s name was Gyu Ho and he was the real deal. All gentleness, thin glasses and merit badges. “Uh. Issy–Hyung…” he’d begin, handing me my $3 Cass beer mug and always addressing me with the ‘older brother’ honorific. “Are you available to hike in the mountain this weekend?” He searched the ceiling for more English. The lighting of Kino Eye was spare, relying on the glow from behind a row of colorful film images on the wall. “After hiking we will eat duck…….” Gyu Ho continued. “It is Korean tradition.” He smiled, “Then, we will drink makgeolli”. Makgeolli was a tangy high voltage rice wine that is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages in the country. Not the stuff to stumble down a cliff on. But Koreans were wizards at shoe-horning the drink into activities.
“Of course! Altitude and inebriation. What could go wrong?” I replied. He laughed, catching a few of my words but mostly reading body language.
No one ever never said “no” to Gyu Ho.
Everything we did, we all did together, and in those days we helped keep Kino Eye afloat. Our five-night a week bamboozling combined with doggedly inviting anyone we met to join us brought much of the customer base. Unfortunately the auteur theme and mellow vibe was not exactly what the expat scene was looking for at the time. Most of the westerners liked bars that reminded them of home. With Heineken bottles and DropKick Murphy’s and chalk scarred pool tables. A moody bar projecting a French film on the wall wasn’t necessarily pulling the kids in off the street by the carload.
Despite being a city of four million people, Busan was nearly a generation behind its big city brother, Seoul, in international integration and pop culture progress. When there isn’t much cultural variation, one becomes more empowered to catalyze it. Since there was no live music in the city, we started bands. Since there were few DJs, we spun our own playlists. There were no events, so we rented space and party-planned. There was no craft beer, so we started breweries. The collective expression and authoring added to the allure that anything could happen. The absence inspired innovation. We became creators and choreographers of a new reality unlike anything we’d been a part of back home.
Kinships formed fast because friends were family. You spent days with them, weekends with them, vacations with them and holidays with them. There were no alternatives. We passed out on the heated floors under Christmas trees and ate half dead squid on the jetties. We took Korean classes at the universities and practiced those skills in conversation with the cabbies. We played guitars on the boardwalks and traveled to fishing villages on the yellow sea. It was an unparalleled social accelerant. Friends were the support system and the crowd source. Eating out was cheap and by local custom, communal. While Koreans were rarely hostile and generally kind, foreigners were still a relatively uncommon siting outside of Seoul, and this further burnished an “us against the world” mentality that forged bonds and stitched community. The Korean knack for staring at foreigners heightened the sense that something unique was happening, and it just might be you.
While we were keen on adding variety to to our social menu it was only to bolster options around the edges of a bountiful country we were fully enthralled with. We partook in as much Korean culture as our local brethren allowed. A night was rarely spent absent native friends and without Korean food. We integrated as fully as we could without being conspicuous or overly opportunistic. There is no better way to learn about the strengths and weakness of ones home country than by living in another. And our educational cup overfloweth.
Years later, as the crew succumbed to increased responsibilities and child rearing it slowly disbanded, with some trickling back to Australia, Canada and the States, or some up north to Seoul. A report surfaced that Kino Eye had finally become what we all hoped it one day would: a success. I was surprised at how I suddenly felt jealous and a little sad. Kino Eye had arrived as THE place for the expat crowd and english teachers and happening locals to congregate in Busan. A place to see and be seen.
Then in 2018 another report, from the lone member of our original Busan crew still in the game, albeit hobbling noticeably from the weight of such responsibility. “Nothing perfect lasts, lads”, he wrote our group thread. Kino Eye had closed.
Sundays were the only days it was closed when we lived there. But not for us. After all, where else would we go? The owner would open it up for our little rag-tag collective and serve half price beers as we screened international films not available anywhere else in the region. We’d order takeout and spend the day feeling as close to “home” as we ever would on the peninsula. Somehow knowing days like that may never happen again.
And I’ll tell you what, they never have.
Where: Busan, South Korea, Kyungsung Dae District.
What to Drink: 4 tequila/jagger for 10,000 won. (aprox. $2.50 USD a piece).
When to go: Anytime it is open.
What to do: Kino Eye was an independent film themed bar with the best music selection in town. It had darts, foosball and if you listened close, the ghost of a boisterous go-stop game at the far corner table.
Uncharted Dives 