Gettin' pseudo-ghetto fabulous at the Hong Kong

We suspect that the owners of the Hong Kong in Harvard Square intended their establishment to be a classy bar where pretentious Harvard students would go to debate the finer points of fluid mechanics over a glass of cognac. When that idea didn't work, the owners turned it into a ghetto-booty dance club sports bar with a Chinese restaurant _ and this concept works fabulously.

From the outside, the Hong Kong is at its sketchiest. With a half-broken neon sign and an intimidating bouncer, the Disneyland-goes-to-China architecture makes the bar look more like a strip-club than a dance club. The inside is a little more classy _ though some patrons didn't get the "no sucky-sucky" memo.

On the first floor is a Chinese restaurant that offers your typical late-night MSG fare. The menu was lengthy but the dishes were standard _ one step up and a cup of grease less than Kee Kar Lau. Instead of beginning your evening here, think about stopping here on the way out. The restaurant stays open half an hour later than the club, and trust us, the food will taste better after a few scorpion bowls.

Head up to the second floor if you need a few drinks before you start bumping and grinding. This is the bar floor, featuring high-stools and tables for setting your scorpion bowls on, four televisions to catch the game, two dart boards (not exactly the smartest thing to put around drunk people), and our favorite, the Keno monitor for the Viagra-hounds who still like a night on the town.

In case you haven't already figured it out, a scorpion bowl is the drink of choice at the Hong Kong. Not only does the sweet punch pack a punch, it gives you little plastic animals to play with throughout the evening. The beer is reasonably priced ($4 on average), and the selection is standard _ a couple of imports, a couple of domestic, and 12 on tap. Get your draft beer here, as the small third floor bar offers only bottles and hard liquor.

If you're looking for the trailer park girls who go 'round the outside, then the third floor should be your destination. This tiny room tries really hard to be a pseudo-ghetto dance club, and it's halfway successful. 94.5-esque music, fake fog, and a double-sundancer set a great atmosphere, but the club can't escape the fact that its patrons are white Harvard students and sketchy 35-year old men.

The mixed crowd is actually one of the club's best attributes. At the Hong Kong, everyone fits in, whether you are wearing black pants and a sequined shirt that barely covers your nipples or a sweater-vest and pleated khakis. (Authors' note: please do not mix and match these wardrobe items.) When we first entered the third floor, we were greeted by two thirty-something men doing the robot to Ice Cube's "You Can Do It." The dancing _ and the hairstyles _ only got weirder from there.

Don't go to the third floor before 11:30 unless you are looking for that high school dance feel _ you know, when everyone stands in the corners of the room waiting for the other people to make the first dance move. After 12, however, a line to enter reaches down the stairs, and the younger, more glittery crowd gets the party started.

Seeing that we have even less rhythm than Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance, the traveling lushes were looking for a distraction, which we found when Japanese anime porn was turned on the two televisions mounted to the walls. Nothing spices up your evening like "Fighting the Satanic Sex Monster: Volume II," which we must say had excellent character development.

Despite its pseudo-ghettoness, the Hong Kong is a brilliant marketing strategy. Unlike the nacho cheese dispensers in the campus commons, this place caters to a variety of palettes, from the college students who are looking for some wild dancing to the 20-somethings looking to chill at a bar to the 30-something men looking to get with the younger generation (which, they do not seem to realize, will not happen if you try to freak girls from behind). Having a restaurant on the first floor is pure genius, because what tastes better than fried, greasy Chinese food after a night of drinking?

The only real downside to the Hong Kong is that the proliferation of security staff makes it feel more like a high school dance. Aside from that, the venue is a great place to go with a group of your friends, or with a date to whom you don't really want to have to talk.

As senior Neorge Gitzburg put it, "yo, da fuckin shit at Hong Kong is da bizzi-biz-omb! I got my grub on, and that shit didn't know what hit it. It was like, 'what if my bitches be Chinese food' and I be like, 'DAMN, I'm eatin' you BIYATCH!' "

"You know what I'm sayin'," he added.