Two foreigners walk into a bar — and they buy it!
On the way to interview soon-to-be-former Bliss owner Barry Smit on Tuesday, I saw two men gazing at the mural painted on the wall outside the building. I blurted out, “Are you guys going to buy Bliss?” It turns out that is exactly what they were doing. During my interview with Smit, I watched them sign the papers.
News that Smit was leaving Taipei and was going to sell — or close — Bliss had been weighing heavily on many in the foreigner music scene. Smit, who used to play in a rock band in his native Holland, has spent much of his adult life involved in either the hospitality industry or the art world. When he blended the two by making Bliss into a live-music venue, he had both sensibilities in mind. And in so doing, he made Bliss one of the few music venues in the city that didn’t take a cut from admission charges.
“If I give all the money to the bands, the bands will do their best to bring the crowd,” Smit says. This strategy made Bliss, formerly called Chocolate and Love, into a place loved by musicians and fans alike. “That’s true,” Smit says, “but all truths are temporary.” Running a bar has taken a toll on him. “For the last year I’ve had no creative energy … It’s good that it has new blood, a fresh start — I was falling asleep here.”
That new blood comes in the form of Travis Bannert and Oliver Campbell. Bannert hails from Edmonton, Alberta, and has a real down-to-earth friendliness. “The first time I came to Bliss,” he says, “I was like ‘Wow! I didn’t know a bar like this existed in Taiwan.’” He told his friends, “I want to open a place just like this.” So when he saw an ad for Bliss on Facebook, he jumped at the chance.
They don’t have huge plans to change it: “We love this place, the general feel, and want to keep the core idea,” Bannert says. They’ll try some new things on weekdays, and Smit is helping them work on improving the sound. The biggest initial change will be to hire a sound engineer who will be paid for out of the cover charge from the first five people to come see the band. The rest of the cover will still go directly to the musicians.
“I sleep better at night because I know I’m leaving it in good hands,” Smit says, clapping a beaming Bannert on the shoulder.
Smit will remain in the hospitality business. He and wife bought “a huge piece of land, with a sea view, mountains in the back” in Taitung two years ago, Smit says, and they plan on making it a “place where people can escape the hectic city, get back to nature.” There is already a well for water, and they will develop the land “fully ecologically, recycle the water, grow our own plants, use alternative energy,” Smit says. Years drop off of his face as he talks about it: “Taitung is the forgotten county of Taiwan. I’ve seen on my travels in Thailand how things get going over time.”
“I see this move as the next stage in my evolution in Taiwan.”
There will be a weekend-long farewell party, starting at 8pm tonight with Pan Africana. Whacked-out cover band The Originals open the show for the “Bliss Closing-Down Party All-Star Jam,” which starts tomorrow at 10pm. Bliss is at 148, Xinyi Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市信義路四段148號). Call (02) 2702-1855 for more information or go to www.myspace.com/blisslivehouse to see a schedule of upcoming performances. For updates on Smit’s venture in Taitung visit Bliss’ Facebook page. Entrance to Bliss is free. Cover to see the music upstairs tonight is NT$200 (free Hippie Party after 1am). There is no cover charge for tomorrow’s farewell party performances.
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
On a hillside overlooking Taichung are the remains of a village that never was. Half-formed houses abandoned by investors are slowly succumbing to the elements. Empty, save for the occasional explorer. Taiwan is full of these places. Factories, malls, hospitals, amusement parks, breweries, housing — all facing an unplanned but inevitable obsolescence. Urbex, short for urban exploration, is the practice of exploring and often photographing abandoned and derelict buildings. Many urban explorers choose not to disclose the locations of the sites, as a way of preserving the structures and preventing vandalism or looting. For artist and professor at NTNU and Taipei
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
RSS