My first day in Beirut was unusually long, lasting from 9am – 5am, beginning with a walk in the neighborhood, a 3 hour lunch at Chez Sami in Jounieh north of Beirut with Haitham and his sweet friends from Kuwait, a visit to see the Lady of Lebanon in Harissa --the shrine built to honor the Virgin Mary complete with an enormous statue towering over the city like an ancient deity, dinner at Centrale, drinks at Avant Garde—the newest and most explicitly gay club in the center of the city, then on to Skybar and then finally B0-18, which is listed at #13 on the list of the world’s top 100 clubs for its extraordinary location and design. (http://www.worldsbestbars.com/top-100.htm)

According to a profile on the club's architect Bernard Khoury, published in OUT OF BEIRUT, "the club is situated across from a location in Beirut that was the site of many horrendous tortures during the civil war and is redolent with a ghostly presence. Previously a refugee camp, first for Armenians in the 20's and then for Palestinians and Kurds, many of whom were massacred by the Christian Phalangist Militia in 1976, the site was a desolate vacant lot rumoured to contain mass graves for the many 'missing'. The club was conceived as a bunker-like structure, set deep into the ground so that no superstructure is visible. Cars arrive from the adjacent motorway and park around the site in a semicircular arrangement. The entrance down dark metal stairs brings to mind the entrance to a tomb. The interiors are furnished with chairs lined with purple velvet and open like coffins. A spectacular sliding roof opens the club to the night sky and further enhances the idea of some Dantesque underworld in which dancing bodies find escape in a delirious present."

from OUT OF BEIRUT, published in 2006 by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK, and distributed by DAP, New York. It provides an excellent overview of the thriving intellectual, artistic and design community in Beirut during the post-war years.