Shuang Cheng Street has seen its share of combat. In the 1970s, US soldiers on leave from the front lines of the Vietnam war would head to its cluster of boy meets-bargirl nightclubs when in Taipei. They joked that the boisterous pubs were the only place to find a fight in Taiwan.
'Back in those days, just about the only places to go for just drinking were the girlie bars,' recalls Dirk Bennett, an American who lived in Taipei for more than 30 years. 'So, it was natural for the first pubs to open in this area.'
In the decades since the end of the war, Shuang Cheng and its neighbouring alleys have weathered a steep drop in business, noise complaints from residents and an ill-fated effort to reinvent the strip's seedier side. Instead, most of the bars closed, leaving boarded-up holes and just 20 or 30 hard-boiled survivors.
It's no wonder the Shuang Cheng bar district is best known as Taipei's 'combat zone'.
But a cluster of cosy international neighbourhood bars has risen from the rubble. These are places where hosts and their repeat customers, still largely from overseas, take pride in knowing one another's names.
Granted, the seedier side persists - bargirls from places such as Volcano and Miami Pub have been known to launch skirmishes at passing men - but these days it is more a sideshow than the main event.
