A lot has changed since Frank Siegel poured the first drink at Frank's Place, Beijing's first non-hotel bar, 16 years ago.

Located near Gongti's east gate, Frank's Place quickly became a hotspot for foreigners to spend fistfuls of Foreign Exchange Certificates the sole form of currency permissible for expat use back then.

"When I opened Frank's Place, it was a slam dunk. We got busy and stayed busy for about five years, until there were other options," says the 50-year-old American from Newcastle, Pennsylvania.

Classically modeled after Cheers, the mainstay of the Americana dcor was the automobile license plate collection adorning the walls. It began when one patron donated his Texan plate and grew until the walls were covered with plates from most of the 50 US states, plus a few European countries.

Siegel first came to China in 1981 to work for the oil exploration company Geosource, Inc.

"Back then, the only places to go were hotel bars, which weren't that attractive," Siegel says. One night, while bellied up to one such bar with a few foreign friends complaining about Beijing's watering-hole drought, Siegel decided to make a splash by opening his own nightspot.

Beijing hasn't been the same since.

It started as a trickle, with Poachers opening in 1993, Jazz-Ya arriving in '94 and Minders and Nashville debuting a year later. From there, what would become Sanlitun bar district pushed northward. Its takeoff at the end of the decade opened the nightlife floodgates, and the trickle of non-hotel bars turned into the deluge that has set the city awash with tipple.

Susannah's and Moonhouse arrived in Haidian in '93, giving students one more way to thank their parents for shelling out the money for their study abroad experience by raising their glasses to toast their folks before getting wasted instead of studying.

Houhai began to build up following the arrival of No Name Bar in 2000. This district saw a surge during 2004, when SARS led to a preference for outdoor seating.

Next came the Super Bar Street, followed by the sleepier Yuan Dynasty Bar Street. Throughout this development, plenty of isolated nightspots sprung up to fill in the geographic cracks between districts.

Today, there are 278 bars registered with the Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce. However, the real number is anybody's guess, as there are more than 200 bars in Sanlitun alone.

This proliferation has given rise to the emergent "divide and conquer" mantra of Beijing's maturing bar industry, and Beijing's barflies today drink from an increasingly diverse fountain of watering holes.

"The bar scene as it is now is more dynamic; People have more choices," Siegel says. "Individuals, they see a gap in the market where they think they can do well, and they jump in."

Specialization might give bar owners an edge, but Siegel believes that taking the niche-marketing trend too far could result in flops.

"How far can you push the envelope? You've got things here that we never heard of anywhere.

"How defined can you get until there aren't enough people interested in that even to support the business? Pretty soon, we'll have a Peruvian-Albanian fusion place," he says, laughing.

It took only two years for Siegel to make back the money he spent on the $100,000 joint venture nearly two years sooner than the industry standard.

He sold Frank's Place in 1999 to return stateside with his Chinese wife, Jennifer, of Beijing.

In 2002, Siegel and his wife returned to the capital city to provide their children Audrey, 12, and Frank Jr, 14 with a bilingual education and to break into the restaurant business.

"As I've matured, I've become more interested in coffee and wine," said Siegel, who describes wine as one of his hobbies, which may or may not bloom into a profitable venture.

In 1996, he opened the John Bull Pub currently being reinvented as Tim's Texas BBQ. He opened the first Sequoia Caf in Ritan in 2004 and the second in Sanlitun last year.

Frank's Place closed in 2005 with the demolition of Sanlitun South Street, but was resurrected a year later in Trio an establishment which takes its namesake from the fact that it warehouses a mnage of three nightspots under one roof.

So, what does the man who started it all see for the future of Beijing's bar scene?

According to its godfather: "It's going to settle down. It'll eventually go the direction of other Asian cities."

While Beijing's maturing bar scene is going through its turbulent teen years, Siegel has grown up and moved on to the restaurant business.

"There's a lot more opportunities for people like us in food," he says.

For him, it no longer matters if the cup of nightlife options overflows for Beijing's boozers, because his plate is already full serving the city's growing glut of gastronomes.

(China Daily 01/18/2007 page18)