Would the refs have appeared better on a bigger screen?

Shanghaiist went to Big Bamboo early this morning to watch a ref from Uruguay dominate the World Cup match between the U.S. and Italy. Shortly before the 3 a.m. match time, we plopped ourselves down on stools upstairs with a prime view of the bar's only big screen TV. That's when we were told that they were closing the upstairs part of the bar and asking everyone to watch the match downstairs, because they wanted to create an "atmosphere." Um, OK. Who wants to watch the World Cup on a big screen anyway?

This seems to be a good time to ask Shanghaiist readers: Where is the best place in town to watch the World Cup? (Conversely, some readers might be interested to learn the best places in town to completely avoid the World Cup.)

[An aside: We left the bar at around 4:50 am and it was already light out. Not just a little bit, either. It was definitely daytime. Aside from the large group of joggers (!) we saw on an otherwise deserted Nanjing Xi Lu, who really needs sunlight at that hour? Let's start the push now for daylight savings time in China. Maybe we'll get it before the Olympics in 2008? Nah. Who are we kidding? We don't even have time zones yet.]

And now, some localized World Cup links:

• The 150 Chinese reporters covering the World Cup in Germany don't have access to many of the top teams and personalities. Is that stopping them? Of course not. Many have simply started making up the news.
• A professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wrote on her blog an essay entitled "Why Chinese people are not good at football."
• Esquire's Chinese magazine has a blog at Sina, and at first glance you might think the magazine has caught World Cup fever. In fact, the mag is simply hot for models playing soccer in the mud while wearing underwear.
• A real estate company in Jiangsu has a similar approach: Hiring "football babes" to help sell property.