Good Boonna Café: We miss bohemian charm like we miss an old-fashioned milkshake. Luckily, Boonna Café (open in two locations; Boonna 1 is on Xinle Lu, Boonna 2 on West Fuxing Lu, directly across from JZ Club) has both in spades, not to mention attentive waitstaff, a Mac G4 (how often do you see one of those in a coffee shop?), and no cell phone rings set to the blare of (bad) Korean pop. Yet.......

Stop reading. Call JZ Club. Find out how you can buy tickets for tonight's Sparrow Quartet gig. They were excellent last night at a packed Cotton Club. It's so nice to see skilled musicians (including one who many consider to be the best ever at his instrument of choice) having a great time making music together. And Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck, Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee really did seem to be having a great time......

• A book talk by Paul French at Glamour Bar: Access Asia's Paul French is a reluctant Shanghaiist reader who actually made an appearance at our recent Halloween party. Perhaps more importantly, he is an author who puts out about a book a year. His latest, Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand, is out now from Hong Kong University Press. He'll be talking about the book at Glamour Bar tomorrow at 4 pm. Here's......

Another week, another edition of Shanghaiist Reads. SH and Shanghai Talk are on the clock … SH With Shanghai fashion week in full bloom, it’s hardly surprising that the bulk of SH’s coverage is devoted to hot young designers, hot fads, and hot, hot hotness. “Design Time” is a no-frills sampling of the city’s rising fashionistas, though it’s probably safe to say that an all-gray background is hardly the most fashionable layout to accompany all......

Jon Campbell, a super nice bearded guy who we met at the Abigail Washburn/Bela Fleck gig in November, writes a column called "Foreign Devil" for the American music website PopMatters. A couple of weeks ago, he posted a story about Top Floor Circus (顶楼马戏团), a folk-cum-punk band from Shanghai. "The band was from Shanghai, for goodness' sake," Campbell writes, "and everyone in Beijing knows that good rock bands come from anywhere but Shanghai." Yes, Campbell......

Strumming her banjo and singing in English and Chinese, Abigail Washburn performed traditional American music last night at the Cotton Club with three esteemed bandmates. Playing a mix of bluegrass, country, gospel and old-time music, the former Beijing resident was joined by eight-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck who is considered the best banjo player in the world. With Casey Driessen on the fiddle and Ben Sollee on the cello, the packed club audience enjoyed a......

Last weekend was quite a stunner, what with Japanese punk, Korean horror-movie music, and a new addition to the C's revival (better than "200 people turning up to DKD wearing mp3 players and dancing in their own heads all night"); but we live in the city where 酒不醉人人自醉 ("people, rather than alcohol, enebriate") and with a population of 13 million, the party doesn't stop so easily. Read on for this week's contributions to our city's......