Seoul Subway Randomizer Adventure #2: Hakdong Station

Brotherood Kitchen.

For my second Seoul Subway Randomizer Adventure, I stayed closer to home — so close, in fact, that I never actually rode the subway. On a holiday Wednesday, my Korean friend and I set out from Gangnam, which is home, and walked over to Brotherhood Kitchen for what they call “American Home Food” and I call soul food.

Now, I’m no expert on either soul food or Southern food, but what they cook up at Brotherhood is at least tasty. We had the fried chicken and waffles, which is salty and sweet and decadent, with a weird gooey cheese sauce on top. But I think I liked the roast chicken with chili and yellow rice better.

Chicken and waffles.
Roast chicken with chili and yellow rice.

Little houses on a hill

We headed up the hill that starts behind Gangnamdae-ro, an area you’d think I’d know pretty well, but I don’t yet. It’s upscale, with stylish cafes, little shops, and here and there actual detached houses that look like they’ve been around for a while.

One of the most interesting of these houses, just past Eonju Station, is the Nonhyeon flagship store of Gentle Monster, whose sunglasses are amazing, and whose stores are more amazing than the sunglasses. The store in Nonhyeon has an actual ship attached to it, and the interior contains an astonishing array of strange art machines. And some sunglasses, including a line in partnership with Tilda Swinton and some glasses they did with Hood By Air, which is pretty impressively hip company to be keeping. I tried on many a pair, but I still haven’t found the Gentle Monster pair that calls to me. Someday, though, I will get a pair. Surprisingly, while they’re not cheap, they don’t cost any more than a pair of Ray Bans or Oakleys.

A little house.
Get it? Flagship? Gentle Monster in Nonhyeon.
Yes, that’s a pencil.

Saddles and chairs

Hakdong Station.

We made our way to Hakdong Station, and from there we followed Hakdong-no to Nonhyeon Station. The whole stretch is full of furniture stores on both sides — not the typical Korean places, but the sorts of places where you can get, say, hideous French-inspired kitsch for $10,000, or a coffee table by Jean-Paul Gaultier. There’s some good stuff in there too, and not all of it at insane prices, but it’s certainly high-end. Still, it’s considerably more stylish and diverse than the sort of stuff you find in the big department stores here.

If I had a lot of money to spend making a very large apartment look like a hip urban hotel, I would come here. Realistically, though, if I’m gonna spend a lot on furniture in Korea, it will probably be on very Korean furniture, like an antique chest of drawers or something. To me, that’s exciting and different. My Korean companion, though, was fascinated by a display that looked like something my Grandma Hannah or my Aunt Belle would’ve gone for, all flower prints and swoopy Victorian curlicues. She grew up in a house full of old Korean furniture, which doesn’t much interest her. What’s exotic, to her, is the sort of Western stuff she wasn’t around very much because no one under 90 decorates that way. She responds to American granny gear the way I respond to weird old statues and tombs here.

Furniture!

Maybe the oddest shop along this stretch is Balio, which is where you go if you want fancy horse-riding gear. Why is it here, in Gangnam? I have no idea, except that people must come here to buy stuff. I wonder if the Choi Soon-sil scandal’s equestrian connection has been bad for business?

Gear for the horsey set.

Fire and rain

With that, we headed back to my neighborhood. By evening, it had started to rain, so we decided to sit by some blazing coals in a neighborhood restaurant that offers unlimited beef barbecue (no more than two hours and a 5000-won charge for leftover meat). The initial course was something like six thin steaks and a big pile of chopped up rib meat, so we never even got around to asking for more. It was smoky and delicious and a fine way to end the day.

Coals for barbecue.
A rainy night in Gangnam.

The Seoul Subway Randomizer Game

How do you get to know a new place? I was in New York for many years before I finally started exploring the outer boroughs, and I’ve still never been to Canarsie.

Now that I’ve moved to Seoul, I want to jumpstart the process of discovering those out-of-the-way places that aren’t on the usual leisure circuit. What’s out there? The best way to find out is to go. At random. That’s why I’m creating The Seoul Subway Randomizer Game!

  1. Create a list of Seoul subway stations.
  2. Randomize the list.
  3. Go!

 Yes, I will almost certainly wind up with a few disappointing trips to apartment complexes and highway interchanges, but what else might I find?

I’ll let you know.

Rules I: The list

  1. The Seoul Metropolitan Subway System is the largest in the world by track length, if you include all the lines that extend beyond Seoul proper. For the sake of sanity and to avoid three-hour journeys to not-yet-built suburban housing developments, the list of stations will include only those that are actually in Seoul itself. That still leaves 284 stations.
  2. I’ll randomize the list several times, and I’ll select one of the randomizations based on how interesting I think the first five stations will be.
  3. Stations that I have already visited will be skipped.

Result: Here’s the list. Feel free to play along. (I gathered the list of Subway stations from Wikipedia and randomized them using sequences of numbers from Random.org.)

Rules II: The visits

  1. A visit to a given station only counts if I get off the train and go outside, obviously.
  2. The return trip should begin from a different station, or from a bus stop that’s similarly far from the station. That means getting out and walking from one station to another. However, the walking requirement can be called off if the station turns out to be somewhere really unwalkable, like a bunch of train tracks and a bus station or something.
  3. Arrival at a second station counts as a visit to that station as well; it will be removed from the list of future visits.
  4. Visits outside of the game don’t count as part of the game, but they do qualify for taking stations off the list.

Rules III: My game

  1. This is my game. Traveling companions will of course be welcome, but I’ll pick the stations, and a visit counts when I go. You’re welcome to start your own game.
  2. I can skip stations any time and for any reason, because this is for fun.