Blok M news update, June 2003

Looking good

Things are on the up and up in Blok M, no doubt about it. The feel of the place is busier and more cheerful by the day - it’s slowly but surely regaining more of its old character. There’s more mobility for a start, the revellers (and the girls) are circulating round the bars rather than dropping anchor in one place for the night. After a long period of resembling a monastic cloister, Jalan Pelatehan is becoming quite a lively thoroughfare. A couple of evenings ago there were clutches of girls wandering around the street, laughing and joking with the itinerant revellers.

The bars are more lively, too. The other night I was surprised to see more guys than girls in D’s upstairs bar - which is good news for the girls, but not for the Reveller whose amatory aspirations were thwarted by the competition. Sportsmans and Oscars are similarly thriving, though poor old Top Gun is still the Cinderella of the street.

Dereliction of duty

One night, as I stub out my first cigar and am about to order another Pernod, it suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t visited the other dives on the Blok for some time. To remedy this inexcusable lapse I resolve to uproot myself from D’s Place and obey the call of duty without delay. "I’m going out for a walk, and may be gone for some time" I announce to those of my fellow revellers who are sober enough to register what I’m saying - but not, alas, to recognise the quotation.

Sportsmans redux

First stop, Sportsmans, as it’s right next door to D’s. Many moons ago I abandoned this hostelry after being served some of the worst steak I’d ever had in Jakarta - not once, but twice. As the word on the Blok is that Paulus, the manager, has since revamped the restaurant side of the business and it’s now greatly improved, the Reveller is currently sampling the menu and will report back after completing his culinary research.

I’m delighted to say that I can now recommend Sportsmans as a place worth dropping into for a jar and to enjoy the ambience, if you don’t mind paying premium price for your drinks. Unlike some of the other bars, which are amateurish in their layout and decor, Sportsmans has been tastefully redesigned and there is evidence of thoughtful attention to detail throughout. An example of this is that the dining tables are professionally laid out with all the accoutrements nicely placed, and the service is friendly and attentive. Top marks for picking the place up, shaking it down, and providing a venue that’s greatly improved whilst retaining its distinctive identity.

Top Gun resuscitated

Miracles never cease - things are actually getting better in Top Gun. They’ve toned down the lighting in the main bar and moved the side-room pool table down into what was the rear restaurant. That makes sense, as it’s quieter in there and now you can play pool, have a sociable jar or two, and hold a conversation without rupturing your vocal cords. The side room is now a pleasant bar area, with tables and chairs round the walls. Three cheers to the management for a sensible improvement in the layout.  Click here for a shufti at some photos of the bar.

Out of the corner of his eye the Reveller sees Mr B, the éminence grise of Top Gun, lurking in the shadows. A lot of the guys - and many of the girls - shun the place solely because of him. This character has done for Top Gun what Alfred Hitchcock did for shower curtains.

The mystery of ownership deepens - the chap who was negotiating the purchase of a major slice of the action hasn’t been seen for a couple of months, and no-one seems to know what’s happening. The Reveller suspects he’s found out that Top Gun is what his American friends rather charmingly call a money pit, and that investing in the place would be akin to buying a ticket for the Titanic.

Oscars and entropy

Strolling down the middle of the street towards Oscars (the pavements down that end being unsafe at any speed) I am amazed to hear a tune that I recognize coming out of the bar. A good omen! The place isn’t very full, but it’s got a nice busy atmosphere and there are a few old friends propping up the bar counter. I greet the bar staff, get my jar in, sit down at my favourite spot in front of the aquarium, and start up a conversation with a couple of charming girls.

Then, tragedy strikes. I turn for a moment to say hello to the fish, but my favourite one is no longer there. Now even to someone in my inebriate state it’s obvious that there’s only one way out of a fish tank. A closer inspection reveals that there are at least three new fish in there, two of them lean and mean-looking specimens with beady, predatory eyes - they remind me ineluctably of two of the girls I know in Top Gun.

As I sadly wish my departed friend farewell, and utter a silent prayer that she’s gone to that great fish pond in the sky, it occurs to me that there is a marked similarity between a bar and a fish tank. Like radioactive isotopes, fish and girls have half-lives:  over a given period of time, natural decay will reduce their numbers by half. I estimate that the half-life of the girls in a bar in Blok M is approximately six months, whilst that of a fish tank can be as short as six weeks.

It also strikes me that the law of entropy applies to the bars. Over time, there’s a slow fragmentation of the social fabric as many of the girls become ‘citified’, as a friend of mine once put it. They lose that wonderful charm and freshness that set Indonesian girls apart, and become stuck-up little madams who think only of money, finery and baubles. Their holy grail is a regular boyfriend with the wealth of a Bill Gates and the generosity of a Rockefeller. They’re no longer part of the Gang, going their own solitary way instead. When disillusionment inevitably sets in they fade from the scene to be replaced by a new intake of recruits.

The Club time-warp

The Reveller only goes to the Club once in the proverbial blue moon, but each time he does he experiences a melancholy sense of déjà vu. Nothing ever changes there, and I could swear that the furniture hasn’t been moved an inch since I first went into the place nigh on five years ago. Even the inter-bar pool competition has passed the Club by, which is crazy as it has three pretty good pool tables and some sharp players.

One good thing about the Club is that the gang of ageing harpies who used to lurk inside the entrance have disappeared into oblivion. The remaining girls are a likeable bunch; they all speak passable English, and make good company for the weary reveller who enjoys a bit of social chit-chat with his drink at the bar.

I don’t stay very long as the place is almost empty - there’s nothing to do, and no-one to do it with. But as I drain my glass and call for my bill I can’t help thinking that the Club could be a gold mine, given its location and its internal layout:  it’s the great missed opportunity of the Blok.

The Lintas enigma

To round off the evening, into a taxi and off to LM - only to find that not much is happening there, either. I’m puzzled by Lintas Melawai. Some nights it’s all systems go and the place is vibrant - others, it’s got less life than a three-toed sloth suffering a catatonic seizure. It’s not the numbers, because after the witching hour it’s always fairly full, and it’s not a shortage of girls, as there are always the LM stalwarts on hand - it’s that mysterious Factor X that’s missing.

To the Reveller’s trained eye the root of the problem is that LM lacks characters. There’s a predictable sameness in the regular Lintas girls - with a few notable exceptions they lack that little extra sparkle and pizzazz, whereas the Pelatehan bars (with the sad exception of Top Gun) have a cast of characters that would do a TV cinetron proud. As a consequence of this the guys no longer go in droves to LM for a fun evening as they used to - they now tend to go very late for a quick fling in the disco, treating the place a bit like a late-night filling station.

LM is a rudderless ship with a broken engine. The management just let it drift on its idiosyncratic way - their attitude seems to be that as long as the cash tills keep ringing, all’s well with the world. But they should heed the warning words of Shakespeare - "Then think so still, ’til fortune teach thee otherwise".

Reveller’s reflections

The hour between eight and nine in the evening is hallowed time. It’s when the Reveller likes to sit in the empty bar upstairs at D’s Place to savour a quiet cigar, ruminate on the day’s affairs and reflect on life, the universe and everything - to experience, as the poet Wordsworth put it so eloquently, ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’. He was a wise old bird, Wordsworth - he also wrote those immortal words, ‘we have no time to stand and stare’. For the Reveller, the Blok is not only a place for hedonistic flings of dissipation and debauchery, but a haven of solitude where you can recharge your batteries and restore your equilibrium after a day of grappling with Jakarta.

And so ends another month’s revelry. More news next month, and don’t forget to look out for the Reveller’s mid-month diary in which he chronicles one evening on the Blok.