Blok M news update, August 2003

Status report

Considering that so many of the regulars have decamped for the summer, the Blok has been surprisingly busy over the last month. But many of the guys seem to have restricted their revelling to smashing pool balls around and carousing - in consequence, the girls have had a pretty thin time of it. Not knowing anything about supply-side economics they’ve kept their prices high and been very picky about the guys, so they’ve only themselves to blame. ‘Stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’ is the way to keep afloat when times are bad, I keep telling the dear things - but they just won’t listen. So most nights the Reveller sits in the bar on his tod, gently but firmly rebuffing the amatory advances of the little darlings.

Only in Jakarta

Whatever you may say about Jakarta, it certainly isn’t boring. A fellow reveller, whose devotion to duty is quite exceptional, has had one of those serendipitous encounters that are the hallmark of the Jakarta experience. Chatting to a cabin attendant during his in-bound flight to Jakarta, he arranges to meet her for a meal the following evening. Sitting in the restaurant together having a pleasant tête-à-tête, the meal is brutally interrupted by an urgent handphone call to his companion telling her that her cousin is in jail, and begging her to drop everything and rush to her aid. Being the true-born gentleman that he is, our reveller tags along and spends the rest of the evening helping the family prise the cousin out of the clutches of the local gendarmerie. This is gallantry above and beyond the call of duty, and gets the Reveller’s award of the month for Doing The Right Thing.

No cars, please!

Well, the character of Jalan Pelatehan is about to change for ever - the bar owners have ganged together and decided to make the street a pedestrian precinct. The Reveller is striving to keep an open mind about this draconian measure, because although it makes good sense from the security angle, the mess of double-parked cars, bikes, taxis and bajays is part of the scene that he knows and loves so well. Half the fun of revelling in the street is staggering out of a bar and picking your way between and around the crazily-parked vehicles, like some demented obstacle-race. On more than one occasion I’ve thought to myself that this sport might one day achieve Olympic status.

And what will the street be without the echoing refrain of the parking lads as they bawl out their inimitable ‘terus, terus, kiri, kiri, kanan, terus, terus, terus, stop!’ On many an occasion this mantra is followed by the sickening crunch of metal on metal as the hapless reveller backs his car into another vehicle, invariably a taxi whose driver then proceeds to extort wallet-crippling compensation for a minor dent or scratch that you need a microscope to detect.

Lintas Melawai’s Indian summer

Just as LM’s use-by date looms ever nearer, the place is undergoing a belated renaissance. On two occasions recently the Reveller has dropped in to look for companions who have gone AWOL from the other bars, only to find the place swinging and pulsing with life. Not only that, but the girls have been a great crowd, living up to the best traditions of the Blok in their wild abandon, lively dancing and predatory proclivities.

The big question that is taxing every serious reveller is what will happen when LM finally closes its doors to the world? For all its many faults, it’s part of the scene and has been the setting for some of the Reveller’s most memorable encounters over the last few years. The main problem is that there’s nowhere as big and spacious as the Lintas Melawai disco, or anywhere near as seedy and decadent. Sleaze like that doesn’t grow on trees, and it will take any other place that steps into LM’s shoes a long time to live down to its reputation.

New girls galore

The good news - there’s an influx of new talent in D’s Place. The bad news - to the Reveller’s experienced eye all too many of the new girls have a rather tawdry, shop-soiled look, a sleazy sleekness that is not at all to his taste.

The Reveller asks some of his intimates among the girls about this phenomenon, and receives an intriguing reply. It seems that many girls are drifting down from north and east Jakarta when they get too old for the well-organised and tightly regimented city fleshpots, gravitating to the more relaxed milieu of Blok M where age is no barrier and they can go freelance.

The great problem is that although earnings are significantly lower in the haunts up north than in the south Jakarta bars and discos, the girls are being told by mischievous meddlers that Blok M is an El Dorado packed with naive and gullible expats who are lining up to drop their trousers and empty their wallets for a cheesy smile and perfunctory performance. They are of course very quickly disabused of this nonsense, and many of the parvenus drop off the radar never to be seen around the Blok again.

Epilogue

The resurgence of Islamic clockwork loonies with their penchant for suicidal pyrotechnics has soured things in Jakarta, but the Blok has thankfully escaped a knee-jerk reaction. Innocence was lost with the Bali bombing, and there’s now a sad acceptance that Indonesia has joined the club of countries with endemic terrorist problems - with all that entails.

In spite of the bombs and the polemics there are signs on the horizon that businesses are preparing to invest in the country again, girding up their loins to reinforce or rebuild their operations here. As a good friend of mine says, the Indonesian market is simply too massive and potentially important to ignore for any length of time. This is good news for the country, and the Blok - as they say in the theatre, ‘the show must go on’.