Blok M diary, August 2004

The power of the past

If the Reveller were ever asked by the bar owners what the "ingredient X" is that makes a bar successful, his short answer would be nostalgia. Now nostalgia comes in many shapes and sizes. For the old hands who’ve been knocking around the Blok for donkey’s years, it’s nostalgia for the place as they remember it when they first came to Jakarta, a haven of comfort, solace and blissful debauchery. For newer guys, it’s a little corner of the West with echoes of the bars and pubs they’ve left behind in the home country. For tourists and transients, it’s a touch of the Mysterious East – that exotic and enticing never-never land they’ve always heard about and wanted to experience at first hand.

Speaking as a back-seat driver in these matters, the Reveller reckons that the best bar managers are those who steer a canny line between novelty and nostalgia. Sure, hold competitions, special events and displays aplenty, but never underestimate the power of nostalgia. By all means use the latest laser lighting technology, the dernier cri in sound systems, cutting-edge software on the accounts computer – but keep the illusion alive, don’t kill the chimera.

The one thing that’s of crucial importance is the choice of music. As a very good friend and long-time Jakarta hand once said to the Reveller, the guys like to hear the songs they grew up with – the stuff they heard when they were teenagers, when they went to college, when they were setting out in life. Of course, the best of the modern stuff is essential, too – the girls in particular like to hear their latest favourites. Ironically, the danger comes from too much knowledge on the part of the bar managers, rather than too little. They’re widely knowledgeable about trends and innovations in modern pop music, but they sometimes fall into the trap of forgetting that the great majority of their customers are musical unsophisticates who just enjoy a good tune with a solid melody and a foot-tapping rhythm.

Scroungers in the night

One of the Reveller’s biggest turn-offs is scrounging. For a good while now the girls have been pretty well house-trained, but this last couple of weeks there’s been a quantum leap in the undertow of cadging and begging that’s always been a leitmotif of the Jakarta bar scene. The perfect word to describe these persistently annoying creatures is the Yiddish expression ‘nudniks’.

Of course, it’s customary to slip the girl (or girls) you’ve been drinking and chatting with a little something for their taxi fare, a gesture that’s greatly appreciated in these straitened times. And the more astute Sweet Young Things will wait until they’re offered a few notes, or drop a subtle hint to their guy – how subtle depends on how sloshed he is – on the perils of getting home safely in the early hours of the morning. But when they stick out a hand, fix you with a baleful stare that would do the Ancient Mariner proud, and utter those dreaded words "you give me taxi?", it quite spoils the whole evening.

If it were just the one girl doing this it wouldn’t be so bad. But one ghastly evening the Reveller’s simple gesture of counting out a bit of spare cash triggers a horrendous feeding frenzy among the other girls sitting nearby. A shrill chorus of "Me, taxi me too", "Help taxi", "You help me" is heard from girls the Reveller doesn’t know from Adam (or Eve, to update the old saying). Losing his usual equability the Reveller quietly intones the Two Magic Words, which makes it crystal clear to even the most moronic harpy that she isn’t going to get a penny.

Oscars on the mend

As reported in the August Blok M update, Oscars goes on getting better and better and has become the Reveller’s bar of choice for a nightcap before heading homewards. By decision or (more likely) by default, the management has not tarted the place up with cheap carpeting, fancy lighting and daft decorations. Apart from a paint job and some new bar stools, it’s the same as ever. Yes, Oscars has retained the character and atmosphere it had when the Reveller first hit the Blok, but it’s not gone catatonic as the Club has.

More important, it’s dawned on the cleverer Sweet Young Things that an increasing number of guys are hanging out there. One evening, as he’s quietly avoiding the predatory advances of a couple of the My Bar sharks, he bumps into them coming into Oscars hot on his trail just as he’s going out. As we all have a good laugh at the coincidence, the Reveller remarks to himself that Oscars is now firmly on the map and the girls will soon be back in strength.

My Bar mid-evening

My Bar is rapidly becoming the Reveller’s regular mid-evening dive. While D’s Place takes longer and longer to gather momentum (sometimes the disco bar is virtually empty until well after eleven o’clock), My Bar tends to fill up slowly but steadily after about nine thirty, and is a very pleasant place to spend a couple of hours before the late night carousers pour in and the place is packed as tight as a tube train in the London rush hour. The staff are marvelous, the music is tuneful and pitched carefully at just the right volume level, and the resident dancers do a very good turn to get the night under way.

Top Gun’s big miss-steak

Having lauded the excellent steak on Top Gun’s menu in the August Update, the Reveller now has to sadly withdraw that recommendation. The reason? They’re out of meat. Twice now the Reveller has dropped in for a steak, only to be told that they’ve got no Australian rib-eye, only American. Now apart from the price (the US stuff is almost twice the cost of the Ozzie product), any connoisseur of good meat will tell you that the two products are quite different in taste and texture – American beef is corn-fed, while Australian is grass fed. So it’s one step forwards and two steps back for poor old Top Gun.

Sportsmans sanctuary

The Reveller likes Sportsmans. It’s got character, a good menu, amiable (and efficient) bar staff, and a nice laid-back atmosphere. It’s a great place to surface from the sleazier depths of Blok M and enjoy a sociable pint or a tasty meal in a bar that isn’t pitch-black and reverberating with eardrum-shattering music. So he’s enjoyed a couple of pretty good meals there over the last week or so, and flags the place up as worthy of more frequent patronage.

D’s Place decibels

It’s a Wednesday night. Dropping into D’s Place at his accustomed hour for a few jars of the free beer promotion, the Reveller finds the downstairs bar already packed – it’s the venue for a pool tournament game, and the thirsty combatants have already drained the barrel of free beer. So cutting his losses he swings round and mounts the stairs, only to stop halfway up as the lunatics have got the music on full volume (at ten to eight in the evening, for heaven’s sake!). Setting a record for the shortest visit ever to D’s Place (less than two minutes from entry to exit), a distinctly dischuffed Reveller stalks down the street in high dudgeon.

The Club saves the day

Abandoning D’s Place so early in the evening presents the Reveller with a serious dilemma. Where to go next? He’s not particularly hungry, so Sportsmans doesn’t hit the spot; Top Gun is pretty well torpid at eight in the evening, My Bar is just ticking over in preparation for the late night fling, and Oscars is never doing much at that hour. So faut de mieux, off trots the Reveller down to the Club.

For once, the timeless familiarity breeds content. The pool tables beckon invitingly, a couple of the old Top Gun girls greet him warmly, the smiling barmaid is there in a flash to take his order, so the Reveller settles in for a most pleasant hour of pool, good-natured chatter and plenty of cold beer.

Lintas limps along

One Friday evening, as he’s downing a very pleasant drink in Oscars with an old friend, the talk turns to how Oscars has come up in the world over the last couple of months and is now consistently lively late in the evening – by contrast with Lintas Melawai, which has sporadic moments of life interspersed with long stretches of sheer torpor. So feeling lucky, the Reveller – in a fit of completely misplaced optimism – suggests rounding off the evening at Lintas Melawai. Peering at the Reveller to see if there are any signs of incipient lunacy present, his good friend warily agrees to try it out. Now a real friend is someone who’ll take the daftest things you can say and do at face value and not bat an eyelid, so off they go.

As fortune would have it, LM is amazingly lively that night. True, there are only half a dozen guys and about twice as many girls in the disco, but they’re all animated, talking and laughing and having a good time. The Reveller’s companion contrasts this with D’s Place, which they left earlier in the evening – remarking that although it was packed solid, D’s was static and lifeless. Within minutes of their arrival his mate chats up the prettiest girl in the place, and with a satyric grin sweeps her out of the bar.

Drinking up and settling his bill, the Reveller reflects that if only the management could get its act together it would recoup enough of its former glory to become once again the sleaziest, the most decadent, late-night dive on the Blok.

Epilogue

Well, there you have it – a snapshot of events over a couple of weeks down the Blok. The Reveller earnestly hopes that his good friends in D’s Place management don’t ignore the warning signs on the horizon – the demise of the nine o’clock Ladies’ Lucky Draw and its impact on the number of early evening girls in the place, the sometimes quite appalling choice of music, a total lack of control over the disco sound levels, a distinct falling off in the number of girls dancing in the disco, and the increasingly frequent lifelessness of the upstairs bar (in spite of its being packed full).