Blok M diary, November 2004

Wanders never cease

After the traumatic events of late October things settle down to their normal tenor in Blok M, but the Reveller feels restless and increasingly finds himself drifting from bar to bar rather than settling in to one place for the evening. In particular he pops into Oscars with greater frequency, as it’s a welcome haven from the sometimes too frenetic late nights in My Bar and the early evening hullabaloo in D’s Place. The Oscars bar staff are a cheerful and cheering gang, and because the place isn’t too busy they’ve got the time to chat and joke with the customers. And of course, there’s the fish. The two Lohan have survived longer than all the others put together, perhaps because they’ve achieved a state of piscine equanimity.

Some evenings Top Gun is the oasis of choice. Sitting at a table at the far end of the bar one evening the Reveller notices that the diehard core of regulars is in the minority, as erstwhile customers who abandoned Top Gun when it became the basket case of the Blok are drifting back to their old haven. And there are a few new faces, observes the Reveller - frisky younger guys, for whom the Blok is still a novel experience. But as the circling Top Gun sharks home in on this fresh prey, it’s clear that their innocence will be short-lived.

Sportsmans, as always, is a good place to relax and enjoy a meal - either a quick snack of their rightly-famous nachos, or a more solid plateful from the well-maintained menu. Glancing round the bar one evening as he’s waiting for his meal to arrive, the Reveller reflects that his earliest observations about Sportsmans still hold true; yes, the individuals may have changed, but they’re generic - the business and professional types for whom the place becomes the focal point of their after-work social life.

My Bar is becoming a really good hang-out for an early evening sojourn. The bar is a pleasant place to sit and muse, to watch TV, or idly chat with the bar staff. One drizzly Friday evening the Reveller drops in for his usual sop buntut and glass of beer, and as he wets his whistle he reflects that My Bar is a great place to just sit, and think. There’s a quiet hum of background bar noise, a muted mumble from the overhead TV, an unobtrusive syncopation from the music system - white noise that leaves the mind free to roam and mull over anything and everything. And the Reveller isn’t alone in his enjoyment of this early evening homeliness; there are four or five other guys relaxing and savouring the atmosphere - one enjoying a leisurely smoke, another luxuriously stretching as he unwinds from the day’s travails, a third absent-mindedly drumming his fingers on the bar top as he half-focuses on the Fashion Channel beauties strutting their stuff on the big-screen TV behind the dance floor. As he takes in this tranquil scene, the Reveller reflects that it’s a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

It’s a Wednesday night, and strolling up the street from Oscars the Reveller drops in to Everest to see how the place is faring. There’s a handful of regulars at the bar, chatting to the ever-delightful bar staff. Looking round, the Reveller takes in the now forlornly depleted shelves and racks that used to hold an exotic and eye-catching variety of liquors from around the world, and all shapes and sizes of glasses. Their absence makes the place rather sad, thinks the Reveller. There’s quite a tuneful band playing, he notices, but the strange choice of music doesn’t hit the spot. So who’s it aimed at? The guys don’t seem to be reacting to it, and it’s not the sort of stuff the girls listen to by choice. This lack of focus, of customer-oriented service, is unfortunately typical of Blok M management in general, muses the Reveller. As an erstwhile student of formal logic he spots the underlying fallacy - the guys like the bars, the bars play this type of music, therefore the guys like this type of music. It’s called the law of the undistributed middle.

Then into D’s Place to see what the tide’s washed up - and yes, it’s packed with the usual suspects. After eleven the upstairs bar generally hosts a motley crew: the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, a kaleidoscopic microcosm of the good, the bad, and the ugly - which is precisely why the Reveller likes it so much. Whilst My Bar has effectively cornered the commercial late night music-and-totty market, D’s Place can still provide that raw unpredictability which, for many of the guys, is the hallmark of Blok M. Sadly, though, the disco is gradually becoming a pale shadow of its former glory. Some nights it’s firing on all cylinders, but all too often nowadays it lacks life and vitality. Even more sadly, the management doesn’t seem overly concerned; their yardstick is money. While the tills tinkle and the cash comes in, all’s well with the world.

Epilogue

Yes, things pick up nicely after the end-of-Ramadan holiday, and life returns to normal on the Blok. Even the rains can’t put a damper on things, and business is brisk - My Bar reports the best weekly takings since they opened, Oscars and Top Gun are doing pretty well, even the Club is ticking over on its early evening trade. Although D’s Place puts a brave face on things and tells everyone that My Bar hasn’t dented its profits very much, there are persistent murmurs from the old hands that things are a fair bit worse than admitted. So as we go into December, all eyes are on the bar stakes.