Blok M update, December 2004

Status report

Sometimes we need to stop, take a deep breath, and focus on the broader picture; as the adage goes, it’s difficult to remember that your job is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your arse in alligators. It’s also a trite but true saying that coming events cast their shadows before them. Over recent months the Reveller has commented on isolated happenings and local shifts in popularity and allegiance, and as the year draws to a close he sifts through recent events looking for underlying patterns and omens, searching for causes and explanations. His conclusion is that Blok M is going through a period of quite significant change, about which he writes in the following article.

Sea change

The major change has been the demise of Lintas Melawai and the meteoric rise of My Bar, and it’s clear that the ostensive reason for this shift has been the crass commercial folly of LM and astute marketing by My Bar. But underlying this the Reveller suspects there’s been a sea change in what the customer wants. For years, LM’s eccentric management style has been one of the standing jokes on the Blok - it was the place we loved to hate. What’s changed seems to be the punters’ tolerance level. What used to make us laugh now irritates and annoys us, what we used to smile at now exasperates us. We want better service, more entertainment, more comfort. Let’s face it, we’ve become spoiled.

Another factor may be that we all used to have more money and time on our hands, so a very late night at Lintas Melawai was both affordable and doable. For the punter on reduced income and longer working hours, My Bar tempts us with a low-cost one-stop package - a "booze to bird to bed" service, with which you go in stone-cold sober, get as sloshed as you want to, listen to the music, watch the dancing (even join in, if you’re pissed enough), find the Sweet Young Thing of your dreams (or nightmares, if you’ve had too much to drink), and drop into a waiting taxi to whisk you off to wherever it is you want to go.

What is also clear is that the punters have grown tired of gimmicks - not because of the events themselves, but being bludgeoned by overkill. D’s Place had the great innovation of a sexiest dressed girl competition, and the first event was a huge success. So successful, that it was repeated a fortnight later. And again, and again, and again - until it was no longer a special event, and both competitors and punters began to ignore it.

The Ladies’ Lucky Draw was another successful innovation that died because it was cynically manipulated. Sure, it had the laudable commercial intention of pulling in the girls, who would in turn pull in the guys, who would in turn pull in even more girls. But it was also good fun, it was a great social occasion. However management only saw it in crude cash terms, and once they started moving the draw time later and later into the evening they didn’t foresee the ramifications - the girls got fed up wasting half the evening waiting for the draw, weren’t in a particularly good mood when it was sprung on them up to three hours later than advertised, and consequently scarpered as soon as the draw was over. And quite a few of the guys reported that it was something of an embarrassment to be eyeballed at their tables with pointed requests to contribute, and felt pressured to chip in.

The pool competition is another case in point. Rather than being run as a light-hearted social event with the whole of the bar and its regular customers in mind, it degenerated into a money-driven commercial event that appealed only to a small minority of the regulars - and even succeeded in alienating some of those in the process.

My Bar has astutely managed its events much better. The "wet tee-shirt" competition is held only occasionally, and the "calendar girl" event is, by definition, a monthly bash. The old commercial adage, "give ‘em what they want, but make ‘em want more than you give ‘em", is never so true as in the bar business.

So yes, there’s a sea change in the Blok, and it helps to explain why Top Gun and Oscars are coming back into vogue. They’ve eschewed gimmicky events and commercial inducements, sticking to their time-honoured formula of booze and birds. When you walk in the door you know exactly what’s on offer, and how much it’s going to hit you for. The Reveller earnestly hopes that his good friends who run D’s Place will listen to customer feedback, act on it, and get the place back on track as the premier bar on the street.

VIP - RIP

The Reveller is saddened to hear the news that the D’s Place VIP bar has been closed down. Yes, it was a controversial venture from the start, but it was a good initiative that was no skin off anybodies nose because it utilised otherwise waste space in the building. It promised a lot when it started up; a more exotic range of drinks, free cocktail nibbles at the bar, extra services such as a cable TV quiet area, a cozy little bar, a card table, and even a computer for checking your email or doing a spot of surfing if the fancy took you. Plus, of course, the sexy dancers.

The reality is, sadly, a different story. The drinks on offer were from the start the same basic utility range as downstairs, and the free nibbles lasted a month or two before being withdrawn. How much does a bowl of peanuts or popcorn cost, in proportion to the hefty whack that guys had to pay for membership? The Reveller had looked forward to playing his old favourite, stud poker, as did quite a few of the other guys - but did this ever happen?

The sexy dancers were fun to start with, but this act degenerated into a begging exercise because (it was rumoured) the management didn’t pay them for the service, telling the dancers that they’d make money from customer donations. Of course some of the guys were turned off by this - as one put it rather pithily to the Reveller, "I go in there for a quiet drink, and don’t like being expected to fork out every time some dancer jumps on the bar and sticks her fanny in my face."

Popularity stakes

Sadly but predictably some folk accuse the Reveller of favouring certain bars, and unfairly running down others. So to answer these Moaning Minnies head-on he’s decided to throw the matter open to public opinion by providing a poll for the Blok M regulars to vote for their favourite places across a range of criteria - best overall bar, best bar for girls, best bar for food, best bar for pool, best bar for music, and best disco. [Poll now closed] .

Other democratic avenues for the locals to record their opinions are of course the chat rooms and the guest book. So, to paraphrase the popular shop sign - "If you like our service, tell everybody about it - if you don’t like it, tell us".

Epilogue

As the old year rings down the curtain on a rainy and waterlogged Jakarta, the Reveller sends everyone his warmest greetings and best wishes for the New Year. So whoever you are, wherever you are, happy revelling!