February Update
Blok M update, February 2005
There’s a lot happening down the Blok this month. The January upturn continues apace and there’s much to report. The mystery of the piles of rubble outside My Bar’s entrance has finally been solved, and the reason for the recent closure of Oscar’s upstairs bar is now revealed. Read on for the full stories.
The sad news of the month is the official announcement that Lintas Melawai has shut its doors for good, and is now fading into Blok M folklore. Yes, it’s the end of an era - or the end of an earache, for those who patiently suffered its deafening, tuneless music in their dedicated pursuit of late-night debauchery. Read the full obituary on this page.
Top Gun thrives and is rated by more and more of the regulars as the best early evening dive on the Blok. Yes, Sportsmans - as ever - holds the fort for the business brigade, and D’s Place downstairs bar continues to be an excellent place for guys to get in those cold beers and chill out after the day’s travails - but only Top Gun has that sure-fire combination of pool, girls and bonhomie that makes it a great place to kick off the night.
Now one thing that endears Top Gun to the Reveller is that they’ve retained the old Jakarta bar pool rules, and not changed over to what are euphemistically called the "Pool League Rules" that you’re increasingly expected to abide by in D’s Place. The old rules are crazy but simple, and help to make the game more enjoyable for punters who, by dint of inebriation or mediocrity, just enjoy thrashing the balls about and having fun.
One of the Reveller’s inside contacts reports that Everest, like Top Gun, seems to be sweeping up a fair number of disaffected D’s Place regulars - one evening earlier in the month he bumps into a whole bunch of them in there. The Reveller is glad for Everest, but a bit sad that the premier bar on the Blok - and until very recently, his own regular night-time spot - is now in a serious state of customer haemorrhage.
We old hands all too easily forget that the things we take for granted about Blok M are exciting novelties for a newcomer, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time just how fortunate we are. The Reveller is delighted therefore to receive a copy of a piece written by a guy who’s been to Blok M a couple of times on short visits and has rapidly become an ardent fan of the place. The writing in question is an email to a couple of mates who, for domestic reasons, are unable to accompany him on his latest Blok M safari, and to let them know - in full, gory and explicit detail - exactly what they’re missing.
Now there are many people who can write well, but very few who have a ‘voice’ - a distinctive style that’s immediately recognizable and bespeaks the personality of the author. My friend Gary has this gift, and he’s turned it to marvelous effect in his blow-by-blow(job) account of his picaresque adventures in and around Blok M. So although he’s not a Blok M regular, In honour of his outstanding contributions to literature and dissipation he is hereby awarded the title of "Reveller Emeritus".
But before you rush your mouse to the link - be warned. This is a raunchy, uninhibited saga of lust, depravity and unspeakable excess that may upset readers of a delicate or nervous disposition, and should emphatically not be read by those who suffer from premature ejaculation. For the rest of you, get that mouse moving and click here for Gary’s visit to Blok M.
The latest developments on the Blok may be invisible to the casual observer, but they’re going to have far-reaching consequences in the very near future. Those of us who cheerfully zigzag our tipsy way from bar to bar are for the most part ignorant of the profound changes taking place not under, but above, our very noses.
Yes, Oscars and My Bar have two projects but a single thought - offer an enhanced and expanded service by revamping and extending the premises. Oscars is going the whole hog and making the entire upper bar a members-only area, whilst My Bar is ambitiously taking over the whole of two, possibly three, upstairs floors next door. There’ll be full details - and pictures - in the Blok M February diary.
But what’s already clear is that both places are moving inexorably upmarket. The fitting out has already been finished at Oscars, and the Reveller is impressed with the design and layout. The choice of materials and quality of finish are excellent - no cheese-paring economy here - and they’ve managed to strike a nice balance between open space and intimacy. The only anomaly is the far end of the bar, which - because of the rather odd choice and arrangement of furniture - resembles nothing more than a business-class airport lounge. The seating consists of blocks and rows of high-backed sofas and armchairs that look austere and uninviting. A bar is, after all, a social place, and the ‘lounge’ alcove is rather at odds with the well laid out and very comfortable main bar area at the other end.
My Bar has so far shown a near-infallible nose for what will succeed and draw the Blok M punters in droves. It’s a canny combination of hard-nosed marketing research, meticulous planning and that ‘finger on the pulse’ instinct without which the best laid business plans gang oft aglay, to echo the immortal words of Robby Burns. A lot is going to depend on getting the mix right. Everest tried to create an upmarket sophisticated bar that didn’t allow the floozies in - and almost came a cropper in the process; D’s Place VIP Club was an over-ambitious project that never quite hit the spot and didn’t catch on as the owners had hoped.
The game plan for My Bar is a good one. Present thinking is to make the first floor into a spacious lounge bar and restaurant, the keywords being comfort and relaxation. The aim isn’t to make it a guys-and-accompanieds-only bar, but to prevent the hustlers and gold-diggers from flooding the place. The second floor will be a pool player’s heaven, with three full-size, good quality tables available. Now here’s the nice part, and one which the Reveller wholeheartedly endorses. Tables will be bookable by the hour, so a group of guys who want a sociable game between themselves can do so without the girls clogging the waiting list and hogging the tables, as in the other bars. The Reveller hears that the booking charge will be very reasonable, and there may be an option whereby if a punter buys a pitcher of beer there’ll be a hefty discount on the table hire price.
It seems to the Reveller that for Oscars and My Bar to hit the jackpot they’ve got to do two things. The first is to persuade some of the Blok M regulars to change their drinking habits, the second is to draw new blood into the Blok. Now the great majority of the guys come to Blok M to get pissed and get laid, to enjoy the earthy ambience and let themselves go - they’re not by any stretch of the imagination clubbable sophisticates. Ironically, the places that may be most vulnerable to losing trade to this new market could be Sportsmans and D’s Place in Kemang - and the Reveller suspects that Bugils regulars would probably feel quite at home in the revamped Blok M premises, along with the denizens of other south Jakarta bars that cater for the business fraternity.
The one constant in the equation is travel. Jakarta’s idiosyncratic road system and chronic traffic congestion being what they are, lines of communication are all-important - the time it takes to get from door to door will be the determining factor for many would-be new customers making Blok M their destination. The Reveller wishes the Oscars and My Bar owners the very best for the success of their ventures, and waits eagerly to see how things pan out.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Lintas Melawai is no more. Its demise was brought about by a lethal combination of stupidity, neglect and the passage of time. Bars, in common with all living organisms, have a natural lifespan, so perhaps the place had just reached its use-by date. Maybe, with hindsight, just leaving it to die a natural death was the kindest thing to do: tarting it up and going for gimmicks to keep it limping along would probably have just prolonged the agony and put off the evil day.
The Reveller has many happy memories of Lintas Melawai, all of them chronicled in the Updates and Diary sections of the Blok M web site. If you’re interested in browsing through them, just use the Word finder utility - click here to go to the Word finder search page, then type in the words ‘Lintas Melawai’ and choose the ‘exact phrase’ search option.
Here’s a picture of Lintas Melawai in its heyday, snapped as the place is filling up at about midnight. If you’d like to see the complete set of pictures, click here for the gallery slide show.
For many of us the great thing about Lintas Melawai was the variety of fauna you’d find in there. Apart from the regular ‘business’ girls you could always count on meeting good-time lasses out for a night on the town, students and office workers on the razzle, and casuals just dropping in for a drink and a bit of fun. The reason for this range was quite simple - it wasn’t in the depths of the Blok but on a main road where a girl could hop off a bus or out of a taxi without the risk of being observed going into the backstreet fleshpot area.
Most important for the late-night guys, of course, was its proximity to the Melawai Hotel. These two places had a perfect symbiotic relationship, and the Reveller wonders if the hotel’s trade has dropped off any since the demise of Lintas Melawai. Many a time he and a bunch of his mates have wheeled into the hotel with a clutch of floozies on their arms in the very early hours of the morning, making a perfect ending to a wild night on the Blok.
Sadly, the street outside is also now dead. In the past it was a thriving little community of girls squatting and chatting on the pavement or having a snack at one of the food stalls, ojek boys slouching and smoking in the shadows, pirate video-disc sellers plying their trade alongside the cigarette stalls. And the beggars. There was one wizened little old thing who’d lie in wait until a guy walked past, when she’d dart out like a screaming dervish demanding money - and bawl abuse if she wasn’t given anything. Gone, all of it, gone into urban oblivion - a little slice of Jakarta life the memory of which will soon remain only in the pages of the Blok M web site.
One of the great things about living in this wonderful metropolis of ours, Jakarta, is that just when you think you’ve seen everything, experienced every lunacy, every craziness, that you possible can, something happens that forces you to re-calibrate the scale.
One evening the Reveller meets up with an absolutely charming Sweet Young Thing in My Bar, and after a few drinks and some amiable chit-chat it’s clear that they have but one thought about how to while away the next couple of hours. After a pleasant and exhausting interlude it’s all too quickly departure time, so the Reveller discreetly makes the usual donation. The dear thing promptly looks totally mortified and goes into a performance that Sarah Bernhardt would have been proud of. When gently asked why she’s so upset she replies "Me want five hundred thousand - we make two times, I want pay each one!" Flabbergasted, the Reveller explains - in simple terms - that this isn’t the way things are done in Blok M, and in as nice a way as possible tells her to get real. So she sulks out with less than half of what she expected, doesn’t get any taxi money, and hasn’t been seen on the Blok since that night.
Recounting this cautionary tale to one of his mates who’s been around Jakarta for donkey’s years, the guy replies "Yeah, that’s right out of order - ‘pay per poke’ just isn’t on. Reminds me of a tale I once heard in Thailand about a guy who was fondling a bar girl when she told him that the price only included one tit - ‘you want other one too, you pay me extra’." So all you guys out there, beware of the piece-work merchants and don’t let them con you into paying silly money.
At one time or another it’s happened to all of us. As we slowly wrench ourselves awake after a night of excess, we turn to look at the gorgeous creature we’ve just spent the night with - and recoil in horror at the gorgon lying comatose by our side. Yes, the beer goggles have struck again.
As you get dressed as quickly and as quietly as you can, you may ponder on ways to avoid such a disaster happening again in the future. It might even dimly cross your mind that there’s a beer intake ‘point of no return’ beyond which your critical faculties seize up but your libido unfortunately hasn’t got the message - that dangerous window when you’re as randy as hell but seeing the world through very thick rose-tinted spectacles.
Well, the question that’s preoccupied mankind since the ancient Egyptians first brewed ale in the shadow of the pyramids has at last been answered. A dedicated bunch of guys in Wales has come up with a formula that will tell you exactly how many pints you need to drink before being so far gone that you’re in beer goggle territory. Know that, and you then know when to stop. So just click here to read their academic paper - The determination of the number of pints required to have sex with a ‘not the best’ female. It’s a hoot.
Browsing through the chat rooms the Reveller notices quite a few requests for information about the Blok - hotels, girls, taxis, security - whatever. Now a lot of the information being sought is actually right here on the Blok M web site, it’s just a matter of doing a bit of searching. So hie thee to the Word finder option on the main navigation menu, click it, and - voilà! A state-of-the-art search engine springs up, with which you can find the source of any word or phrase on the site. It’s fast and easy to use, doesn’t waste your valuable bandwidth, and is infallible.
Epilogue
Well, February has seen a lot happening down the Blok. It may well turn out to be a milestone month, in which an old favourite dies and development projects breathe new life into two of the Pelatehan watering holes. Business grows apace, and the bar owners smile as trade picks up all round.
As he winds his way round the badly parked taxis and the late-shift beggars in the direction of the Ambhara bajaj rank, he’s first of all accosted by a Sweet Young Thing and a bunch of her friends who are hanging out in the shadows between My Bar and Oscars, and then hailed by a gaggle of rather attractive girls lurking on the steps of the Busway exit tunnel at the bottom of the street. Now that’s the litmus - life on the street, and not just in the bars. Things are, indeed, looking up.