April Update
Blok M update, April 2005
In Europe we’re used to April showers, but not so much here in Jakarta where it’s usually well into the dry season by the end of the month. But peering into the sky you get the impression that the rainy season has set in for the duration, for as afternoon draws on there are towering banks of cumuli piling up, threatening thundery squalls for the early evening. The weather gets hotter and more humid by the day, making the nights sticky and stifling once you’re out of range of an air conditioner. All of which makes a nice cool bar and an ice cool beer even more welcome of an evening.
The bar extensions that were reported last month have begun to sink into the Blok M collective consciousness, but it’s still too early to talk about success or failure. On the couple of occasions that the Reveller has ventured into Oscars upstairs bar he’s been pleased to note a gradual increase in numbers, but plans to make it into a membership facility seem to have stalled for the moment and the planned range of cultural events has yet to materialise. My Bar is actively promoting the new Level 2 bar/restaurant, but usage so far has been thin. Once again, the Reveller encourages all the guys to give it, and Oscars, a whirl.
One thing that the regulars are increasingly scathing about is the state of the street. It’s no longer just a picturesque part of Blok M, a quaint thoroughfare that’s a bit run-down and neglected, but a growing navigation and security hazard. In a word, it’s getting squalid. The bar owners seem powerless to clear out the taxi sharks and their antiquated rust-buckets, and to bring the parking guys and taxi touts into line. These parasites are increasingly awkward and even abusive when customers complain about the ‘parking’ and ’standby’ fees, resulting in the occasional nasty incident. And one evening the Reveller is amazed to see that a food stall has been set up in the middle of the street outside La Fonta.
Legally speaking, Jalan Pelatehan is a public road and the bar proprietors have no powers beyond their own doors. But unless they sort out this problem - perhaps by the use of outside security staff in arranging taxis for departing customers - they’re going to start losing business.
It’s the last lap before midnight on a fairly bustling Friday in My Bar and the Reveller is as happy as a proverbial sandboy. Cuddled up with a particularly charming Sweet Young Thing, and with half a dozen others just waiting for her to vacate her post for a split second, he’s chatting amiably with a friend as they pace each other with the beer. The dancing has just got under way, and the mood is cracking - “Good Lord”, gasps the Reveller, ” look - three Indramayu girls actually laughing and smiling!”
Taking this as an omen, a portent of Good Things to come, we drain our bottles and sit back to enjoy the show and relish a couple of his friend’s notoriously crude and tasteless jokes. When suddenly, out of the blue (or black, given the low lighting in the bar), a girl he doesn’t know sidles up to the Reveller, winks knowingly, and slips something into his hand. Expecting to read some protestation of undying affection, a salacious invitation for discrete dalliance later on, or at the very least a couple of handphone numbers, he surreptitiously scans it.
But it’s none of these. Gobsmacked, he reads - and rereads - the billet doux. Wonder of wonders, it’s an invitation to the grand reopening of Lintas Melawai! “We’re back with new Atmosphere … May, 4rd 2005, 9pm onwards till drop” announces the flier, with rather more verve than grammatical competence. Click here to read the flier in all its glory.
Raising the invitation into a pulsing pool of garish disco light, the Reveller suddenly has a fit of the giggles and almost falls off his bar stool. It’s the small print at the bottom of the invitation that prompts this laughter: “Lintas Melawai Rules: 21+, no drugs, no weapons, no short or sandals, no drinks outside.” The drugs and weapons warnings are to be welcomed, but the others are hilarious. Never, in living memory, has anyone taken a drink outside the premises, so what on earth prompts this pompous interdiction? As to the “21+” diktat, this - if seriously implemented - would exclude more than 95% of the Blok M girls from entering the place! The “no short or sandals” imperative is just plain daft. My good friend Ray, whose trademark is baggy shorts and flip-flops, will be desolated at his automatic exclusion by this misguided attempt to raise the sartorial standards of the erstwhile sleaziest nightspot in Blok M.
Well, thinks the Reveller, perhaps they want to raise the tone and make it into a class joint. But this expectation is soon dashed as he reads that other allurements to be offered include “dj, sexy dancer, games, lucky draw“. With a sinking feeling of déjà vu he slips the invitation into his pocket and mutters to himself “O tempora, O mores” - which best translates as “they’ve lost the plot”. Here’s a glossary of what these expressions really mean:
A tone-deaf hirsute Neanderthal whose raison d’être is to select the most tuneless rubbish he can find and bash it out non-stop with ear-rupturing loudness.
Amateur totty wearing converted plastic bin liners who prance about on the bar tops and expect the customers to slip them tips.
Let me guess: wet T-shirt nights? dance competitions? beauty contests? sexy dress competitions? fancy dress evenings? quiz sessions?
An embarrassing ritual whereby the house invites punters to chip into the pot for a ladies’ raffle.
Now here’s a quiz for the regulars: which well-known Blok M bar has already tried all of the above?
OK, fair’s fair. Perhaps the Reveller is being unduly pessimistic and only seeing the negative side of it all (based on the track record of the old LM management). So let’s suspend judgment until the glorious 4rd of May and give dear old Lintas Melawai the benefit of the doubt - “innocent until proven guilty”. He’ll be there at 9 pm sharp to claim his free draught beer and cheer on the troops, but with a very sharp eye for any try-ons. As they say, watch this space.
The case of the missing Carlsberg
Bar regulars are notoriously creatures of habit. We have our favourite seats, our favourite girls, our favourite music - but above all, we have our favourite drinks. As regular readers will know, the Reveller enjoys Pernod and Tequila early in the evening, but his late-night poison of choice is bottled Carlsberg. As it is with many of the guys, who never knowingly drink anything else from dusk to dawn.
Now on several evenings in My Bar recently the Carlsberg has run out by the disastrously early hour of 11.30 pm. So one night we beard the bar manager and ask him why they’ve got none left. It turns out that there’s a supply problem connected with a change in the draught beer provider, resulting in a withdrawal of direct deliveries of bottled Carlsberg. The management appreciates the concern of the customers, and assures the Reveller that rapid steps are being taken to ramp up the immediate supply pending a longer-term solution being found.
The problem of My Bar’s beer supply sets the Reveller to thinking one evening, as he’s working his way through a bowl of their excellent sop buntut, that - to paraphrase the Gilbert and Sullivan song - “an owner’s lot is not a happy one”. For starters, just consider the number of variables he’s got to juggle. There’s the mechanics of obtaining, storing, cooling and dispensing the beer, selecting and training bar staff, keeping the place in good nick, doing the accounts and stock-taking, getting the sound system right, selecting music, getting the girls to come in (and behave themselves), providing entertainment for the troops, and keeping up the entente cordiale with the local police and politicos. And last but not least, making a healthy profit.
What he’s doing, of course, is creating a theatrical illusion, a phantasmagoria that keeps the punter’s mind on two essentials - getting pissed, and getting laid. The German statesman Otto von Bismarck once remarked “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made”. Now this canny observation applies just as much to the bars that we know and love as to that humble phallic comestible, the domestic sausage. We eat, drink and are merry in a more or less carefully stage-managed scenario, ignorant for the most part of what goes on behind the scenes.
The bar managers are the great showmen of Blok M. Theirs is the job of not only keeping the bars functioning in the sometimes dysfunctional business world of Jakarta, but creating that special magic that dispatches the guys with a girl on each arm, a grin like a Cheshire cat and a lighter wad at the end of each night’s carousing. Yes, the Blok has got its Barnums and Baileys and its Fred Karnos.
Each of these three showmen was driven by innovation, creativity - even a touch of genius. Fantastic, extravagant and spectacular shows were their speciality, and each in his time knew fame, fortune, and bankruptcy. Never satisfied, never still, they were great improvisors; once something was done, the immediate aim was to forget it and do something bigger, better, and yet more breathtaking. They had their finger on the public pulse, and fed the insatiable appetite for spectacle and escape in a humdrum world of tedious work and widespread poverty.
Whilst P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey were great entertainers and had the circus in their blood, Fred Karno was a more subtle and complex character. A shrewd and far-sighted impressario, he spotted and groomed two young unknowns - Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel - as well a host of other comedy stars, but was most famous for his crazy knockabout comedy routines in which everything ended up in a total shambles. So the legacy of this brilliant showman is a name irreversibly associated with disorganization and chaos. Click to hear the World War I song, Fred Karno’s Army.
Yes, being a showman and an entertainer are precarious jobs, requiring immense inner stamina and staying power in the teeth of adversity. So even when the Reveller is exasperatedly critical of some of the crazier plots and schemes hatched by the bar owners, when he compares them with Messrs Barnum, Bailey and Karno he’s putting them alongside some of the greats.
In the course of a relaxed conversation with one of the bar owners the Reveller remarks that for him, Blok M is more than just a ragtag collection of bars and discos - it’s a living community, and the web site’s aim is to foster a community spirit for the blokes currently based in Jakarta, and for that forgotten army of guys who’ve lived and worked here at some time in their lives. And, as it turns out, the thousands of ‘honorary revellers’ spread over 150 countries who follow the monthly goings-on down the Blok!
After a slow build up the chat rooms are now an active, lively place. With 60 registered users and nigh on 400 postings, there’s some good stuff going up. You don’t have to join in the chatter - just browse around, read what folk are saying, and enjoy some pungent, humorous, off-beat and lively gossip. Click here to visit the chat rooms and see what’s happening.
Unless he’s absolutely out for the count and doesn’t know whether it’s the post office or Tuesday, your average reveller has the occasional twinge of conscience about the negative effects of a prolonged intake of ale. Yes, we all have a love-hate relationship with the amber nectar. We know all too well that it can make you do Silly Things if consumed in excess, can be a sartorial disaster as you have to buy larger trousers with depressing regularity, and is heartily detested by your long-suffering liver.
However, you beer drinkers should take heart. It’s not all gloom and doom, as scientific research is constantly finding out more and more Good Things about beer. Not only is it less fattening than milk, not only does it reduce your chances of going down with heart disease and cancer, not only is it a great reliever of stress - it may also make you brainy. This startling discovery by a group of Swedish researchers will bring tears of joy to all the beer swillers in Blok M. Click here to read all about it!
Epilogue
It’s been a month with momentum down the Blok. The bars have been doing good business, and there’s been a sustained influx of Sweet Young Things - not just younger ones, but some very attractive and charming older girls. These are proving very popular with the guys, who are getting increasingly fed up with the capricious little madams and their flighty ways.
Success feeds on success, and once again it’s the richness and variety of the Blok that’s its greatest attraction for the Reveller. To be able to stagger out of one hostelry and meander unsteadily to another that you know will have just the company you seek and the atmosphere to suit your mood, is one of nature’s greatest gifts.