Friday 23 June
Watch this space
When the poet Robert Frost wrote “Something there is that does not love a wall, that wants it down”, he could with great prescience have been talking about our own beloved Top Gun. Many years ago they demolished the wall between the front and rear bars, for reasons best known to the management. Some time later the wall was replaced, because there were so few customers that it was like having a drink in a barn. Then along comes New Top Gun, and down comes the wall again as part of the Grand Design.
And so it is that as I stroll into Top Gun on Friday night for my regular routine of ten minutes’ humiliation at the pool table and three or four bottles of ale to prime me for the travails ahead, I’m gobsmacked to find the place looking like a building site. The wall between the main bar and the disco has been ripped out and there’s feverish activity going on at the far end, where a cheerful gang of Top Gun staff are milling around carrying, lifting, shoving and sweeping for all they’re worth. A new pool table is under construction at the back of the area, and a new bar next to it on the right. In the middle of all this, a dance floor is being created. This is serious and expensive modification work.
The boss greets me warmly, and asks what I think about it all. He explains that the disco had never really taken off, so they decided to redesign the whole bar. I reply that it’s obviously been very carefully thought out and the space used very well, the quality of furniture and fittings is very good, and I wish the venture well.
In fact, what many of us had predicted has come to pass. Try as they might, Top Gun simply couldn’t wrest the late night disco supremacy away from My Bar. At about 11 pm the exodus starts as every able-bodied Sweet Young Thing migrates across the road in search of a victim. So Top Gun returns to its roots as an early-evening watering hole and meeting place, where weary revellers can shoot pool and chat with their mates or the charming girls from Indramayu. Chewing the cud with an old friend at the bar who, like me, has known the old place for nigh on ten years, we agree that it does make economic sense to enlarge the bar and pool area as their money-earning peak is effectively between seven and eleven pm.
There does, though, remain the perennial question of the number of potential customers. Competitors in this market segment are of course D’s Place, Everest and Sportsmans, each of which is very much geared to the early evening trade. D’s Place is enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, and most evenings the downstairs bar is packed. Sportsmans is picking up speed slowly but surely after the Fall, and Everest is doing very nicely these days – thanks to the hands-on management of the boss and his very well trained and absolutely charming staff. G-String is being very seriously squeezed by the competition, but has set its niche as a quality music all-night place along the lines of Oscar, which is of course just across the road and has the advantage of a regular coterie of older but very pleasant and sociable girls. Competition is keen.
Being the stalwart that I am I shall do my bit to help the venture succeed. I’ll be there again tonight to see how it fares, armed with my trusty Canon – so watch this space for piccies of the grand event in my next blog.
Friday, I must confess, is not my favourite night in My Bar. For all that it’s packed with punters, overflowing with Sweet Young Things and has a great dynamic, it’s not to my personal taste. Everything is hurry, hurry, hurry. The girls go into a feeding frenzy, the guys hit the bottle as though booze is going out of fashion, and at midnight it’s show time – the now-obligatory extravaganza of tits, bums and wet T-shirts.
So why, you may ask, do I head for My Bar early in the evening? Well, for two very good reasons. One is to get pole position at the end of the bar, the other to have a bowl of their excellent sop buntut. Then, the inner man well-satisfied, I can sit back and enjoy the pageant. Eleven o’clock is the magic hour when most of the Sweet Young Things leave their perches in D’s Place and Top Gun and flock to My Bar. It’s also the time when the guys have finished their beery socializing and are on the prowl in pursuit of carnal dalliance.
Finishing my meal, I turn to face the disco and see who’s around. A lot of the older girls, better known as the My Bar Heavy Brigade, are here tonight; futilely fluttering their heavily-mascaraed eyelashes at every male in sight, they eventually congregate at the end of the bar to chat among themselves. The Sweet Young Things are in full battle cry tonight; every positive return of eye-contact is a signal to home in on the guy and wrap herself around him. It must have been just like this in the days of the great gold rushes, I reflect – each girl hits pay dirt and stakes her claim, guarding him jealously from the many claim jumpers lurking in the background.
On Friday nights I have observer status only, enjoying the spectacle without partaking in it. This particular night there are some very interesting Sweet Young Things flitting around, and I make a mental note to further our acquaintance at a more leisurely pace during the week. And yes, before you ask, one of them is wearing a white mini skirt!
