Saturday 12th August
The Late Late Show
The action on a Saturday night down the Blok just keeps on getting later and later, with the ludicrous consequence that as I’m striding down the street in the direction of my bajay there’s often a sizeable crowd of carousers and Sweet Young Things pouring into the bars. So, anxious to see if I’m missing any action worth the name, just for once I decide to stick it out and go home with the stragglers.
The evening starts with a jar in One Tree to see how the fittings and trimmings are progressing. It’s looking good, but the reek of petroleum-based adhesive soon drives me out and across the road to have a shufti at what’s happening in Top Gun and see if I can get in a few games of pool before the stampede starts.
Top Gun is quiet and civilised - there’s just a handful of the older regulars shooting the breeze and enjoying an early evening beer. The pool groupies are there, a gaggle of girls who’ve been around the Blok for a good many years. One stalwart, Yani, was in Top Gun on my very first visit to Blok M almost a decade ago. After a few of my depressingly and predictably appalling games I hang up the cue and take a seat at the bar to watch the Sweet Young Things as they arrive.
An hour or so later I up sticks and cross the road to My Bar, but the place is virtually empty. In spite of this the DJ’s ramp up the sound system to a crescendo of incoherent hammering, so I leave the empty bar to its cacophonous soliloquy and return to the relative peace and tranquility of Top Gun where I have another ale and bump into some friends I haven’t seen for a while.
And it’s back to My Bar as the clock slips past eleven. The punters are now trickling in, and by half past it’s fairly full. The usual gang of weekend girls is on duty, and amongst the Sweet Young Things there are some real gems. As usual, by twelve thirty the place is uncomfortably full and uncomfortably noisy. As ever, the narrow gap between the bar and the disco floor clogs up so badly that navigation is almost impossible. I like to wander round the bar, but the layout in My Bar makes this impossible and I end up being pinioned uncomfortably against the disco bar.
By about one thirty I’ve had enough, and fight my way through the mob to the doorway. Like a human yo-yo I cross again to Top Gun, expecting to find a rump of revellers left behind after the exodus to My Bar. But the place is surprisingly full and pulsing with life, so I settle down at a bar table with a squadron of the Buncit girls. They’ve been drinking tequila and a couple of them are somewhat the worse for wear, so I carry on a weird and disjointed conversation with these two beauties until one of them disappears with her friends - possibly to go home, but more likely across the road to get even more sozzled.
So I’m left alone with a charming, but totally incapacitated, Sweet Young Thing from Indramayu. In spite of the band’s blaring we manage to carry on a conversation for half an hour. Alas, it’s too late to do anything more than chat, and I do have a strict leave-’em-alone policy if they’ve had too much to drink, so we part on beautifully platonic terms - and she’s now on my list of Most Favoured Girls.
As the clock crawls towards three o’clock the place palpably slumps and the guys and girls start to straggle out. The bar staff, bless them, are visibly drooping, and the band is winding down ready to pack up and go home.
As I’m chauffeured home in my regular bajay I reflect that there’s nothing special about the late night action - it’s basically more of the same. In the days of old Pentagon and Lintas Melawai the late night was special in those places; they existed for the sole purpose of last-ditch carousing and match-making. The moral of the story seems to be that an all-purpose bar is never going to capture quite the same ambience as one that’s dedicated to the early hours market. A great pity, and another way in which the Blok has both gained and lost in the changes of the last year or so.