Back from a break

Streetwise

That this is the first blog entry since late December is an ominous sign. After a nondescript Christmas and New Year followed by a few rather boring and uneventful nights down the Blok, I decided to give the place a rest and let the blog lie fallow for a while.

During my absence I did of course receive regular dispatches from the troops at the front, but these were uniformly depressing. My Bar bore the brunt of their criticism, with some excoriating comments about music, service and the clientele. More disturbing were reports of a resurgence of beggars, taxi touts and layabouts, and several regulars commented that the place has lost its friendly atmosphere.

Top Notch

Top Gun is now my regular early evening base - if you can call eight thirty early. The sad fact is that things continue to start later and later on the Blok, and it doesn’t get into its stride much before ten o’clock these days. When I wander in the place is empty but for a handful of customers, and I can play pool to my heart’s content with the girls and the bar staff - a far cry from the time when you had to fight your way into the place at seven o’clock, and then wait half an hour or so for your first game.

The good thing about Top Gun is that the action is consistent, so you can always be sure of a pleasant and sociable night. The only downside is the music - I hear reports from my correspondents that on two occasions recently it was so loud that people complained and left the bar.

The bands are a mixed bunch. Believing that you have an amazing talent for singing seems to be an adolescent phase that all Indonesian kids pass through, and some of the bands hired by Top Gun are excruciatingly amateurish and cacophonous. One night the teeny-bopper band is so appalling that my good friend Dave Jardine grimaces and switches off his hearing-aid, while another mate inserts the ear-plugs he’s taken to bringing with him to Top Gun.

But before the music starts there’s one of those absolutely delightful and inimical little scenes that make Blok M such fun. A bunch of half a dozen or so Indramayu lasses are swapping experiences of the recent floods, and our favourite deaf-and-dumb Sweet Young Thing is regaling them by acting out her home situation. First she mimes hauling and lifting a big object - her TV, presumably - onto a shelf or wardrobe, then wading through water that reaches up to her very ample bosom (which provides plenty of buoyancy), and finally swimming through the deeper water.

Everyone is creased with laughter, and one of the guys solicitously takes her to one side so that he may learn more about her traumatic experiences - and no doubt offer to contribute handsomely to her flood recovery programme in more intimate surroundings.

Their Bar

I often wonder if some bar owners are born with a self-destruct button in addition to congenital tunnel vision and selective amnesia. Many of the regular customers have told My Bar’s boss what they think of the music, the tit-shows and the shady characters who infiltrate the place late at night. But has anything been done about any of these things? The answer is a resounding no - so it’s hardly surprising that the place is now rumoured by many to be in its death throes.

One recent Saturday night turns out to be a real eye-opener. Well primed and eager for some late-night revels, I leave Top Gun just before ten thirty and slip across the road to My Bar - but what a depressed and depressing state it’s in. There are only a few girls hanging around, and of those only one that I recognize as a My Bar regular. There are two western expats (one of whom is me), and a dozen or so rather dour eastern expats.

Between ten thirty and eleven ten I count eight western expats who put their heads round the door, take one brief look, then turn round and go straight out. You can be sure they tell their mates about the state of the place, so a lot more than eight customers are lost in those forty minutes. By eleven thirty a handful of the regular girls have come in - not, by any measure, the pick of the crop - and the clientele is largely eastern expats.

Another shock is the bar staff. Gone are most of the charming barmaids, in their place a trio of deadbeat guys who don’t smile, don’t know your name, and can barely rub a few words of English together. I’ve no sooner finished a bite of lasagna and a bottle of beer than one of these zombies thrusts the bill right in my face and demands payment there and then. I later complain about this to the boss, but haven’t had any reply to my SMS - which makes me wonder if he’s still running the show.

The place now has a run-down, forlorn feel about it. The bar display is a sad mockery of its erstwhile exuberance - sad rows of plain glasses, a shrink-wrapped pack of Kraetingden, and a few bottles of wines and spirits posing listlessly in front of a scratched and dingy mirror.

They’ve replaced the worn-out bar stools with nice shiny new ones, but this is a no-brainer as the footrests are so high off the floor that you’ve got to sit hunched-up to put your feet on them - if you don’t, your legs are left dangling in mid-air.

I pop back into Top Gun at about eleven forty-five and find the place packed and swinging - with a lot of the regulars present, and not only the Indramayu crowd but a good number of the Betawi Sweet Young Things going about their business with commendable dedication.

Gentle reader, I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this sad little vignette.

D’s decline

Having heard rather mixed comments about D’s Place I decide to pop in to see for myself how it’s faring since the Pattens’ pull out. First impression? It’s shrunk. The downstairs bar has fewer tables and stools, and some genius thought it might be a good idea to put a circular podium with a dancing pole slap-bang in the middle of the bar floor.

The decor is tatty and makeshift, giving the place that shabbiness that comes from lack of care, competence and investment. The plastic vine leaves have fallen off the fancy trellis-work, tables have been crudely re-set on the old dance podium behind which mirrors have been amateurishly fixed with what looks like cheap glue that’s oozed and been smeared between the panels. The walls are pocked with holes and scuff-marks from long-abandoned gimmicks, and to cap it all a few rolls of green and white candy-striped wallpaper have been inexpertly hung to patch the wall next to the bar door.

The real horror, though, is the floor-to-ceiling wall paintings on the stairs to the upstairs bar/disco - a tacky and amateurish rendering of music and dance themes, the characters in which seem to be suffering from some hideously disfiguring skin condition and the sort of skeletal deformities you’d expect to find in a circus freak show or low-budget horror film.

And upstairs? A noisy little box full of flashing lights and flashy girls who are way beyond their use-by date. I don’t even bother to go in.

Neverest

Walking past Sportsmans - a place I’ve boycotted since the usurpation of poor old Paulus - I push open Everest’s door only to be blasted by a live band belting out some instantly-forgettable tripe at ear-numbing volume. Closing the door I stroll down the road, give My Bar a wide berth, and head for Oscar.

Oscar

First impressions? Like D’s Place, it’s shrunk. Fewer tables and bar stools reflect the shrinking clientele, as fewer guys are coming to the Blok these days. But Oscar has got a good band playing, and what they lack in numbers the customers make up for in enthusiasm. There’s a pleasant, lively atmosphere, the staff are as chirpy and attentive as ever, and a few of the older girls I’ve known for years join me for a drink and a natter.

The best word to describe the place is that overworked and rather dated word, swinging. Yes, feet are tapping, some of the braver souls are dancing, and there’s animation in the place. But alas, by now I’m rather the worse for wear and after a couple of beers I decide to wander off homewards.

Postscript

Why, you might ask, don’t I drop in to G-String or One Tree? Well, G-String’s loud music puts me off even opening the door to have a quick peek inside, and One Tree has completely spoilt its large windows by putting up lace curtains! Now in my book, a pub with lace curtains is a bit like drinking your beer from a wine glass - it just ain’t done. Anyway, the place is empty so I give it a miss and head straight for the bajay rank outside the Ambhara Hotel.

As my bajay wends its way through the streets and side roads of south Jakarta I feel a sense of loss, and grieve for the good times I’ve had down the Blok in years gone by. That magical ingredient that made it a very special place has gone, and we’re left with memories of its greatness. Yes, it’s still a good place to go for a night out, but it’s lost its soul and has become just another run-of-the mill street with a handful of bars.

I feel no sympathy for those bar owners who are now feeling the cold winds of decline, as it’s they who are responsible for bringing into the Blok those tawdry trappings of loud, rowdy music and salacious dancing displays that have reduced their bars to a sleazy sideshow. Their chickens have come home to roost.