Thursday 29th March
Breaking News
There’s been a sharp increase in the number of complaints about Jalan Falatehan and the bars over the last few days. Customers are leaving in droves, girls are packing their bags and departing, the streets are deserted, ojeks are rusting on the sidewalks, the bars are going bankrupt, Armageddon is about to descend on South Jakarta - and it’s all the Reveller’s fault. Read on for the sensational details.
There’s been yet another complaint about the guttersnipes who roam the street and hound customers from bar to bar. “Where have they all gone? There used to be dozens of the lovable little blighters, but tonight I could only count twenty. They’re such cute little tykes,” one guy chokes with scarce-concealed emotion, tears trickling down his grizzled features. “I really miss their cherubic little faces beaming up at me as I stagger out of the bar, their little hands tugging at me, their sad pleas for a bit of my loose change - I mean, Jeez, what’s the Blok coming to if there’s no room for these barefoot little angels? I blame that Reveller guy, he’s always telling ‘em to ‘piss off” and moaning to the bar owners about shifting them off the street.”
There was a fracas in My Bar late last night between staff and customers when the air conditioning ventilator suddenly started working. “We only come in ‘ere for the stale fag smoke and the sore throats”, wheezes one particularly gutted individual after he stops coughing his lungs up and wipes bloodshot eyes with his shirt cuff. “Hell’s bells, can’t this bleedin’ management get anything right?” thunders another before collapsing in a paroxysm of phlegmy splutters. “It’s all because of the bloody Reveller”, he mutters. “Why doesn’t he just shut up and leave the bars the way we like them?”
Yesterday evening an angry mob in Top Gun rounded on Tony and demanded that he turn the music volume up to the maximum. “We’re really gutted that we can hear ourselves think!” bawls one at the top of his voice; “That effing band you had in last night was far too effing tuneful for my effing liking”, roars his mate. “We’re tone deaf, and proud of it!” yells another. “You turn the volume down any more, and we’re leaving!” bellows a guy from a neighbouring table, “Why should that Reveller character spoil our fun? We don’t give a toss about other customers, and we’re proud of it.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning three angry customers stormed out of My Bar complaining to a stunned management that the DJ had failed to play one track more than three times in a row. “We like to hear the same stuff pounding over and over again,” scowls one. “And real loud!” echoes his mate, “Tell the effing Reveller to stuff it and stop griping - it’s all his fault that the DJ’s not doing things the way we like them.”
A couple of guys in D’s Place have complained about the lack of police raids on the street over the last few months, and the absence of patrolling police cars. “I just love it when they burst in with their cameras flashing and their videos rolling!” sighs one of them nostalgically. “Gives the evening a bit of a buzz, that’s for sure,” reminisces the other. “Yeah, I’d love to see my boss’s face when he sees me on the early morning news being hauled out during a drugs bust.” “And don’t forget the missus”, chimes in his mate, “think how proud she’d be to see her hubby on the evening news, plastered out of his skull and clutching a brace of dollies as the lights turn on you”. “Yeah, them’s the good old days. Sod that rotten Reveller for telling the bar owners to get the bloody cops out of Jalan Falatehan.”
A group of My Bar regulars were overheard last night complaining that there were so few African businessmen in the place. “These guys are real characters!” chips in one, “salt of the earth. You just gotta admire the way they blow cigar smoke in everyone’s face - and that style when they shove other guys out of the way at the bar!” “And they sure as hell know how keep them tarts in their place - a good grope round the tits and a bit of pinching and pawing, that’s the way to treat ‘em! The Reveller’s a bad influence, telling the bitches to complain to the bosses about a bit of friendly feeling up.”
Out on the street in the early hours of Thursday morning a group of sozzled customers was heard complaining bitterly about taxis and touts. “Where’s a taxi tout when you need him?” fumes one angrily. “Can’t beat ‘em for getting you the lousiest cab in the street at the highest price”, chimes in another. “Yeah, last week I got one that wasn’t falling apart and didn’t break down before it got out of Blok M”, moaned a third. “I was really pissed off when mine only charged me seventy thousand to get me to the Ambhara via Kemang”, grumbles another guy as he staggers towards them. “That flippin’ Reveller is a real pain, these guys only want to earn an honest crust and they wouldn’t hurt a fly.”