Humpty Dumpty

Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?

It is a remarkable coincidence that on the same weekend that the Jalan Falatehan bar owners hold a meeting at which it is decreed that the Reveller’s humble organ is the prime cause of their business woes, a spate of obscene and threatening hate messages should appear on this blog.

Now I do not for one moment believe that any of the bar owners wrote these cowardly tracts. We may have our disagreements about how to run a bar and what the majority of their customers want, but I respect their integrity as businessmen and regard those that I know personally as friends.

However, there appear to be some Blok M regulars whose loyalty to their chosen bars borders on the fanatical, and for whom the Reveller’s sometimes acerbic comments are a personal attack that must be answered with vengeance. Theirs is the blinkered chauvinism of the football hooligan, the blind bigotry of the religious zealot since the beginning of time.

I believe that one or more of these fine fellows heard the owners’ complaints and decided to take the law into their own hands. So in the same way that four over-zealous knights mistook Henry the Second’s sotto voce comment about Archbishop Thomas Becket as an indirect command to whack the poor guy, these deluded bigots took the bar owners’ gripe as their cue to attack the Reveller.

Ironically but predictably their hasty and ill-considered action has backfired on them right royally. They forget that the Internet is a double-edged weapon that can so easily turn the tables on such behaviour. The Blok M web site gets in excess of 50,000 hits a month and is viewed in more than 150 countries by upwards of 500 visitors every day, so their anonymous cowardice has been held up for all the world to see.

What saddens me is that these degenerates have not only tarnished their own good name, but by association the entire Blok M community – owners and customers alike. They are living proof that evolution can work in reverse.

Putting the pieces together again

The bar owners are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Not only is business slow, but their below-the-line costs have risen sharply over the last year – putting a double squeeze on the cash flow. It’s only human of them to perceive the Reveller’s criticisms as a cause of the decline in customers, and hence revenue.

I admit that I’ve been pretty harsh in my comments and criticisms of some of the bars – but I’ve also been pretty lavish with my praise of places that get it right. I also admit that my views are entirely my own – I’ve never pretended to be the mouthpiece of the Blok M customers. But it’s also fair comment that, with a couple of exceptions, the bar owners haven’t approached me to give me their side of the Blok M business woes. And from what I can gather, only one of them is a regular reader of this blog and the forums.

My message to the bar owners is that you have failed to understand the two main reasons why your customers are leaving the street.

The first and most serious reason is that the beggars, taxi touts and shady characters who hang out near Oscar have ruined the street’s friendly atmosphere and actually made people feel so unsafe that they prefer to go elsewhere. You also need to wake up to the fact that police raids on both the bars and the girls in the street, plus a prolonged and heavy plod presence on Jalan Falatehan, have turned away many guys who fear getting caught up in a swoop and appearing on the next day’s TV news. (Incidentally, this is why business in the Five Plus One has been very patchy over the last few months.)

The second reason is that you have all been so busy copying each other (sexy dancers, loud music, live bands, gimmicky promotions, huge TV screens glaring out sports events all night long) that there’s no individuality in the bars any more. Going from D’s Place to Everest to My Bar to Top Gun to Oscar is a bit like going from one McDonald’s to another.

Get the taxis, the touts and the beggars off the street, establish an individual style for each of your bars, keep the police at bay, and I can guarantee that business will pick up very quickly. And you can be dead certain that the Reveller will be the first to applaud your actions and broadcast them to the world with his personal endorsement that Blok M is back on track.