Saturday 17th November
Reaching for the stars
There used to be a popular T-Shirt slogan, “Another shitty day in paradise”. Long did I ponder on the metaphysical truth lurking in this simple paradox, many a pensive moment did I spend mulling over its philosophical depths. In the end I decided on a Sartrian existentialist interpretation - that each moment is a blank slate on which we may write what we choose. And nowhere in the world is this more true than in Blok M on a featureless Saturday night.
This night starts slowly, with the pool mavens working their sombre serious way through game after meticulously-executed game. Asked by the bar staff if I want to play, I politely decline, saying that while the Top Gun table is run according to the Pool League Nazi Rules I’m simply not going to grace the table with my presence. I prefer to sit at the bar, watch the world go by, and enjoy a really good think.
It’s well after ten before the Indramayu contingent begins to arrive and walk in to size up the regular Saturday night spread of guys. Not many tonight, I count about twenty all told, Of these, I reckon only half a dozen are prime targets for the Sweet Young Things, so the girls form their own little huddles and bivouac by the band area awaiting their migratory prey.
Sure enough, by ten thirty the first wave of revellers arrives, guys well primed and ready for the kill. At this point in the evening I like to imagine a stage curtain rising and the actors launching into their characters. But just as in the theatre you’ve got the star-studded gala performance and the weekly high-spot night when it all comes together brilliantly, you’ve also got rainy afternoon matinees, dead nights when the audience seems to have been magically transmuted into dozing zombies, and evening shows packed with school groups more interested in adolescent sexual experiments than watching a stage play.
This particularly night reminds me of a comedy film I saw many years ago with the catchy title “If it’s Tuesday this must be Belgium”, a light but likeable froth of a comedy that pokes gentle fun at the American whistle-stop tourist business. Looking around me I drain my bottle and think to myself, “If it’s ten this must be Top Gun”.
After farewells to the bar staff, I stroll out of Top Gun and straight across the road to Highway to Elle to see what the place is like and how it’s shaping up. The street entrance is something of an oddity. The vestibule is large and spare, the decor a rather plain shade of blue throughout. A couple of girls sit at a sort of reception point on the right, and straight ahead is a very large staircase with - if memory serves me correctly - wrought-iron trimmings.
The staircase is central to the theme of the place. Very cleverly, instead of trying to tuck it away as in My Bar or disguise it with hideous wall-paintings à la D’s Place, they’ve made it a major feature. Going into the bar is a bit like getting to the top of an escalator in one of the more modern London tube stations, as it debouches you straight slap-bang into the middle of the bar.
The crème de la crème of the ex-Kemang staff await you at the head of the stairs, elegant and svelte in their long maroon gowns. The scene reminds me vividly of air hostesses greeting embarking passengers.
The decor is minimalist, and very effective. Each wall is a primary colour, decorated with old vinyl albums that reek of pure nostalgia behind their neat glass frames. The place is primly carpeted in, again, restfully neutral tones. Space has been used very cleverly, and the effect is quite cosy and friendly.
On the right as you step off the stairs and into the bar, there are two alcoves. One has the mandatory pool table in it, the other a raised dais with the mandatory shiny dance pole on a podium. But what strikes me most is that the walls aren’t solid, they’ve got what look like overgrown serving hatches in them so that you have a sight line from one end of the bar to the other. Suddenly it dawns on me where I’ve seen precisely this feature before - on the old cross-Channel ferries that used to ply between Dover and Calais.
The bar is long, functional and inviting. It stretches down the left side of the saloon, and then the full length of the outside window wall. A simple awning over the bar, a touch inherited from the Kemang Beat, adds a friendly touch to the place.
Apart from the visual impact, I’m struck by the soft music emanating from a very smooth and obviously expensive sound system. Ah, the Daryl touch! I say to myself - and, like the hero in a pantomime, up pops The Man himself, right on cue. We haven’t met for almost three years, so we sit down for a drink and a chinwag.
Daryl hasn’t given up on his musical ambitions, but as he says rather wistfully you’ve got the reality of needing to earn a crust and pay the bills. He tells me about how he set up the new bar, and the sort of place he hopes it will become. He tells me that he’s not had any financial or managerial connection with D’s Place for a long time, and that Highway is a new venture, not a D’s bolt-hole as the rumours had suggested. Daryl says that he doesn’t like the extremes to which D’s has gone with the VIP crowd and the vulgar strip-shows, and he fears that if they continue down this road they might be letting themselves in for trouble.
Highway is positioned between the D’s fun concept and the quieter bars like One Tree. Yes, there’ll be girls, but the riff-raff will not be welcome. Daryl isn’t going to get into a turf war to bring the girls in, as other bars have done - he believes that if the ambience is right and the guys are coming in, the classier girls will follow. I wish him well with that approach, but in my experience if there isn’t a free market in SYTs they just won’t come while they can run feral in Top Gun and My Bar. The girls come in a job lot, and you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth.
So there you have it - from the horse’s mouth. Daryl’s business instincts and acumen have served him well in the past, so we wait to see if that Old Patten Magic is still there. In the meantime, here are a few piccies I bashed off with my handphone camera - not technical masterpieces, but they show the layout and the colour.
The stairway opens into the main bar
View from the dance-pole alcove towards the street window
View from the dance-pole alcove towards the bar
The pool table alcove seen from the stairwell
The pool table seen from the dance-pole alcove
The two alcoves seen from the window end of the bar
Looking through the pole-dancing alcove to the top of the stairway
Looking down the bar from the street window corner
It’s been a bit of a rum fortnight and I’ve not got down the Blok as much as I’d have liked to. Work and home duties have had first call on the Reveller’s time, and - to be quite honest - the ever-increasing Blok M drink prices have curbed my normally expansive drinking habits. Other revellers have also made sharp comments about drink prices in the Blok M Forums, so the bar owners had better realise that the market is increasingly price sensitive for the average Joe Carouser who hasn’t got a bottomless expat salary.
So the year marches on, and the festive season will soon be upon us. As I drive my nice shiny new car out of Jalan Falatehan and swing round the bus station entrance down towards Melawai, I muse on what Santa will bring me this year - and immerse myself in a fantasy of white mini-skirts, red boots and flimsy fur-trimmed tank tops.