Friday 20th June
Community spirit
Most Jakartans have a love-hate relationship with rain – it may make travel difficult, but it does scour the air of its accumulated Nasties. The skies have cleared this week, so we’re now back to Jakarta’s regular cocktail of dust and exhaust fumes – and hoards of manic drivers who seem hell-bent on making up for lost time caused by the recent downpours.
Looking forward to a relaxing Friday night down the Blok I edge my little car out of its narrow gateway and trundle down the gentle incline at a leisurely pace. Now my street suffers from being a rat run when Jalan Fatmawati is full, and there are two cars coming towards me and one of my neighbours who’s driving the car in front. There’s an impasse, as neither of us has any intention of backing up for the invaders to push their way through.
Suddenly, it’s as though the circus has come to town. Crowds of grubby little wide-eyed street urchins, chattering mothers toting sleepy toddlers, half-dressed guys in vests and T-shirts idly scratching themselves, all gather round to watch the show. They’ve no sympathy with the selfish intruders, and gesticulate for them to back up.
Now one of the facts of life in our great city (and indeed, throughout Indonesia) is that a road is not a space reserved for vehicles, but an extension of one’s home and a freely available community resource. My street is furnished with worn wooden benches and threadbare hulks of old armchairs, trees, shrubs and flowers growing in assorted pots and cans, and little shops whose owners cheerfully extend their counters into the street. And of course, the ubiquitous ojeks. Whenever there’s a local wedding or a pesta the street is blocked off: gaudy awnings are strung up, rickety chairs set out, field kitchens fired up, and monstrous sound systems hauled up onto dangerously leaning telephone poles.
After much muttered discussion, peering and measuring, a couple of the more enterprising lads persuade the oncoming drivers to back up against a slightly recessed wall – but there’s still not enough room to pass. Then, like an orchestra striking up in unison, everyone starts to shift the benches, armchairs, pots and cans into doorways and snickets, hauling and tugging with smiles and nods.
After a couple of minutes the street looks forlornly bare and characterless, and we’re able to squeeze through with barely an inch to spare on either side. The oncoming drivers look thunderous and scowl as we nod our thanks to them – and I reflect that they probably won’t be using our little street as a rat run again.
So I’m on my way at last, grinning and thanking the neighbours for their help. This is one of the reasons I like living in Jakarta – the sense of community that’s a thing of the past in our Great and Glorious British cities.
Jalan Falatehan is packed solid with cars when I eventually arrive, so I have to park down by G-String. Striding up the road towards Top Gun it’s noticeable how much life is going on around the little food shacks and the cigarette vendors’ stalls, with girls and their ojek-driving beaux chatting and munching as they squat on the pavement.
It’s eight fifteen, and Top Gun is pleasantly tranquil. There’s something about the hour before the place starts to fill up that I’ve always liked. The music is quiet, the staff natter and chatter together, the managers summon the troops and give them the evening’s marching orders, and there’s a rather comforting acoustic muffling. It reminds me of an empty theatre just before the doors open and the audience comes in.
A waitress with a welcoming smile that would charm the proverbial birds off a tree takes my order, echoing my “and sop buntut, please!” with a knowing nod. A quick (and traditionally disastrous) game of pool later, my food arrives – and it’s up to its best quality. The green chilli sauce is bitingly hotter than the last batch, and there’s nothing more satisfying than quenching the fires with a long draught of ice-cold beer.
By nine o’clock the place is filling up fast, and who should wander in but Bas – one of our Blok M Forum stalwarts, and a long-established reveller. He too promptly orders a sop buntut, and we spend a couple of minutes extolling the nutritious value, the excellent digestibility, and the exquisite flavour of our favourite bar dish.
The incoming customers behave in a rather odd way. They cluster along the bar or on the fringes of the tables by the Twilight Zone, leaving the central space and tables eerily empty. Many of them are South East Asian expats so maybe it’s a cultural thing, I reflect.
The music is a pleasant and tuneful selection, not your typical Top Gun fare, and I guffaw loudly when I suddenly recognize “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. As I drain my double Pernod, I reflect that it’s moments like this that make Blok M such a memorable place.
This completely surreal musical event coincides with a completely surreal sartorial happening, as a girl resembling one of the Fat Slags waddles into the bar and commandeers the corner by the pool table waiting list. She’s wearing a revealing white outfit with cutaway straps across the back that make her look like an actress in a bondage video – but as to the frontal view, you just don’t want to know. Her hair seems to be modelled on one of the less pleasant female characters in a Harry Potter film, and her make-up may euphemistically be described as ‘striking’.
Not to be upstaged, in comes a guy resembling a bit-part actor who’s just walked off the set of one of the weirder scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean. He’s a heavily-built bloke wearing a black T-shirt, long sloppy shorts, and a red bandanna tied round his head. But the show-stopper, the absolute pièce de résistance, is his belt – from which hangs a collection of neatly-tied plastic bags strung over his stomach. Clutching a mineral-water bottle in one hand, he strides through the bar and out of sight into the Twilight Zone.
“It looks as though tonight’s going to be a classic!” I confide to Bas, whose expression is priceless.
As we watch the pool players, I catch my breath and my heart beats faster. There’s a girl in a white miniskirt at the table – a bit full-figured for such an outfit, but a stunner for all that. My eyes are glued to the pool game. Eventually I tear myself away, and try to control my racing pulse by looking at some of the OEMs who have just come into the bar – ghastly passion-killers with all the allure and sex appeal of an overcooked suet pudding.
Glancing at the darker back corner of the bar, I see a group of girls sitting and chatting together. It must be a girls’ night out, I reckon – a gang of office workers who want to see the Naughty Side of south Jakarta. They trot out rather demurely after an hour or so, no doubt suitably scandalized
This little vignette gets me to comparing the rear bar of another place – the Club. It occurs to me that the great difference between that venerable institution and Top Gun is that there, the Dark Side is a dangerous and a very naughty place, whereas in Top Gun it’s a safe haven from the main action in the bar. And in that brief moment, I suddenly think of a new name for the Dark Side of the Club – Hoover Corner, because that legendary cleaner is renowned for its powers of beating and sucking.
As I’m chatting to Bas, in walk two – then three – of the Club girls. I ask them why they’re so far away from home, and they tell me that the Club is totally dead tonight so they’ve given up and come to see what’s happening on Falatehan. Now it’s interesting to compare the Club girls with the north Jakarta OEMs – and the Club girls win hands down on looks and liveliness.
Some of the girls tell me they’ve come into Top Gun because D’s Place is packed full, which means good takings for both bars tonight. This is how the Blok was always intended to be, I reflect – something for everyone, and no-one left out of the action.
Shortly after nine a lot of the guys leave the bar, making a lull in the evening’s festivities. But soon afterwards in comes a new contingent – not the regulars, but the ‘guys out for a night on the town’ brigade, young bucks with their characteristic swagger and bravado. That some of them are pretty well plastered is shown by the fact that they make a beeline for the OEM crones and start to chat them up. “Jeez, I’d hate to wake up next to that one” I say to Bas, as one awful specimen slips a brawny arm around the neck of a sozzled carouser and plants her lurid red lips full on his unsuspecting mouth.
But one thing that’s increasingly noticeable is, yet again, the absence of Indramayu girls. Even Dumb and Dumber isn’t here, and Bas is eager to see this legendary Sweet Youngish Thing for himself. Ten o’clock comes and goes, and eventually they do drift in – with a rather demurely dressed D&D who shows no interest at all in the male clientele. I point her out to Bas, who’s a bit disappointed that she’s not dressed to kill and vamping round the bar as usual. It must be her rest day, I speculate.
Soon, all but the youngest of the Indramayu girls are in the bar and latching on to the guys. Hunting in packs, it’s the Blok M equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, and every few minutes another bemused looking guy is hauled bodily out of the bar by one or more Sweet Young Things.
One tall and very alluring slim young thing slinks past us at the bar, and within two minutes of striking up a conversation is on her way out with the guy she’s targetted. “That’ll pay the rent for next month”, I comment to Bas.
Top Gun is indeed a classic tonight. I’d got Highway to Elle and D’s Place lined up for a visit, but with so many friends and acquaintances to chat with the night just flows by – and before I know it, midnight is here. The band, which started fairly competently, is now going rapidly downhill and getting louder by the minute, so I decide to bid farewell and head for home.
The drive southwards is mercifully uneventful, and I’m soon tucking the car into its narrow little garage. Looking down my street as I open the front door, I reflect that Jakarta is still a place where community counts. It’s what makes Blok M the great place it is, and my small corner of south Jakarta a great place to live.
