Saturday 14th June
Chill factor
A lot of folk have complained about the week that’s just gone by - its capricious weather, agonizing traffic jams that are bad even by Jakarta standards, niggling minor ailments, and a general sense of sloth and lethargy. So it is that I head towards the Blok through the miserable evening murk with high hopes of physical and mental restoration.
My little street has turned in on itself against the rain. Shops and stalls are draped in plastic sheets of varying age and hue, making the roadside look like a glimmering patchwork strip. Ojek boys huddle in corners under awnings smoking kreteks, their bikes dripping in the rain, and parked cars cower under shrouds of dull gray fabric. The roads are quite empty because Jakarta taxis go into hiding as soon as there’s a spot of rain, and bikers hug the kerb as they hurry and scurry on their watery way.
The road into Blok M resembles an apocalyptic scene from a Bosch painting - darkness punctuated by splashes of orange light from the street lamps, flashes of white light from the traffic, and multicoloured bursts from the advertising hoardings.
The road into Blok M on a rainy night, by Hieronymus Bosch
When they’re full of water, the Jalan Falatehan potholes are even more treacherous than usual - so I advance gingerly towards my usual spot outside Top Gun. The parking guys are huddled against a wall across the road, and half-heartedly call out their regular patter - “terus, terus, kiri, terus, stop!” The street looks doubly forlorn as there are few cars parked by the bars, and even the urchins have taken refuge, a bedraggled group of them squatting by the side of a huge Toyota.
Now the best cure for the doldrums is a good drink and a tasty meal, and I rub my hands with pleasurable anticipation as I stroll hungrily into Top Gun.
Girls may come and girls may go, but sop buntut is always there when you need it. So here’s my visual tribute to that Great Institution, the Top Gun sop buntut.
The full monty - a bowl of soup and a plate of boiled rice, chilli sauce and krupuk
Ready for action - oxtail fished out, chilli spread on rice, krupuk soaking in the soup
The end of a perfect meal!
It’s unusually quiet in the Blok tonight, I remark to one of the girls. She tells me that all the pool league players are at a big party in some hotel or other to mark the end of the pool competition, and of course there’s the football stuff going on as well. I take advantage of the absence of the Pool Nazis to have a relaxing game or two with the girls - just like old times before the Junta imposed their League Rules diktat, I reflect, as I cheerfully lose yet another game,
By nine thirty or so Top Gun is filling up nicely, but alas the Sweet Young Things are thin on the ground - and there’s no sign of Dumb and Dumber. I wonder if she’s joined the Shangri La contingent? Or maybe found a boyfriend? Her regular support crew are also absent, so I presume they’re all off hunting together. After another bottle of ale I decide to pop across the road and see what’s cooking in D’s Place, so it’s up and away from an increasingly busy Top Gun.
D’s Place continues to amuse and bemuse me. Having chalked up something of a Jakarta record by its accumulation of bad taste and tacky decor, I didn’t think there was any scope for further creative endeavour - but one look at the staff uniforms makes me realise just how wrong I can be.
The girls are wearing long white dresses that have a strap over one shoulder and a cut-out slit at the waist on the opposite side. Mistake number one, the material is quite awful - it’s thin, clingy and cheap looking. It cruelly hugs the figure in all the wrong places, making buttocks protrude and legs look like malformed tree trunks. Mistake number two, the tailoring is truly terrible. The fit is bad, the sewing all askew, and the most polite word for the hemming is amateurish. The visual effect, as the staff hustle and bustle round the bar, is that of a badly choreographed chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy.
Far from complaining, I heartily applaud the D’s Place style. It’s cheeky and cheerful, cranky and kitschy, and adds to the place’s quite unique character. The bar staff are absolute gems, the regulars a great crowd, and it’s a good place for an early evening jar.
I spend a pleasant half hour in D’s, chatting with a guy I haven’t seen for a couple of years (he stayed with Old D’s after I’d abandoned it) and bumping into one of the original Top Gun girls I’ve known since my first night on the Blok. As the music starts I up sticks and head for the door, deciding to wander down the street to visit One Tree.
I really like the One Tree Bar. It’s got a decor, a character, and an ambience that makes me feel immediately at home - this place is instant nostalgia, a throwback to the European bars and cafes of my carefree youth. This is a bar to relax in, let your mind drift back to days gone by, and put a stretch of clear water between you and the strife and stress of Jakarta’s workaday world.
Instant nostalgia!
One Tree’s regulars are a pleasant, sociable bunch. For the most part they’re guys with girlfriends who meet up there to chat and enjoy good company, or single guys who just enjoy a bit of badinage with the ever-cheerful bar staff. What more could a guy want?
The answer to this rhetorical question is, a bit of peace and quiet. It’s ten o’clock as I walk down the middle of the street towards One Tree, carefully pacing the puddles and potholes. The pavements these days are so full of ramshackle food stalls, ranked motorbikes and knots of pimply ojek riders that the peripatetic carouser is crowded out and forced to tread the open street.
Leaving behind the clammy drizzle of the grumbling Jakarta night as you go into the warmth and cheer of One Tree is a sweet experience. A friendly personal greeting from the staff, and I’m soon sat at the bar with a glass of the house red wine. Bart is rightly proud of his wines, and every smooth glass is a tribute to the care he takes. The only sounds you can hear are the hum and chatter of conversation, occasional laughter and cheering, the clink and clatter of glasses and bottles - homely sounds that give the place its atmosphere.
This idyllic scene is spoilt at a stroke when some selfish clown turns on the sound system and starts belting out loud music. As if to add insult to injury, they then chop and change the tracks before they’re finished, like some dyslexic jukebox. I politely ask if the sound can be turned down, and it is - but moments later, it’s blaring again. This is the cue for me to pay up and go.
As I walk out into the night I reflect that the street is losing another bit of its individuality, and One Tree is losing a customer. Taking such pains and going to such expense to create a great little pub, and then turning it into just another Jalan Falatehan drink and music hole, is a Blok M tragedy.
It’s been a mixed evening on the Blok. Top Gun was great as usual, D’s Place goes ever upwards on its Wonderland way, but One Tree is a big disappointment. If the only way to turn a profit is to play loud music, and that’s what the customers really want, then I bow to the will of the majority and we go our different ways.
As I mull over these thoughts I’m suddenly aware of a pair of bright headlights bearing down on me. There’s a narrow wedge of no man’s land near the bus station that’s skirted by a traffic lane barely wide enough for one vehicle, and no-one’s sure which direction is one way. After a good-natured impasse I back onto a scrap of waste land and the other car edges through the narrow gap. A cheerful wave, and I’m on my way into deepest Melawai - homeward bound, the batteries charged for another week’s toil.