D's Place
Sportsmans
Everest
My Bar
Top Gun
Oscars
The Club
The Stamford Arms
Lintas Melawai
'Five Plus One'
The centre of gravity of Blok M is Jalan Pelatehan (or Jalan Fellatio, as some wags call it). This is a side street next to the bus terminal, and is home to five expat dives and a thunderously loud disco that no-one ever admits to having been in.
As the saying goes, “nature abhors a vacuum”, so D’s Place was called into existence to provide the sort of service and ambience for which the Blok M bars were so rightly famous until a few years ago. And I must say it’s largely succeeded, drawing much of the boozing trade away from the other bars on the Blok and attracting a stunning variety of girls in the process.
D’s Place has a great ambience - it’s a good place to get slowly and sociably smashed out of your skull. By general consensus it’s the best place on the Blok for cheap drinks and honest bar bills, but service can be patchy. Getting a bar girl to take your order is sometimes like trying to get a London bus - you wait for ages, then suddenly two or three arrive at once.
Downstairs is a nicely designed bar and pool annex, but it’s rather small (“bijoux” in the parlance of estate agents) and the pool table is so close to the side wall and a central pillar that it would challenge Harry Houdini to play a decent game.
Upstairs is a cool, dimly-lit bar with what might best be described as an up-market sleaziness. D’s Place has become the most popular pick-up place on the block, and after about 10.30 pm upstairs is usually wall-to-wall pussy. You can barely make out peoples’ faces in the half-light - and many a jar of beer has missed its mark when being put down on a table, ending up on the floor instead.
Picking up a girl in D's Place requires the fly-fishing technique. You have to be deft and skilful to attract and retain the best girls, as competition can be fierce and they get very picky.
My only negative comment is that D’s Place has suffered a bit from well-intentioned over-management - for example, constantly changing the facilities, layout and decor, and going for gimmicks – but top marks to the management for making an effort, and they’re gradually getting it right. Click here to see pictures
D's Place now has it's own web site - click here to visit: http://dsplace.jakartablokm.com
Located at the top of the street - and right next door to D’s Place - Sportsmans has a pleasantly spacious bar downstairs with a pool table and a small counter, whilst towards the back of the bar there’s an eating area and another counter on the left. Upstairs there’s another pool table and a recently enlarged restaurant.
A favourite early-evening watering-hole for the business community and TV sports fan, Sportsmans has striven to be a bit more up-market than the other dives on the Blok. It’s a great place if your idea of riveting conversation is mulling over the comparative merits of different sorts of oil tankers and drilling platforms.
However, Sportsmans has seen better days and is now eclipsed by D's Place, which offers the same sort of ambience downstairs and has much cheaper drinks. Used to have a decent restaurant, that too has gone steadily downhill over recent years – though a new manager (with a good track record of running restaurants) may, the regulars hope, reverse the trend.
Sportsmans is very much a guys’ bar. No girls are allowed in unless accompanied.
Everest is the new kid on the Blok - a brand-new bar in Jalan Pelatehan, one door down from Sportsmans at the top of the street. It's a two-floor place, but with a difference. The downstairs is the classical bar and eating area plus podium for a live band at the far end, the upstairs is a traditional pool and dining area. But the upstairs area occupies only half the floor, the rest is open so that the drinkers and diners can see the downstairs bar and the band. The effect is a bit like an old-time cinema, with stalls and a balcony. The only rather surprising omission is a dance-floor.
Everest is squarely aimed at the up-market reveller, the guy who takes his dissipation seriously and wants to do it in style but without giving his bank manager a heart attack. And Everest oozes style - design, decor, lighting and finish are spot on, and there's nothing pretentious or tacky about it. It's all very understated, which means that the dedicated reveller can get down to the serious business of enjoying himself in a pleasant and relaxing ambience.
This place also smacks of very canny planning and marketing. It's set its standard right off the top of the Blok M scale, bringing the quality one expects of the larger hotels and plush downtown bar/discos into south Jakarta. But more importantly, it's not trying to compete with the established bars, it seeks rather to complement them. It doesn't mimic any of the other dives, and has a distinct personality. It's an ideal place for business entertaining and bringing along your out-of-town visitors.
The drinks are premium priced, and the menu offers a sensibly conservative range of dishes all at mainstream prices. The spectrum of spirits and liqueurs is quite stunning - at least five types of Bols, good quality cognacs and single malts festoon the bar, plus a variety of classical drinks from around the world that are completely alien species to Blok M.
The service is friendly and efficient, the bar staff are cheerful and helpful - what more could a reveller desire? Click here to see pictures
The first impression as you walk through the door is that it's glitzy - but a closer look shows that some serious money has been invested in the place, and there's quality aplenty in the design, the decor and the furnishings. As you enter, the bar's on your right and the dance floor on your left. And they're both big - the bar is the long saloon type, the dance floor spacious and laid out like a small piazza. There's the mandatory pool table in an alcove at the far end of the room.
The visual effect is one of space and openness, without it feeling barn-like. It calls to memory the seafront bar-restaurants that you find all round the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, with its brick archways and its balustraded dance floor - the plastic foliage dripping from the walls and ceiling recalling the vines that give shade from the glaring sun and a welcome respite from the heat of the day. Two revellers mentioned - quite independently - that it's very much in the style of the bars in the bigger international-class hotels.
But the dance floor is something else. Lights pulse, flash, wink, glare and stream at you from each and every direction, reflected and refracted by floor-to-ceiling mirrors and thick pebble-glass floor tiles. The effect is something like a lighthouse on LSD, and wouldn't be out of place in a big-budget sci-fi movie. As the lights came on, creating a photon vortex from the under-floor lasers, I couldn't resist uttering those immortal words, "Beam me up, Scottie!"
Good though the design is, it must be said that there are a couple of howlers. First - and most dangerous - is the unmarked (and unlit) steps from the bar to the dance floor, and which jut out at a lethally sharp angle at the far end of the bar. They are an accident waiting to happen. The second gotcha is the space between the bar and the dance floor, as there are stools on both sides making an awkard bottleneck which everyone has to negotiate to get to the far end of the bar and the toilets. You can't sit and enjoy your tipple without someone bashing your knees or bumping into you and knocking you off balance.
The service is efficient and friendly, the bar staff absolute charmers, the prices reasonable. There's a goodly selection of drinks, and a tastefully bilious green concoction that seems to be the girls' Standard Issue.
My Bar bar is firmly targeted at the late night reveller, the 'dance till dawn' brigade. It's a welcome addition to the Blok, a real shot in the arm of class and style. We now wait to see how it matures and mellows into the Pelatehan landscape. Click here to see pictures
One of the legends of Blok M, this place (located in the middle of Jalan Pelatehan) has been in a time-warp since the mid ‘80s when it opened - and has slowly gone to seed under a succession of disastrous owners who make the emperor Nero look like a rank amateur. And to no-one’s surprise, this hot potato is reportedly changing hands yet again.
The main bar has a characterless long counter with all the charm of a public urinal on the left, facing a pool table; behind it (at the back of the bar) there’s a separate restaurant room, and to the right another bar with a pool table. (This room, too, used to be separate from the main bar - but one day management knocked the wall down without warning anybody and several of the more inebriate regulars fell over when they tried to lean against it.) Drink prices are about average for Blok M.
Top Gun has always been a girlie bar. Until fairly recently you could find anything to suit your taste (and your pocket) there, but now it’s haunted by a diminishing band of over-priced under-performers. On a bad night it has an air something between a convent and a mortuary. It’s the hunting ground of choice for Indramayu girls, whose general inactivity in the bar (and sometimes in bed) would do Madame Tussaud's proud. The management is arguably the worst on the Blok. Security supremo Ballan looks and behaves like one of the nastier creatures in The Lord of the Rings, and Iwan (the pool wallah) is an uncanny Gollum look-alike. Mitigating factors: pleasant and efficient bar staff, two (albeit crap) pool tables, and the best nosh on the street. Click here to see pictures
Catering for the late-night reveller, Oscars nestles in splendid isolation at the bus terminal end of the street.
This bar is a character in search of an author. It can’t really decide whether it’s a live-music-and-dance bar, a pool joint, a watering hole, or a girlie bar. It tries to be all things to all boozers, and falls between more stools than you can count after a skinful of beer.
The downstairs is one long room with a bar on a raised floor at the far end, and the usual counter on the left as you go in. On the right there’s a small stage for the bands, and behind that a seating area that has all the charm and character of a railway station waiting-room. Upstairs there are two pool tables and a slightly quieter bar, and a rather forlorn eating area which is usually empty.
Drinks are expensive, and Oscars has probably the worst bar service on the Blok. You could die of thirst before getting a drink on a busy evening, and settling your bill is a leisurely process. The bar staff are collectively not very good at arithmetic and occasionally develop fits of amnesia about bringing your change when you've paid the bill.
The only live music on the Blok, bands of dubious pedigree strum and howl their way from one 'hit' to another. The ageing Elvis impersonator, a great guy, has to be seen to be believed. On weekday evenings before about 11pm Oscars has all the activity and bustle of a gold-rush ghost-town.
Most of the Oscars girls are well past the first bloom of youth, but there are some real characters to console and entertain the erectionally-challenged reveller.
Other places on the Blok
The Club [a.k.a. the Bali Hai]
Located on the corner of a run-down, rather shabby block to the right of the bus terminal entrance, the Club has since time immemorial been a convenient watering hole for those finishing work and requiring a little something to round off the day en route for hearth and home in south Jakarta. It’s basically one large bar with three pool tables in the middle and an eatery at the far end, and a U-shaped bar on the right.
Although it has landmark status, this place is in fact a living fossil. An odd mix of clients and girls makes it vaguely interesting to visit if doing a pub crawl round the Blok, but you enter at your peril as a bunch of ageing harpies lies in wait just inside the door. Crueller denizens refer to The Club as 'The Whores' Graveyard'.
Although it's really just a small bar and dinery tacked onto the posterior of the Ambhara Hotel, this is actually quite a nice little hostelry that's made a niche for itself on the Blok. It caters mainly for the passing business trade, and has the synthetic Olde-Worlde trimmings that tiresomely adorn so many pubs these days - the bar-world's equivalent of airport art.
The main bar is a snug little place that's compact without being fussy, and there are traditional little bays with settles and tables off the main drinking area. Through the bar is what can best be described as a conservatory, a largely glass extension to the building that makes a characterless but functional eating area.
The drinks are not overpriced, there's a limited but tasty selection of items on the bar menu, and the service is friendly (if a little slow at times) - but the staff don't seem able to wrap their brains around the concept of split bills when there are two or more customers together. Click here to see pictures
Lintas Melawai - now, alas, no more. The descripton is just for nostalgia
This is another landmark establishment, located on the main road (Melawai Raya) which marks the southern flank of Blok M. It’s larger than the other places, consisting of a disco and a bar with a couple of pool tables - all pretty much standard issue. As you go into LM the bar is on your right, the disco on your left; late at night there’s a steady stream of bodies going in each direction because the only gents toilet is located behind the bar.
The Frankenstein of the Blok, this place just keeps lurching on its moronic way. Even the best efforts of a greedy and incompetent management cannot kill the place off, such is its momentum. It's the sump of Blok M, everyone gravitates there as the other places put up their shutters. Its proximity to the Melawai Hotel, and a constant stream of late-night taxis, make it doubly attractive to the less-than-sober reveller. The disco has plenty of dark corners in which to conduct nefarious liaisons and try the goods before buying, but the bar is ball-crushingly boring on most nights. Beware the pool girls, they have a lean and hungry look. By general consensus, the most likely place to contract one of the more unpleasant social diseases.
Picking up a girl in LM requires the coarse-fishing technique. You bait the hook and dangle it in the water, then wait for the feeding frenzy to start.
This is how the Blok M cognoscenti refer to the facility on the sixth floor of the Melawai Hotel. It's really a massage parlour tout simple, but so many of the guys hang out in the bar there that it's worthy of inclusion in a listing of the Blok M bars.
The bar is so dark as you go in that you'd need state-of-the-art night-vision equipment to make out any detail at all, and the ambience is encouragingly seedy. There's plenty of seating available, and clusters of girls lurking in little alcoves and the corners. There's a small bar counter on the right as you go in, a surprisingly pleasant place to sit, chat, and let your eyes adjust to the gloom. You then realise that the bar is strategically angled so that you have a panoramic view of the Temptations.
The girls are a very pleasant bunch, and it's nice to be able to just browse and chat without the aggressive attentions that are typical of some of the bar girls in the other establishments on the Blok. They tend to be a bit older than their counterparts in the bars and discos, and attractive without being absolute smashers. And that's what the Five Plus One is all about - a standard product that the reveller can rely upon, a known quantity that comes without the package of pitfalls and surprises provided by the girls in the other places.
Once you've established contact and been through the courtship rituals you're led into the back corridors of the sixth floor, a little maze with hotel staff bustling from room to room as the guests come and go. On your way to your room you are accosted at every turn by charming young ladies who make intriguing suggestions as to how your short sojourn might be made even more exotic and exciting.
The rooms are clean, plain and functional, and the services are pretty well standardised - as are the prices. Of course, a little extra generosity on the part of the well-satisfied reveller is greatly appreciated, and many of the guys have their favourite girl who becomes a regular.
All in all, this little establishment gets a big thumbs-up. It lacks the spontaneity and anarchy of the other bars, but for those who just want to relax and enjoy their sybaritic pleasures without any hassle, it's the place to go.