Nightmarch

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Super What? The 36th ogling den to open its doors in the environs of Walking Street, the Super Model chrome pole palace is on the site of the old Starlight beer boozer in the Soi Diamond alleyway. The place kicked into life in early March with a lengthy happy hour, 7:30 to 10:00 PM, offering draught amber fluid and house liver wasters at just 30 baht. The den has plenty of dancing damsels and covers two floors, the upper area being the place to sit to get a real view of the action.

 

Formula One Quiz: The first major change to the popular Sunday night Quiz format has been made with teams being allotted points for their scores on a weekly basis. The top-scoring team earns 12 points, the second 10 points, the third eight points and so on down to one point for the team finishing 10th. I’m assuming Martin, the Sunday question setter, mine host of the Red Lion noshery (Soi Chaiyapoon) and Formula One fanatic, came up with the idea. I think it’s a winner.

For those interested, the current 10 teams are, in alphabetical order: Cheers, Noms, OK Corral, Palmers, Pleasure Dome, Rising Sun, Shagwell Mansion, The Bunker, The Londoner and Tropical Bert’s.

 

Stick This In Your Pocket: Rob Scott is a nuggety Aussie singer and odd-jobs man who has been living in Thailand for most of the last decade, variously in Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya and now Koh Samui. A few months ago he kicked off an advertising publication called Samui in Your Pocket. As the name suggests, it’s a pocket-sized, glossy publication with maps and a street directory distributed free across the island and published every two months. Those familiar with Pattaya Nightlife will know what I’m on about. It has deservedly gone from 48 to 64 pages in just three issues and anyone going to the island should avail themselves of a copy as soon as possible after landing as it’s invaluable.

 

Rob was recently back in Pattaya and told me there is another person allegedly doing the rounds of Fun Town businesses with a proposal to establish a Pattaya in Your Pocket. No problem with that except Rob’s been told the man doing the selling, an Englishman, is claiming to be involved with the Samui operation. Nothing could be further from the truth as Rob is currently a one-man band down in Samui.

 

Patti Smith in Disguise: The new Club Electric Blue head-bangers room has opened for business on Walking Street. Big Andy’s new venture, replacing the ailing Club Electric Blue ogling den, is in its early days yet and will take time to draw the late-night boogie crowds from the likes of Lucifer’s and Tony’s. One of the characters engaged to spin the records (or scratch, fondle, molest or whatever they do to them nowadays) goes by the handle of DJ Space Monkey. Now I know what most of you are thinking: don’t all the DJ’s in Pattaya have similar, and seemingly appropriate, handles? If they don’t then they probably should. The night Andy employs DJ Goose and DJ Water Buffalo to help out the original ape, I’m there with a camera and a copy of Patti Smith’s song ‘Space Monkey’.

 

Old Enough to Shave: What happens when you mate a shark with a beaver? You get a collection of raunchy dancers who like to display their baby-making wares on table tops in a place like the Shark Club in Soi Diamond. It seems as if the management have sorted their staffing shortage and the other evening when I wandered in there were plenty of high steppers scratching the solid table surfaces with their long white boots. The music is passable and the libation deal is pretty good with draught amber nectar at 45 baht all night and a buy-one-get-one-free on selected house liver wasters and Thai rotgut at just 95 baht suggests they’ll keep punters coming through the doors. A problem with one of the serving wenches over the 2-for-1 deal was sorted out with efficiency and a minimum of fuss by the manager, who, from his accent, came originally from the Land of the Garlic Munchers.

 

When it came time to pay up the serving damsel concerned grabbed the proffered note from my hand, so, needless to say she didn’t look too happy when I made sure to collect every last baht from my change. She had made an error, felt she’d lost face (that ridiculously Asian cultural glitch that allows people to keep stuffing things up and get away with it) and the charming Thai smile rapidly Gorgonised. In spite of this silly girl, I would recommend a visit to the Shark Club, especially if you’re an afficionado of its trailblazer the Beach Club (Soi 15).

 

Another One Bites the Dust: The clutch of Soi 9 beer boozers along the Beach Road, just down from plod headquarters, were there one day and bulldozed the next, along with the long-running Universe Gym. As others have remarked, vast areas of land currently occupied by boozers is immensely valuable as development property and in coming years, there’s almost no doubt much of it will fall prey to the bulldozers as it’s turned into upmarket housing.

 

The Cupido Complex went down a few weeks ago, the Soi 9 boozers on Second Road are ready to be knocked over and the almost new Queens Park Plaza set-up along Second Road, near the Greg’s Kitchen Pommy noshery is now abandoned due to lack of custom. Yet, along Soi Buakhow and adjoining sois a new boozer seems to open every week.

 

Not Worth a Firecracker: A man wakes up in the middle of the night. A light comes on (in this case in the fridge rather than his brain) and he thinks, ‘what gender-confused Pattayaland Soi 1 needs right now is a lady chrome pole palace’. So, in the morning he sets to work and a few weeks later opens the Dynamite ogling den, sandwiched between the Shirtlifters R Us and Beaver Leavers pink palaces. OK, I made those names up, but you get the idea.

 

The dancing maidens he recruits from struggling circuses, concentrating primarily on the fat ladies and then raids a museum where he snaffles period costumes: neck-to-knee see-through bathers, all the rage on St Tropez in 1926. Unfortunately there are only six or seven costumes available, but it doesn’t matter as that’s all he requires. He might only have six or seven dancers but they’re a well-fed bunch and pound-for-pound equal to any den with 20 or more.

 

In order to recoup his outlay smartly, the owner decides price gouging is the way to go. After all, he figures, anybody who is actually going to climb the 20 or so steps to the front door is not going to turn around and walk away without having a drink. So, lolly water kicks off at 90 baht, bottled amber nectar at 100 baht and liver wasters a trifling 120 baht. So, if you like your women to be ample of girth and have a financially masochistic desire to pay 26 percent more for a libation to see approximately 300 percent less ogling talent then this is the place for you.

 

Music to My Eyes: After leaving Dynamite without bothering to indulge in masochistic drinking, I wandered down into Spicy Girls, an old favourite. The place was busy without being full, there were plenty of chrome pole molesters shimmying about the narrow stage and, as usual, the music was good and the thirst-quenchers reasonably priced. Away from the talent of Walking Street this is as good a place as any to wander into.

 

More luk thung Please: After recently remarking on the lack of frontal lobe capacity of the average Thai DJ employed in the vast majority of ogling dens, I was again confronted with a classic example of the breed when in the Silver Star ogling den (Soi 8). The spin-jockey had a Thai tune going when I wandered in and proceeded to play another two after that before reverting to the standard car-alarm noise. The pricing policy in the place also amazed me. Draught amber fluid is 65 baht as is tonic water. Yet orange juice is 95 baht. The dancing damsels, for an off-Walking Street den, were OK, friendly enough (pushy for drinks of course, as with every chrome pole palace on the planet) and with more life in them than a couple of places I might mention but won’t because the owners will think all I do is take cheap shots at them all the time.

 

Shoes Off the Fisherman: I was sitting in the Super Girls ogling den (Soi Diamond) recently having a quiet libation or six when a man of middling years wandered in and decided to sit in the booth next to me. He had shoulder-length hair and a deep tan but oddly, he wasn’t wearing shoes. He placed a drink order but when the waitress returned with the glass of liquid she insisted on him paying the bill upfront. No doubt she thought, as I did, if he wasn’t wearing shoes he mightn’t have the money for the drink. He fished around in his pockets and managed to obtain the requisite amount required, albeit with a church-plate collection of one and five baht coins. Is it any wonder many of the damsels employed in the bars of Fun Town think we foreigners are a very strange lot indeed.

 

Piece of Pith: There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

 

 

My e-mail address is: nightmarch@hotmail.com

Author of Pattaya "Patpong on steroids"

No reproduction without specific reference to: nightmarch@hotmail.com