Nightmarch

[PattayaPete 530]

Chrome Pole Round Robin: The first series of Sunday night dirty dancing contests between four of Walking Street's most closely-connectedgogos have been completed.

 

Captain Picard, helmsman of the Living Dolls Showcase shake-rattle & roll den, spent a few weeks lolling about soaking up the sun on a Greek island or two and all those UV rays gave him an idea to run a dance contest in The Dollhouse, on Sunday night 8 October. The contestants were to be drawn from the home team as well as Club Boesche, Living Dolls Showcase and Hooty's. The idea quickly grew into a full-on series of contests.

 

With a substantial first prize of 10,000 baht, 5,000 baht for second, 3,000 baht for third and 2,000 baht for fourth, there were 16 dancers marshalled into teams of four for the contests.

 

The contests in The Dollhouse -and a week later in Club Boesche- were not long-winded and attracted good crowds, proving that people are always interested in seeing something a little different from the standard chrome pole molesting and table tapping. The third in the series of contests took place on 29 October in the Hooty's show-me-the-flange den.

 

The fourth dance contest will be held in Living Dolls Showcase on Sunday 5 November. This will be part of a three or four-day series of on-going events to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Pattaya's first genuine show palace. Captain Picard has been mentally preparing himself for what may prove to be three or four days of nursing the mother of all hangovers, with the official date of the four-year anniversary being Thursday 2 November. The fifth contest, scheduled for Sunday night 12 November, sees the circus back at its starting point in The Dollhouse.

 

First Tuesday in November: The Boxing Roo (Third Road, just across from Soi Lengkee) is the place to be around 10:00AM (yes, that's in the morning, unfortunately) on Tuesday 7 November for the running of one of the greatest horse races in the world: the Melbourne Cup.

 

The Melbourne Cup is a real horse race, not like those namby-pamby ‘classics' of the turf for precocious three-year-olds such as the Kentucky Derby (run on dirt of all things) or the English Derby (run on a track that goes left, right, up, down and sideways so half the field needs a compass to work out where the hell they are), or the admittedly-rugged Grand National where horses are made to jump over a lot of fences in search of the winning post. The Cup is 3200 metres (two miles in the old money) and over the past decade and a half or so a lot of horses from Ireland and England have come over to try and win the event. Many are highly credentialed (racing parlance for ‘they've won a lot of races with fancy names') and most have failed, probably because Australian jockeys ride tighter than a 45-year-old virgin in a snowdrift and the foreign nags and their riders are used to having room to move.

 

If you want to have a wager I'm told there are people, possibly in pork pie hats and talking out of the side of their mouths in raspy voices, who may be willing to accommodate this unusual human urge. Just tell the people at the door, “Shifty sent me”.

 

There's a horse named Sphenophyta –the cognomen puts me in mind of a serious lung disease- that my spies in the Aussie racing game tell me is one of the popular local picks for the race, but they suggest it's a year too early. So, if you can find someone who wants to back the thing, take their money.

 

The Boxing Roo has apparently linked up with the mob producing San Miguel amber fluid -possibly the best thing to leave the Philippines since General MacArthur- and they will be serving up this froth at a mere 40-baht a bottle all day. As an added bonus, there will be a slew of San Miguel promotional damsels and a band to entertain punters between races on what is one of Australia's greatest social occasions.

 

Seven Years With Hardly an Itch: The Diamond gogo (Soi Diamond) celebrated its seventh anniversary with a slap-up party on Thursday night 19 October. I've watched its progress over that 84 months as it developed from a run-of-the-mill joint into one of the best in Fun Town becoming well-known for its monthly in-house dance contests. It has undergone a number of internal structural refurbishments, each one an improvement on the last, and if the anniversary party was anything to go by, there has been a very positive recruitment drive and the number and quality of the dancing damsels is once more back into the top echelon. The girls from the Lickem-on-Toppe (and any other position you care to name) school of speaking in tongues were in fine unspoken form on anniversary night.

 

It's Dog Eat Dog and Pussy Eat…: The Coyotee's gogo (Soi Marina Plaza) should have run the first of a planned monthly series of dance contests on Sunday night 29 October with the damsels of the local establishment pitted against a number of ladies of the chrome pole who were to be bussed in from places in Soi Cowboy in Bangkok. In my own experience of witnessing Pattaya versus Bangkok contests I've noticed the local lasses really know how to reach a level of raunchiness that leaves their Bangkok cousins with a pout worthy of a Coral Sea grouper. Again, because of these pesky editorial deadlines I am unable to bring you any lick-by-lick descriptions of the action, but as soon as I know the date for round two I shall make sure it appears in print.

 

A Little Bit of The Other: I suspect Rambling Ricky has a little bit of the Romany gypsy in him. He is now propping up a bar stool in the long-running FLB lounge lizard libation room (Walking Street). How long will it be before the demure and shy hostesses of FLB are lured into cavorting about formica tables sans apparel?

 

The former Babewatch gogo (Soi 16), a previous (or should that be ‘pervious') hangout of Rambling Ricky's, re-opened as the Taboo Club on Thursday night 19 October. The entrance is now, sensibly, right opposite the Catz and Club Boesche gogo's doors. The door looks like something you might find propping up the sandstone walls of a mediaeval castle: all oak wood and weighing 300 tonnes. Then you've got to go across an iron bridge that traverses a flowing stream; I kid you not. The place looks pretty impressive, although it had that dungeon lighting feel. Maybe the owners are hoping to save on the electric bills. I only stayed for a brief minute and will give a more in-depth report once the new owners have had time to settle in and iron out whatever areas need work.

 

The Club Electric Blue Jnr gogo (Soi Diamond) is being refurbished and was, according to Big Andy, ready to re-open for business around the beginning of November.

 

A den to be called Club 69, situated on the site of the old Nui's gogo in Soi 15, is also due to open in the early part of November. It's within a dry g-string's throw of its sister dens Baby Dolls and XXX. The latter opened in mid-October while the former spread its legs at the beginning of October. Both XXX and Baby Dolls are small, boutique-like chrome pole palaces (thankfully not the size of a broom closet like Angels ). Baby Dolls plays hip-hop and house music while XXX is a rock-n-roll den. I'm told there are plans to have a half-price happy hour between 8:00 and 10:00PM, which is sensible given the multitude of attractions elsewhere on and about Walking Street.

 

Baby Dolls has a reach-out-and-touch-me intimacy about it. There's no long stage as such, just a series of raised circular platforms and the dancers are pretty much at eye-level. A few of the girls seem to have misplaced parts of their most basic apparel. There are about 15-20 dancing damsels, with shapes and sizes to suit all tastes and although it's only been opened for a short period it's far from the worst place in Fun Town. With a little bit of tweaking in pricing policy and a few more dancers it could probably be a place worth putting on your list as a frequent haunt.

 

Remember the Alamo: No, this is not a sudden lurch into American history, but a quick note for those who may recall The Alamo beer boozer in Soi 8, situated next door to the Silver Star gogo, which suddenly rolled down the shutters a few weeks ago after Garrulous Gary went ‘missing' yet again. The Alamo has been plagued in recent times by a succession of rumours regarding its status, but it is now well and truly ‘occupied' by a new management. I will always recall the Alamo as the place where I sat and watched, with a group of American expats and others, the incredulous events of 11 September 2001 unfold.

 

Piece of Pith: Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.