Jakarta

[Koperen Klaas]

Well, another part of history is gone.

D's Place has announced that it is closed for good. What is left of Pelatehan?

[Turgid]

Hi friends.

The great depression in 1930's,The great recession in 2008,what is in 2020?The great attrition?

The great coronation.

[Menteng]

Elvis has unfortunately left the building.

GREAT!! I should have had my camera more often with me in those days. That's how you create strolls down memory lane.

[Thampi62]

Hi friends.

The great depression in 1930's,The great recession in 2008,what is in 2020?The great attrition?

[Smoothy]

Too many to mention. Lintas Melawai, Tambora, Elvis at Oscar, to name a few. And for the locals: salon!!

Elvis has unfortunately left the building.

[Menteng]

My goodness Menteng! Are you still around?

Yes, my friend, thanks to the yellowish pills. But it is no fun watching all those icons in Jakarta disappear. Makes you conscious of your age!

[Hilo77]

Too many to mention. Lintas Melawai, Tambora, Elvis at Oscar, to name a few. And for the locals: salon!!

My goodness Menteng! Are you still around?

[Menteng]

Edited to add: And of course the granddaddy of them all Stadium, how many more lost icons can anyone recall?

Too many to mention. Lintas Melawai, Tambora, Elvis at Oscar, to name a few. And for the locals: salon!!

[Smoothy]

Ok so it did spend time as that god awful Captain something or other about ten years back due to franchise disputes, but many a happy time was started in that place after you tried your luck elsewhere. As the interviewees attest to in the video! Not for me though, never one pickup there apart from the only case of a bad stomach to ever result in Indonesia.

I didn't notice any difference between the food at that Captain something restaurant and McDonalds. I think he was still selling McDonalds food but calling it Captain whatever. I liked his pirate theme. Pretty cool. He did add a few things to the menu as well. It's amazing how they can get away with copyright infringement in Indonesia. Kind of like when Subway sub shops closed in Jakarta and they renamed it to Mamas subs or something like that, but still served the subs almost exactly the same, even wrapped in Subway wrapping paper. Haha.

I met more than one girl at that Sarinah McDonalds after late nights out at Tanamur / JJs / Hard Rock. My ex girlfriend told me the story of when that McDonalds first opened, her family made a special trip from the kampung to Jakarta just to go to that McDonalds. It seems that was a popular thing to do. That, and to try the escalators in Sarinah since those were the first ever built in Indonesia.

[Smoothy]

Wait, is Jaya Pub still open? Do bules still go there?

Jaya Pub is still open. For a good many years, they had no customers. But for the last 10 years or so it has been packed. Mostly locals now (not naughty girls anymore), and some bules, but the bules who go are usually there with their bule wives. I still go on occasion to listen to the music. At least prior to this stupid coronavirus shit.

[Hilo77]

Remember it very well, lots of memories with HRC next and if I'm not mistaken, a Chillies Restaurant. Later on for the final drinks of the night to Jaksa! Legendary!

Back in the days when the Hard Rock Cafe was, like its counterparts in KL, Bali and elsewhere, a very handy late-night pick-up joint and not the bland, family-friendly, mall restaurant it is today.

Chilies has also gone downhill, not as a pick-up joint, I don't think it was ever that but in terms of quality. It used to be a great spot for drinks, ice-cold mugs of beer or margaritas, and a steak but it had a redecoration a couple of years back and somehow lost a lot of its charm. The last time I was in there it was positively grotty, closing at 11 pm, there were no other customers and the tables were sticky and dirty.

I don't think Sarinah as a whole can survive much longer, more modern malls can expect to go to the wall as a result of this pandemic, I really can't see how an old 1960's style department store can possibly stay in business.

JJs and Tanamour are but distant memories, Today Country has long gone (probably just as well mind you, given its, er, proclivities), the 6th Floor of Melawai closed and Falatehan faded well past its glory days, no more Hard Rock and McD's in Sarinah. Of my earliest memories of Jakarta, with the exception of CJs and BATS (Tiga Puluh died a decade or more ago) only Jaksa remains largely as it was. Wait, is Jaya Pub still open? Do bules still go there?

Edited to add: And of course the granddaddy of them all Stadium, how many more lost icons can anyone recall?

[Ekspat]

For those who remember the days when Sarinah was the epicentre of activity in Jakarta. The McDonalds has closed!

Remember it very well, lots of memories with HRC next and if I'm not mistaken, a Chillies Restaurant. Later on for the final drinks of the night to Jaksa! Legendary!

[Menteng]

For those who remember the days when Sarinah was the epicentre of activity in Jakarta. The McDonalds has closed!

https://www.thejakartapost.com/multi...estaurant.html

Ok so it did spend time as that god awful Captain something or other about ten years back due to franchise disputes, but many a happy time was started in that place after you tried your luck elsewhere. As the interviewees attest to in the video! Not for me though, never one pickup there apart from the only case of a bad stomach to ever result in Indonesia.

It joins the Hard Rock cafe next door (and JJs / Tanamour down the road) as but a memory in long time Jakarta expat minds.

Memories, memories. For me, this McD was always tconnected to jalan Jaksa. Had I no luck in that hamburger joint, I would leave and go there to have a beer and some fun.

[Hung Man 1808]

For those who remember the days when Sarinah was the epicentre of activity in Jakarta. The McDonalds has closed!

https://www.thejakartapost.com/multi...estaurant.html

Ok so it did spend time as that god awful Captain something or other about ten years back due to franchise disputes, but many a happy time was started in that place after you tried your luck elsewhere. As the interviewees attest to in the video! Not for me though, never one pickup there apart from the only case of a bad stomach to ever result in Indonesia.

It joins the Hard Rock cafe next door (and JJs / Tanamour down the road) as but a memory in long time Jakarta expat minds.

[MasBule]

Its a pretty fair assessment of the situation.

Highlight of my week is going too EP for a takeaway curry and a few bintangs whilst waiting for it. Although I have discovered 2 bars open, and a few restaurants where you can sit upstairs or out the back and enjoy your 'take-away' meal there. I guess they are paying someone big dollars to remain open.

The WA contacts are all active asking for a little money, I even have my GoClean lady asking for money transfers against future cleaning services. She is kinda cute and if they bill racks up too high I might just have to sacrifice a clean abode for some action, bonus is she can make the bed afterwards.

On a positive note, the roads are empty and I can hear birds singing occasionally. Pollution was at 7 on Labour day, I have never ever seen it that low in Jakarta.

Police don't seem too be harassing anyone, they have their checkpoints setup, but if you have a mask on then they let you go. They are still on full salaries, so they are pretty content as the city is so empty and easy for them to manage.

I live in an area where I can walk around alot and take advantage of that. On my walk I go past the checkpoint and there hasn't been any problems at all.

It might be my imagination, but I am getting alot more suggestive looks from girls, either at the supermarket, or in the apartment lift. I guess everybody is suffering from a little loving due too the lockdown. Or maybe because of the mask wearing I focus on their eyes more now?

Good point on the home-delivery alcohol scene. Vin+, Ismaya group all are having great discounts, which I guess shows what their true margins are on these products.

Away from the P4 P seen, its just a matter of keeping up with WA and trying to discriminate on which girls are best to take a chance with. I am still active in that sense, just managing the risk as best I can.

Stay safe out there gentlemen.

To confirm everything is closed, everything. Bars, restaurants, spas, clubs, the whole shebang. There is zero commercially run activity out there. The high point of your day is going out on your resupply run to the supermarket in the otherwise shuttered mall to pick up some groceries. If you live in an expat zone this will be slightly enlivened by the middle-class mommies who are taking to dressing up a bit and making an effort to look good in their one trip out of the house a week. If you have a mask fetish, and by the end of this we all will, then this will get your juices flowing slightly. If you are in a run-of-the-mill kampung, even this small pleasure will be denied you as the local talent will mostly comprise frumpy ibu2 in their daster and jilbab picking up chicken, veggies and a bottle of sirop for the buka puasa. It also may be my imagination but local people seem to be giving bules a wide berth, it's not just social distancing protocols, I suspect we might be viewed as super-spreaders or something.

Now I mentioned above that the commercially run activity is stone dead but there are plenty of entrepreneurial independent traders out there. Tinder is simply wall-to-wall women asking for money now and if you have a stable of WA contacts you will be finding the same thing. There is serious hurting out there, combined with the approach of Idul Fitri and the almost 90 percent layoffs among shop, office and factory staff you can almost taste the desperate need for cash in the atmosphere. The strange thing is it's not from the regular pros, sure there are still a few of them about (immediately identified in a Tinder chat by the opening questions "where you stay?" "hotel or apartment? But by no means as many as before. No these are the regular girls and single mothers, who need money and aren't terribly sure how to get it, for most it is a simple upfront explanation that they need cash and can you send it to them now please. For others it's a pretty lame attempt at getting into the VCS game, asking for 500 k for "a picture", few of them have a clue how the game operates and frankly must be unaware of all the free to air porn sites on the web and live-stream video sex services, also available gratis.

There are quite a few willing to travel to hook up (what looks like a total lockdown to us does not appear quite so total in the back streets and kos-kosan). I give them all a pass, I really don't need to invite the bugs and microbes of the fetid gangs of East Jakarta into my home. That might seem ludicrous given my previous decade and a half of exposing myself to all sorts of infectious and noxious connections but I don't know, this one feels different. A healthy 19 yo cewek can probably shake off the corona in a week or two, an overweight, probably pre-diabetic, white man in his fifties? The chances shorten a lot for him and have you seen the hospitals here? My years of excess have caught up with me, the preacher was right, your sins will find you out. Long though I have been willing to take the risks associated with playing the game in Jakarta and surrounding cities I am going to sit this one out.

I am actually saving a fortune (just as well given that half my work has dried up), and instead I am taking advantage of all the cheap booze being offloaded by bars and wholesalers on social media and delivered to my door by grumpy little men in green jackets on clapped out motorscooters. Lockdown isn't so bad when you have a decent glass of something and a VPN account and the curtains closed.

Keep safe, stay healthy, see you all on the other side.