Space Age clubbing comes to Old Batavia

Space Age clubbing comes to Old Batavia

Somewhere around Monas, speeding north in a taxi at night, one
crosses a psychic boundary line; a synaptic membrane in the
capital's lead-poisoned brain. The concrete monotony of the
central business district gives way to the ancient ghosts of Kota
and the mind is filled with intoxicating images of flamboyant
Chinese restaurants, Viagra and condom selling warung, illicit
high-stakes gambling, karaoke in heavily inverted commas,
tasteless neon artifices and occasional glimpses of grinding
poverty and squalor. It's like some kind of Sino-Indo acid trip
taking hold, befuddling one's already befuddled Jakartan brain.

Please note, however, that this psychic fault line cannot be
accessed from the busway. It's a taxi-at-night-time-or-nothing
I'm afraid. The only time many lily-livered South Jakartans cross
this imaginary line is when they head up to the discos and clubs
of Kota; places where people take their recreational
pharmaceuticals seriously.

Stadium has been the center of activity of the uptown club
scene for a number of years. It possesses the same pleasure
palace vibe as the nearby Millennium and a host of other Kota
clubs. However, it eschews that god-awful amphetamine driven,
Asian teenybopper, shaky head, 200 beats per minute music that
predominates in those other discos in favor of decent club tunes.

There is now a new club in Kota that could well challenge
Stadium's dominance of the uptown scene. Continue north up Jl.
Hayam Wuruk, past Kota Station on your right and head straight on
past Cafe Batavia. You'll eventually come to a T-junction. Turn
right here and about 50 yards down the road you will have arrived
at K7 (Jl. Kunir No.7, Tel 021 690 7575).

K7's exterior resembles some kind of garish, mock Arabian
palace and is hilariously at odds with the surrounding colonial
era buildings. Inside K7 is a cyberpunk, Blade Runner-esque wet
dream of a club. The ground floor is more like a five-star hotel
lobby than a club entrance hall. There are fountains, a
restaurant, a bar, pool tables and sofas.

K7 has obviously been designed for those who like to relax in
relative calm and chat, as well as for hardcore, head banging
clubbers. The quiet areas in other local clubs look like they
were tacked on as an afterthought in comparison. Ultimately
though, the whole place is more like a spaceship than a hotel or
a club. The walls effervesce with computer controlled, ever-
changing color and the furnishings are all opulently modernist in
design.

Next to the voluminous entrance area is a disco/bar furnished
with techno-chrome chairs and an entire wall of pulsating square
lights that sweep through a psychedelic kaleidoscope of mood
enhancing colors. It's as futuristic a place as I've ever seen in
Jakarta; even the waiters seem to be some kind of cyber-genetic
replicants, although maybe that wasn't intended.

Stroll upstairs at K7 past more Captain-Kirk-on-LSD lighting
and you'll find the obligatory karaoke floor. This floor features
enormous rooms, each filled with a veritable space shuttle flight
deck of vast plasma TV sets and expensive hi-fi equipment. All
that's missing is a Holo-deck, although I suspect that the action
happening in the rooms above the karaoke floor is all too real.
Who needs holograms, ay? The centerpiece of K7 isn't slated to
open until October however. It's a colossal, Roman Coliseum of a
disco covering three floors but as yet it remains just a concrete
shell. When it's finally ready it should be quite breathtaking.

K7 are in the middle of their "soft opening" month at the
moment and we'll have to see if it can put a dent in Stadium's
armor-plated hull. If looks, music and luxuriousness alone were
the determining factors then K7 will soon be reigning supreme on
the Kota scene. However, it remains to be seen if this amazing
new club can match both Stadium and Millennium in the illicit
thrills department.

I'm hoping that it will and that when Kota finally floods for
the last time like some Asian version of Thomas Mann's choleric
Death in Venice, the K7 spaceship will detach from its
foundations revealing the plasma-ion drive hiding in the
basement. It will then blastoff into orbit where it will dock
with the forthcoming Indonesian space station and a bright new
future ahead. Busway? Monorail? A space station is the next step
I swear, along with the hover Bajaj.

--Simon Pitchforth