MIDNITE HOUR - 01 March 2020

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William R. ''Will'' Morledge
News page correspondent
(Midnite Hour) and contributing
editor - book reviews

MONTHLY NEWS
COLUMN

Bangkok,
01 March 2020
William R. Morledge

March's Nightlife News
Bangkok's Bars - 20 Years Ago
A Smile in the Land of Smiles.
Reader's Corner: The R&R 'Miami's'
Bangkok's Graffiti Update - #168

Queen's Park Plaza in 2010 - a testament to the regular turnover of Nitespots.

We had the above headline prepared for last month's issue, but we didn't anticipate that there would be a few Venues holding on for a few days into the next (this) month. And as MIDNITE HOUR is an 'historical' journal, we held off until this month so we could, with a level of confidence, lay down the 'final word' on Queen's Park Plaza Night Entertainment Area. This month, by way of an historical review, we will cover the 'QPP' from its inchoate days until the final close-out of the last Nitespots.

VIDEO CLIP

If you are looking for your old stomping grounds @ Queen's Park Plaza, don't. As of mid-February it was just another construction-site-to-be. We received different "last day" reports (somewhat similar to that 'last chopper out of Viet Nam'). The earliest was 4 February, when the pirated electricity in Rumours finally gave out, and the latest was the 15th, which coincided with Moonshine Pub's official opening at Soi 7 Plaza - (they had relocated, and had opened softly long before that...). For our historical records, we will err on the conservative side, and say 4 February as the 'recorded-for-posterity' closing date.

QUEEN's PARK PLAZA (Sukhumvit Soi 22)

The large property that would become the Queen's Park Plaza, located 250 meters inside Soi 22 Sukhumvit Road, had been cleared of its old structures in 1997 for �renewal'. However, this property, like many others of that time, was left undeveloped because of the global economic crash. Nevertheless, it would not remain unutilized.

This was the most recent time of full occupancy prior to start of phase-down.

Scarcely a year later, at the end of 1998, a small bar beer opened on the north corner of that otherwise vacant property. The young ladies from the bar would be out kerbside in the late afternoons, dancing and bouncing around, enticing foot and other traffic in for a drink. The bar beer's name was the 'No ! Bra� - a name most obviously derived from viewing the young ladies' kerbside performances. The No ! Bra confirmed the economic viability of the outdoor-type bar beer at that location, and set the standard for all that would follow. As such, it was given the MIDNITE HOUR label, 'Seminal Bar'. (Surprisingly, by early 1999 it was grossing about 10,000 baht per day.)

The No ! Bra had been in operation there for about a year before being joined by a second bar beer, the �Ngan Hang�. The Ngan Hang was also a modest financial success. These two beer bars formed the nucleus of what would quickly become the Queen's Park Plaza, one of Bangkok's major Night Entertainment Areas.

At the end of 2000, a major construction effort began in the compound - adjacent to, and around the No ! Bra and the Ngan Hang. Unlike other bar beer areas in Bangkok which grew haphazardly, this was a comprehensive and coordinated undertaking, providing an un-congested and well-ordered complex of permanent and semi-permanent structures. Construction was completed in mid 2001, and it was given the name: "Queen's Park Plaza - Best Quality Entertainment Center". In those early years, its customer base was primarily guests from the nearby Queen's Park Hotel (now the Marriott Marquis).

Leasing of the units within the QPP began in earnest (even prior to the finalization of construction), and by early 2001, enough beer bars were in operation to reach "Critical Mass " - the Night Entertainment Area was already big enough and growing quickly enough to be a self-sufficient, crowd-drawing Night Entertainment entity on its own. Other shops were opening in the compound, complimenting the bar beer trade: a traditional massage, a foot massage and a beauty parlor opened within a few months of each other. During this timeframe, the first of many bars installed air-conditioning. At that juncture, the 'originals', the No ! Bra and the Ngan Hang undertook to renovate their premises to match their new �high class� neighbors.

By mid-2002 the Queen's Park Plaza time had come. Non-hotel 'regular customers' were becoming more prevalent. Beer bars whose origins were in Clinton Plaza, Soi Cowboy and Cowboy Annex were hedging their bets by either moving to, or opening branches in Queen's Park Plaza - (Popeye 2, Moonshine and Oraphin for example). It didn't hurt business that the local Men-In-Too-Tight-Uniforms were allowing a number of the Queen's Park Plaza bars to stay open virtually as late as they had customers (something the larger, long-established Night Entertainment Areas weren't able to get away with).

As noted, the Night Entertainment Complex was built on property originally destined for redevelopment (an 'opportunistic' development of indeterminate, but finite duration), so the occasional rumor of impending redevelopment into yet another highrise wasn't surprising. But those early rumors, entirely unheeded, didn't slow the QPP Scene, which continued to grow - some bars lasting the duration, others turning over at a precarious rate.

But as of December of 2019, we saw the beginning of the end : this time the rumor had teeth. Some of the bars were closing, others were preparing to move to Soi 7 - a new Night Entertainment Area, at that time still under construction (Soi 7 Plaza). By January the exodus from Queen's Park Plaza had gathered momentum, and by 1 February only four venues remained - two by candlelight, and the other two by pirated electricity. The last bar beer, the Rumours Beer Bar, 'closed its doors' on 4 February 2020.

In addition to those bars which moved to Soi 7, others moved to other locations on Soi 22 (B52 and Hang Out for example), while others were not heard from again. All in (counting those early 'pioneer' bar beers), the QPP had just over a twenty year run. We include herein a sampling of photos of bars over these last two decades.

Divas