This "walk" has to be broken-up into four posts because of the number of pictures. This is Part 1 of a 4 part post.
THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
A PICTORIAL WALK THROUGH SOI TWILIGHT
When it comes to Bangkok’s night scene, one can think of a myriad of reasons to want to slap the idiots walking around with cameras, or with their smartphones at the ready. Nonetheless, there are some who capture Bangkok' s nightlife amazingly well without intruding into the fun of revellers. Stickman is by far the best of these. The pictures that he takes in the bars capture the personalities of the girls remarkably and his pictures of facades and street scenes are always atmospheric. Stick does not do gay though. So the areas in which Sawatdee’s readers play will never benefit from his remarkable eye and lens. Fortunately, however, the chaps at the Midnite Hour have diligently profiled some of these areas as part of their record of Bangkok’s nightlife, which goes back to the 1960s in some areas. Their record of Soi 4, for example, goes back to the mid-1990s. With Soi Twilight though, only to the early part of the Millennium. They have been remarkably generous in allowing me to use pictures from their archive for this post on the bars and venues of Soi Twilight. If you are going to use these pictures anywhere else, please attribute them to Bangkokeyes.com
With a dearth of photos on the bars of the 1990s though, I have had to use pictures from adverts in magazines from the 90s. The problem with that is that while I want pictures of neon signage, facades and street scenes, the bar owners would rather have bar boys in briefs in their adverts. So it is that I have been compelled to post pictures of hot young lads in skimpy briefs on here simply to capture something of the insides of the old bars. Fortunately, however, from the turn of the millennium, we get to the really exciting stuff, like neon signage.
I do think that the post would have worked better if the images actually appeared in-line though, rather than requiring readers to click-through on them. Still, that shouldn’t be too much trouble as you should have at least one hand free even while looking at pictures of hot boys in briefs.
A WALK THROUGH SOI TWILIGHT
To anchor this walk through a vanished street, I am including a map of Soi Twilight from 2006. Since the Banana Bar and Dream Boy remained in single locations from 2004 to the end of the soi, they are useful points to anchor discussions on where what was when. Right-side and left-side are based on entering from Suriwong Road. Veterans will note that a few known bars such as Sprite Boys and Boys.com are not on this list. For those, I have not been able to find pictures.
Map of Soi Twilight June 2006.jpg
Before jumping into the individual venues, though, here’s a sequence of street scenes of Soi Twilight from 2004 to 2018 to jog one’s memories and because you can’t have too much of good neon..
2004 Soi Twilight & Twilight Bar.jpg
2006 Soi Twilight.jpg
2008a Soi Twilight Dec.jpg
2008b Soi Twilight September.jpg
2010 Soi Twilight May.jpg
2013 Soi Twilight Sep.jpg
2014 Soi Twilight - March.jpg
2015 Soi Twilight April.jpg
2017a Soi Twilight New Year.jpg
2017b Soi Twilight June.jpg
2018 Soi Twilight May.jpg
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