Can Booze Bring Back Sunee?

[Dodger]

The Sunee Swan Song

I remember sitting in a beer bar across from Kaos listening to a farang ranting on-and-on about how “Sunee was on its last legs”…”and how the fat lady had taken the stage and the Sunee Swan Song was now playing”. The bar I was sitting in was Yaya’s shortly after Barry and Yaya hung their sign somewhere around 2008. Here we are nearly 14 years later and I still hear the same remarks.

Either Sunee has more legs than anyone cared to count back then, or the Fat Lady is singing a song that belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the longest song ever played, because, as dark and dismal as Sunee is right now, it still refuses to drop its curtain. Dark and dismal, yes. Very few bars left standing, yes. But still alive.

It wasn’t the Arabs with their shisha’s that started the decay in Sunee, it was The Market. Fewer and fewer gay tourists were coming to Thailand due to a whole host of reasons, and the escalating police raids in Sunee didn’t help matters either. Sunee took another major hit in 2010 when a major campaign against drugs was launched by a newly assigned police commissioner in Bangkok which landed many of the working boys in Sunee (and other places) in prison. The BIB who controlled the operations in Sunee during that period were relocated to other posts – and the street mafia was forced to go farther underground. This is what knocked the wind out of Sunee (and Boyztown and JC as well).

The bars who survived this period (few as there are right now) could reopen and make a go of it, but their future is in the hands of Madam Sunee. She has to be as old as Moses right now and if she sells the property, or leaves it to her relatives who want to sell it, then Sunee Plaza will probably end up being demolished. That’s when we’ll see the last leg topple. That’s when the fat lady will end her song. But right now, there’s no sign of any of that happening.

Sunee will never return to its Glory Days, so those of us who were fortunate enough to have experienced that amazing and surrealistic period in time, should consider ourselves fortunate. But as long as there are survivors in Sunee like Mama Lek, Green Chairs owner, Beer and Mak at Nice Boys, Winner Gogo, and a few others, who are willing to give it another go and refuse to throw in the towel – I’m right there with them.

Sunee needs our support, the same way the bars in Jomtien Complex need our support, and the only way we can do that is by keeping hope alive (the same way they are)…visiting these bars the minute they open (some already are)…encourage others to do the same…be generous in your spending when you do go…and speak in a positive manner about the bar owners plight to survive.

As a side note: I have frequent conversations with the owner of Green Chairs Bar. She is a very street-wise elderly Thai woman who has been operating her bar longer than any other business in Sunee. I remember shooting snooker with her grandson when he had to stand on a wooden box to be able to see the top of the snooker table – who now tends bar for her. This was back in the days when Sportsman’s Bar and Amigo Pub were her neighbors.

She probably knows more about the history and inner workings of Sunee than even Madam Sunee herself. She looked at me…squinted her eyes in the early morning sun,…smiled…and said in a very calm voice, that Sunee will survive - with several host bars and a few gogo bars (Winner, Nice Boys) reopening when the green light is given. She went on to say that her close friend Mama Lek (One Bar) plans to reopen as well. She knows that Sunee will never be anywhere near as busy as it was in its hay day, but busy enough to keep a few beer bars and gogo bars afloat which works for her. It works for me too.

So MFAS, to answer your original question: Can Booze bring Back Sunee?

The answer is No.

What will bring back Sunee are people who think and speak in a positive manner about the plight of the surviving bar owners, who refuse to give up hope.