Sorry I cannot agree that 2011 was when Twilight attained its peak. Yes, perhaps it had more bars that year (although I actually doubt it) but then many had opened and closed in between 2000 and 2010. Sitting in Dick's Cafe, some will remember a bar diagonally opposite with some sort of technology theme. Can't remember the name but it did not last long. I only remember it because one of the boys always outside was aggressively cute and as I later found out completely hairless apart from on his head and lower down. What a turn on! It became a billiards bar.Originally Posted by JayToff
Then there was the short lived X-treme Bar. This was run by a white haired Englishman who I believe had worked in some position for the Church of England. He tried a different theme. He did have some regular gogo dancers but the main 'act' was a group of 8 or so young professional dancers or dance students who put on a different dance show every week. There was never nudity but these boys were great dancers and the shows were really fun. They would also mingle with customers after the shows. When the bar closed - probably around 2003 - the boys moved over to the German owner's bar across the soi. But even he found the act did not bring in the customers and so they migrated once again to the old Rome Club in Soi 4, then called Roxy. Again I think they did not last long.
We really have to remember that nightlife definitely changed after the Thaksin government's Social Order campaigns in 2001 and the new rules they laid down. One result was that many of the Thai customers who had been quite frequent bar hoppers in the 1980s and 90s began to disappear. By the turn of the millennium, gay saunas and massage establishments had been operating for well over a decade and they also tended to take customers away from the traditional gogo bars. In 2006 an article in The New York Times mentioned Bangkok's dwindling number of night spots. It also highlighted the increased number of raids on nightlife establishments. These were always accompanied by a media scrum. Who can forget the raid on Babylon led by some senior Minister who was photographed outside gingerly holding a condom and pronouncing that this was evidence of illegal sexual activity? The fact that another branch of government had been actively promoting the use of condoms for years as an anti-HIV measure seems not to have occurred to him!
The NYT article even quoted Kurt Wachtveitl, the legendary manager of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, who that year spoke out against the social order rules, especially those that mandated the closure of bars and clubs at 1:00 am. "If Bangkok continues to be the kind of city that begins to look sleepy after midnight, it will be wasting all its advantages to the upscale foreign visitors. They'll go to Beijing, Shanghai and now Singapore," he lamented.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/t...m-bangkok.html
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