Pappa Cafe moves from Jalan Jaksa to Sydney

Every now and then a little gem appears which causes me to giggle like a loon. The latest of these was submitted by a gentleman known as "Tablet" who wrote this piece purporting to be an ex Jakartan journalist who moved back to Australia about a year go.

I requested his premission to re-print this (to which he kindly acceded) and the rest is, as they say, almost Private Eye material.....(Apologies to the real Mr Simpson)


G'day everyone.

It's Roy here. You all still remember me, right? You, Nick? You, Dan? You, Roger? Especially you, Roger. Remember me, yeah? I was your lanky, long-haired, quasi-journalist mate from Jalan Jaksa. Think Pappa Cafe, table top, drunk, sleeping, dawn - that was me, usually.

It's been a while now since I departed the exotic, palm-lined shores of Indonesia and returned to my native soil, that being Australia, former trash can for British scumbags, misfits and the defrocked (I myself am descended from the Reverend John Willis Touse, transported in 1781 for stealing a prostitute's handbag, boring a glory hole in the church confessional box, and screaming blasphemies from the church spire), and I thought I'd let you know what I'm up to.

Some people, I know, believe that as soon as I returned to Oz I cut my hair, rolled up my sleeves, grabbed a rake and began plowing the family farm. Others seem to think that I spend my days scouring the budget shelves of DVD stores in search of curious old movies to send to my mates, you all, in Jakarta.

Other people even believe that I never left Indonesia at all, but built a cardboard shack on Ancol beach, where I live in tranquil obscurity, surviving by collecting bottle tops which I sell by the sack to recyclers, while avidly writing a biography of David Jardine, titled 'Batavia Bloke: The Life and Times of a Male Bag Lady in Indonesia'.

And I know that at least one of you thinks that I returned in my time machine to my home century, the Twelfth one, living the life of an alchemist. So I'd like to set the record straight.

Currently I am in Sydney (the city, not a bloke), and am in the process of opening up an Australian version of Pappa Cafe. Why? Indeed why. Bintang is the reason. Pure Bintang. When I got back here I immediately began to miss the stuff. How could I not?

Throughout my years living in Jakarta only prostitutes' tits spent more time at my lips than bottles of Bintang. When I wasn't shagging and catching venereal diseases I was amassing emptied green bottles on the table before me.

In fact I believe that, in a moment of befuddled inebriation, I may have, well, probably did, that is, I seem to recall, trying to shag a half-full, fizzing, frothing, gorgeously wet, erotically tight, bottle. But, er, we won't go into that.

So I began to import Bintang, at first just for personal consumption, say five or six crates a week, to be drunk while watching hilarious old Goon shows and ancient episodes of Derek and Clyde on my TV, but it wasn't long before I had the idea of opening up a bar that dispensed, exclusively, Bintang, to my fellow Australians, of spreading the word that even a Muslim country like Indonesia can produce a great beer, one that the prophet Mohammad himself would have approved of, for infidels.

My bar, naturally, would be modeled on that very model of Jalan Jaksa refinery and style, Pappa Cafe. If authenticity was to be achieved, this venture was not as simple as it first sounded.

Where, for example, does one find a dozen cat-sized rats to let loose around the place? Or actual cats with crooked tails to sit plaintively at your feet as you eat a chicken curry? Armadillo-sized cockroaches scuttling along the skirting boards? How does one build a urinal that pongs like a tramp's underwear and for repellent grubbiness is second only to the maid's toilet in Nick Aaron's shared house?

How would it pass muster with the city's health inspectors? What about wobbly tables, and chairs that come apart in your hands? Glasses with dirty paint spots on them? A fifteen-year-old menu? What about gaggles of squat prostitutes who drown out the sound of the television?

Glue-sniffing street urchins who sit outside in the hope of a pedophile passing by? On a positive note finding a dozen drunken losers of mixed nationalities to patronize the place at two in the morning wouldn't be too difficult in a cosmopolitan city like Sydney, and they themselves would help create that genuine Pappa Cafe atmosphere, of glum hopelessness, of squalid sexual tension, of beer-induced paranoia.

It was a tough task. But after many Bintang's worth of pondering and an expenditure of 327 Australian Dollars I think I have succeeded. I have recreated Pappa Cafe, with all its unique characteristics, its spiritual nooks and crannies, its very heart of darkness, in the heart of Sydney.

The hardest part was reproducing Danny Pope, as he sits there alone, night after night, brooding over the ultimate fate of the universe. But a replica Danny I had to have. Pappa Café without him would be incomplete, like a mutiny without a Bounty, a bum without an arsehole, a Bule without a Gila. I settled on a full-sized glossy cardboard cut-out of him, complete with a mechanical arm that lifts a bottle to his lips every 17.5 seconds, sporting real hair, planted at a corner table, looking grim and anti-social. It’s very lifelike. I would go so far as to claim that it’s indistinguishable from the real thing under the dim, sclerosis-yellow lighting.

Sadly no other cut-outs were required. Pappa Café once teemed with regulars, a broiling bevy of skint English teachers who rioted bacchanalially every night and only ever behaved when they had passed out; but they moved on over the years, at first to Uncle Pedro’s mighty Yaudah bistro with its long list of no-nos, its German-Swiss versus the rest of the world racial segregation, its somewhat better food, and then to Captain Morgan’s ship-shape establishment across the road, where blacks and whites harmoniously sing sea shanties together nightly, jigging to the hornpipe, being careful that the captain doesn’t slip the King’s Shilling into their beer glasses.

And so I would like to invite you all – even you Richard Bennet - to the soft-opening of PAPPA CAFE THE OZZIE WAY, the date of which I wall announce at a later, er date.

Large Bintangs will be served at a fifty three percent discount, and will be placed outside in the blazing sun for a few minutes before being poured in order to warm them up to that authentic Pappa Café temperature.

There will be an all-you-can-gorge buffet of near-lifelike Indonesian cuisine done the Pappa Café way, complete with amusing misspellings on the menu, and European food, including hamburgers of heated luncheon meat.

Entertainment will consist of a stand-up comedian doing impersonations of famous Jalan Jaksa characters past and present - see Commander Bob getting turfed out of Yaudah for sneaking in whiskey in a plastic bag, or Nick Aarons being threatened with a Samurai sword for going to the rescue of a fellow African, or Jason O’Donnell singing My way his way, or Michael Clarke attempting to penetrate a fellow teacher on the floor of Romance. Please come. I will pay for your fare, as long as you swim.

Yours, Roy Simpson
Manager and Patron, Pappa Café The Ozzie Way
72 Gay Kangaroo Avenue
Sydney, Australia