[Sm00thy]

I loved that hotel bar back in the day when free lancers were rife in Jakarta. When I first arrived in Jakarta in the late 90's, the Aryaduta had one of the best bars in Jakarta downstairs in The Tavern. Although they also had pop bands, they had a rock band there that played stuff like Deep Purple that was awesome. We used to go there special just to see them (And to bring home a nice lady for the night). The guys in that rock band were older guys even back then, so I seriously doubt they are still playing around town, but that's the best true rock cover band I've seen in Jakarta. The bar was always packed with female talent similar to what you find these days at BATS. I have many good memories with the girls from Tavern. Although I will say that Tavern was part of the "rotation". You would see the same girls from BATS, Le Meridien, CJs, etc at The Tavern back then. We definitely had some fun nights there. During Oktoberfest, they used to have a special week for that and the place was packed with Germans and a had a German band wearing Lederhosen and playing instruments like the Tuba. It was good fun. The hot stone steak there was a unique dish that never failed to be quite tasty.

Although I believe that bar is still open, I don't think girls go there anymore, so it's basically dead (similar to the disco at LE Meridien which used to be the number one free lance spot in Jakarta but is now dead). Back then, the Aryaduta Tavern, Hard Rock Cafe at Sarinah (now replaced in Sarinah by a worthless restaurant, and the Hard Rock moved to Pacific Place now and became a family restaurant rather than a wild pick up spot), Green Pub (Amigos restaurant) at Sarinah (now a Pizza Hut), Tanamur disco (now closed) and JJ's disco (now closed) were some of the absolute hot spots in town. They all had lots of available free lancers and they were all quite near each other so you didn't need to travel too far to hit a good number of great free lance night spots in one night. Now, not one of those places is still a hot spot. And they were NOT replaced around town by other places with free lancers, so the free lance scene is basically crap these days. Places like BATS and CJs were around back then as well, and they were popular, but there were so many other places back then.