Pattaya Boyztown: end of an era?

[reader]

From Pattaya Mail

By Barry Kenyon

Nobody is quite sure where the term Boyztown originated. One possibility is the 1938 movie of that name, but Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney were hardly icons of the gay civil right movement. There is a town in India’s Kerala state called Boys Town but it is apparently famous only for its herbal gardens and cucumber sandwiches. There is a Jamaican football club called Boystown, but there’s a high murder rate of gays over there. Oh well, never mind.

Pattaya Boyztown (it was originally named Boystown) was the center of gay entertainment in the 1990s and early 2000s, before competition in Sunee Plaza and the Jomtien Complex caused a slow decline.

In its prime, Boyztown played host to a score of restaurants, hotels, karaokes, bars, clubs and cabaret shows appealing mostly to European gay tourists who flocked in their thousands to spend the pink pound, get sunburned, watch the eye candy and let their hair down.

But in October 2020, the Boyztown district is truly deserted. For the first year in ages, Halloween will likely be a flop. In the main street, only the Panorama bar is open most evenings, but plays host to scant customers and to two bored-looking staff checking their cell phones.

The two biggest cabaret clubs, Castro and Boyz Boyz Boyz, appear to be open only at weekends presumably to cater for the Bangkok crowd taking a mini-break. The once elegant Toyboys, a male go go bar catering mainly for wealthy Asian men, now has fixtures and fittings piled up outside permanently locked doors.

Flamboyant drag stars Eggz Benedict and Aggie Glitterbug, not actually their real names and currently unemployed, said that Boyztown’s decline wasn’t sudden. “From about 2010, the number of European tourists began to fall off as Thailand began to get expensive and eastern Europe opened up for the first time,” said Eggz.

“It’s really been downhill since then,” adds Aggie, “although the shows were packed in recent years by Chinese tour groups who have also disappeared thanks to coronavirus.”

In its heyday, Boyztown businesses were also significant fundraisers for various charities, especially aids-related and orphanages. Annual street cabarets and parties could haul in hundreds of thousands of baht for worthy Thai causes.

The Bangkok Post gossip columnist Bernard Trink (who died earlier this year) always refused to mention gay venues, but even he did once congratulate the Pattaya Gay Festival committee for handing out free condoms to the male prostitutes who might need them. He then ruined the positive effect by complaining that the owner of the Amor restaurant in Boyztown had tried to poison him with a tarnished shrimp cocktail and a stale carrot cake.

Will Boyztown recover its former glory? Eggz and Glitterbug think not. “Pattaya’s future lies in a different direction with literally millions of Chinese tourists waiting in the wings,” muses Eggz.

“It’s not only Boyztown,” complains Aggie, “nobody is making any money these days.”

Both of them point to social media apps, such as Grindr and Hornet, which have replaced gay bars and clubs as meeting places. “But what will come back after the virus are the cabaret extravaganzas,” predicts Eggz, “because you don’t have to be gay to enjoy a good drag show.”

Can’t argue with that.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, reader said:

Both of them point to social media apps, such as Grindr and Hornet, which have replaced gay bars and clubs as meeting places. “But what will come back after the virus are the cabaret extravaganzas,” predicts Eggz, “because you don’t have to be gay to enjoy a good drag show.”

Also, not all gays enjoy a good drag show and even when they have enjoyed a very good one, there is a limit to the number of times a repeat showing is of interest.

 

On the other point, has much of the straight prostitution scene has shifted on line in Pattaya ?    

There are girlie bars all over town.   Have numbers there dwindled in the same percentages as the gay scene ?     My impression is no, but as I'm not counting girlie bars, I could well be wrong.

I note there are also hundreds of freelance girls along the beach in early evening.   Dongtan beach seems to have no surviving equivalent gay offering. 

[Vessey]

Because BoyzTown could successfully attract legions of foreign tourists perhaps, its beer prices were significantly higher than other gay venues such as Sunee and Jomtien Complex. 

Now that gay establishements are largely having to try and survive on the ex-Pat community, is it really any wonder that it is Sunee and JC with their cheaper beers that are keeping their heads above water (just), while BT looks like a ghost town?

One of the long-standing boys at Toy Boys tells me that his boss has effectively mothballed the place until there is a significant upturn in tourists, a sort of survival-mode hibernation. Whether the same is true of other B T bars I cannot say. 

[Boy69]

1 hour ago, Vessey said:

Now that gay establishements are largely having to try and survive on the ex-Pat community, is it really any wonder that it is Sunee and JC with their cheaper beers that are keeping their heads above wat

Sunee is no better than Boys Town if not worse. Only JC is barely surviving thanks to the ex-Pat community.

[Travellerdave]

Barry Kenyon is the former British vice consul In Pattaya, who wrote a very entertaining book about his experiences of dealing with the difficulties and disasters of the British expat community over a number of years. So he certainly speaks with authority about the current situation. I’ve looked at a few YouTube  videos of Covid Pattaya which show many girlie bars open for business (although customers are very thin on the ground), particularly in the Soi Buakhow area where many retired expats reside in cheap rooms. I have the impression that gay expats do not favour that area but instead live more in Jomtien often with their boyfriends. Perhaps the Complex bars are surviving better with their custom. 

[williewillie]

The Boyztown area has been in severe decline for years before COVID-19.

The Chinese tourists kept boyztown afloat, especially Boyzboyzboyz which was filled to capacity most nights.

Many older farangs bitched about Chinese women in ‘their’ bars.  They are and have always been Boy bars not

Gay bars.  Without the Chinese women, Boyztown is fading away.  Only the return of the Chinese tourists will

revive the Boy bar scene.  Sunee Plaza is comatose and only Jomtien Complex has a pulse.

[Travellerdave]

The pandemic will not last for ever. Mass tourism will restart - the Thai economy demands it, including gay tourists eager to resume inter-action with Thai boys. The dating apps do not provide the full experience. The Complex is a better location for gay oriented facilities. Sunee will become increasingly part of the Muslim zone and BT could be developed by a luxury hotel and shopping area like Terminal 21 attracting Chinese Visitors with money to spend. 

The Jomtien Complex  would be complete by the addition of a couple of gay gogos. Maybe a revival of the gay beach ?. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Travellerdave said:

The Jomtien Complex  would be complete by the addition of a couple of gay gogos.

At this point, it's almost obligatory for someone to state that gogo bars are not allowed in Jomtien, having read it somewhere else on a discussion board & not from the original documents (presumably).

Although:

1  I've never seen anyone post evidence of this rule.

2  Jomtien Complex already has a show bar and it also has loads of host bars, which facilitate prostitution and sometimes play loud music.   The rules must be quite carefully worded to allow both these bar types, but exclude gogo bars.

3  There are girlie gogo bars in Jomtien.

So I presume a Jomtien gogo is possible.     I would like to see some gogo bars there, preferably with twinks.

 

Assuming we don't get increasing repression from the government or a civil war, tourism is very likely to recover & the recovery should start in 2021.

[Boy69]

Jomtien is classified as residential area gogo bars are not aloud the few girlie gogo bars probably belong to high ranking officers so nobody touch them.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Boy69 said:

Jomtien is classified as residential area gogo bars are not allowed the few girlie gogo bars probably belong to high ranking officers so nobody touch them.

This may well be correct, but I've never seen anyone post proof of the rule.   So whether we choose to accept it as fact, or a much repeated rumour is a matter of personal choice.

What we know for sure is people have opened straight gogo bars, gay cabaret bars & very noisy open air gay host bars.    With or without tea money, friends in high places etc.

For any resident in Jomtien, the very loud outdoor music from the open air bars would be much more inconvenient than most gogo bars, where the noise is contained in the building.   So even the application of the rumoured residential zoning rule makes no sense.  

Looking at what is open in Jomtien, I would think anyone with the right connections could open a gogo bar if they wanted to.  

If they call it a cabaret bar like The Venue, are the police going to march in the moment boys strip down to their underwear ?     Probably not with the right connections or payments.

 

[spoon]

Its probably as simple as few high power socialite controlling the rules of what can and cannot be built in the area.

[williewillie]

Tonight, Joe, the Thai boss at boyzboyzboyz announced that Boyzboyzboyz would be open every night and at

9pm, there will be a parade of bar boys.  The boys were energetic tonight and there was a couple of ladyboys

leading the lineup.

Serene beer bar reopened tonight and will be open weekends only.

Where the customers will come from is unknown and it seems very optimistic.

Dream Boys and Xboys had no customers at about 10pm.

Spay, a waiter at Panorama said zero customers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

[vinapu]

at least they are trying 'open and they will come ' concept. If place is closed, absence of customers is sure thing.

Now all hangs on locals, BKK arrivals and ex-pats as bars salvation. 

[vinapu]

15 hours ago, Travellerdave said:

The Jomtien Complex  would be complete by the addition of a couple of gay gogos. Maybe a revival of the gay beach ?. 

 

10 hours ago, z909 said:

Assuming we don't get increasing repression from the government or a civil war, tourism is very likely to recover & the recovery should start in 2021.

hopefully you are right. When comes to travel prospects for first 6 month of pandemic I was very optimistic and obviously it did not work. Now I'm quite pessimistic and hope that pessimism will prove wrong too.

 

[Boy69]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

at least they are trying 'open and they will come ' concept. If place is closed, absence of customers is sure thing.

Now all hangs on locals, BKK arrivals and ex-pats as bars salvation. 

The problem is that  local Thai's don't hang out at Boyz Town, BKK arrivals come only on weekends , And ex-pats prefer Jomtien Complex over Boyz Town because it's cheaper and more laid back.

Hope that Boyz Town will survive this hard times and not declined as happened at Paradise Complex in Phuket.