(For a side note, on September 10th they will launch their inaugural book: Kisah Kawan di Ujung Sana. I strongly recommend this book. If you don't believe me, go visit their blog, read their writings. Tell me if you're not interested with their stories.)
Last Friday, through his Facebook, Teddy announced the opening of POST on Saturday, August 30th, 2014. POST is a 2-kiosk-unit space in Santa Market, South Jakarta, designed for creativity melting pots. Everyone can use it for gathering, discussion, book launching, garage sale, whatever. This is a Christmas comes early for struggling indie artists and start-up entrepreneurs who find that capitalism has encroached rent price, since they can pay for using POST in any price they like. And the event for last Saturday was traveler garage sale.
So, in August 30th me and my girlfriend, Nitha, went indeed to Santa Market. It was hot and humid Jakartan midday. Luckily Santa Market is not that far from our places. We parked my motor and, luckily again, we met Teddy right away at the parking lot. Wearing Navy T-shirt and yellowish-dark beige shorts, he told me that he was almost going home to take care the then sick Maesy. But he decided to walk us into a quick tour inside.
Going inside, we strolled directly to second floor. Teddy explained that the lowest floor is the "wet market" (meaning they sell fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables there). The floor above that is akin to ITC, a shopping center for clothes, bags, shoes, and perfumes, mostly counterfeit or cater to lower- and middle-class. Only, it is sadder than ITC. And the second floor is where POST exists.
Looking at the metal roof beams above, I mumbled to Nitha, "It's like that Phillip Seymour Hoffman movie."
"Huh?" she said.
It was Synecdoche, New York. But I refrained.
On the second floor, there are the Japanese vinyl record shop named SubStore, a coffee shop named Bear & Co., another coffee shop called ABCD Coffee (this one is quite famous, I'll tell later), a fried noodle vendor Miechino, a glutinous rice snack seller, a Germany electric cigarette shop named Snoke, another vinyl record shop named Laidback Blues, a nondescript second-hand clothing store, and of course POST. Most of them open only in the weekends and holidays. They were still closed when I came that day, except Teddy's place, which was full by the traveler garage sale attendees.
"They will open at 3 PM," Teddy said.
We then sat down near the stairs. Teddy proceeded to tell that Santa Market's second floor is now transforming into a creative space for youths, with artsy style. I gazed around and nodded with agreement. The exteriors, typography, and designs altogether seemed to compose a youthful ambiance. Perhaps, there's no more fitting place than this for Midjournal, a website for "cool" Indonesian "middle-class" youngsters (no sarcasm), which, according to Teddy, is about to open its office here. Whether Jakartabeat and Indoprogress soon to follow its steps is unclear, though.
On the back, some crews of a major news channel came out from POST. Apparently its opening already attracted exposure from major media.
It was still crowded with garage shoppers. And maybe still will for this month's weekends. There will be a pop up bookstore, a music appreciation gathering, and Drive Books Not Cars event if I'm not mistaken.
"You can use it for gathering and pay whatever sum you like. In fact, you can pay zilch to me if you're that shameless." Teddy said jokingly.
Teddy's friend, Joan, who was also a superb debater, stopped by to the place where we sat with a tattooed man whose name fleets my memory. I was not sure if he was a debater or not. I forgot if we ever introduced ourselves, either. The tattooed man joins ABCD Coffee course. There are four classes taught here, he said, and their first letters form the abbreviation "ABCD": appreciation, brewing, cupping, and definitive espresso. What's a definitive espresso, I asked. He wasn't sure what, either. We chatted for a while. I bought Yusi Avianto Pareanom's book which Teddy happened to bring with him. Then he said he wanted to go home to tend Maesy, followed with me and my girlfriend saying goodbye to them all, too.
"I'll be back here at 3. Gotta run some errands first."
"Sure!"
At 3 PM when we were back, the parking lots were already full with cars. I was amazed with these young people. My girlfriend was not surprised.
"[Things] like these are not rare in Jogja." said her.
"Yeah, but hanging out in a traditional market? How do they even know this place?"
"How do you not know about this place? It is already 'hype' and well-known, you know."
"Pasar Santa? Really?"
"Yep."
And our guessing was correct, it was full upstairs, too.
All the tenants which were closed were opening. Coincidentally, Laidback Blues' event, "Pasar Ajojing" also had just started. A significant portion of the crowds might be coming for this. Hordes of hipsters and indie-looking folks swarming here and there, wearing obscure band merchs (Dinosaur Jr.!), pop-culture T-shirts (Star Wars!), or floral T-shirts reminiscing of hippies, um, sorry, flower power generations of the 60's and 70's.
Nitha and I went directly to the aforementioned ABCD coffee. Unfortunately, they don't sell iced coffee, even when this place was choking hot and its air was under-circulated. The AC central was only a remnant of Santa Market's glory day. Yet, we relented, ordering a cup of hot cappuccino and a cup of hot piccolo.
Many people were also gathering near this coffee shop. We sat by makeshift stools made from reused wood planks swallowing regrets of not buying cold mineral water. Joan and the tattooed man were there. Tirza and Denny (both were master debaters as well) sat next to us. Above us, there's a wooden signage with "A Bunch of Caffeine Dealer" emblazoned on it.
"I was stunned, never thought I'm gonna meet debating dinosaurs."
"Nah, we're not. Bubu is dinosaur." replied Denny.
Bubu, along with Perry, Patsy, Arif, and Ruli are the ones who brought competitive English debating to Indonesia. They are the Adams and Eve of debating here.
About half an hour or 45 minutes later, Nitha's order came.
"Too much milk." she remarked. I agreed.
It's a kind of unique concept, actually. First, the owner, Hendri Kurniawan, does not have a designated supplier for his coffee. Hendri, who is a certified barista and international level barista competition jury, brings whatever coffee beans he bought abroad (or given by his friends) as the ingredient. Thus, the taste may vary in every time he opens this shop. (My piccolo, which came 15 minutes later, had acidic taste typical to Arabica variant. Too much milk aside, it tasted different from Nitha's, somehow.) Second, ABCD coffee opens whenever it feels like it, so it adds to the aura of mysterious artisanal quality it has. And third, a tip jar instead of a cashier. Again, like POST, you can pay in whatever price you like. This one supposedly conveys a message that drinking coffee is an experience of sharing. But then again, when car-driving people around you dropped 50.000 or 100.000 rupiah bill, dropping 10.000 rupiah will make you either cheap and/or shameless and/or not appreciative in the eyes of the crowds. The power of silent peer pressure will make this shop a lucrative income source nonetheless.
We were hungry, so we visited Miechino. This noodle vendor's sign, a circle with vertical line inside and triangle on a third from top of it, all in red color, reminded me so much of Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows symbol. It was, so far, the food and beverage vendor here that was good. It was not overrated when Teddy said that the noodle was delicious. Minimalistic, with a splash of kuah (watery gravy) and sticky texture, but delicious. In fact, with only 15.000 rupiah a pop, it might as well be a godsend here.
The speakers from Laidback Blues blared acid house and trip hop musics. How very fitting, I thought.
"If we marry, I want these kinds of music in our wedding."
"Okay, so, no Whitney Houston?" I responded
"Yeah. And no Perri... Perri, what's her name? The 'A Thousand Years' singer?"
"Christina Perri."
"Definitely not her."
"Sure. We will make our moms listen to Aphex Twin, too."
We saw Teddy again, this time with Maesy. We introduced ourselves, and then they introduced themselves to new renter beside POST. There I saw Teddy and Maesy, being the walking, living social glue, mingled with almost all the tenants; a nice quality that I secretly envy.
The multitude of people and lack of AC still heated this floor. I yearned for some cold, cold drinks. Bear & Co. was the viable option.
Josh Estey, the owner, was standing behind the counter explaining to Tirza and Denny when we got there. In front of him, was a metal pipe of silvery color emerging from the counter. It branched into two, similar to what you see in hydrant. At its ends, there were two valves, like those on draught beer keg. The left valve was for tea, the right one was for coffee.
"I just got the nitrogen working this very morning. I made this counter by myself, from recycled woods. My friend gave the wood to me." he recounted with pride.
"What's the nitrogen for?" I asked him. I asked because from what I remember from my waking high school time, nitrogen is an inert gas.
"Oh, it's to make the coffee foamy."
"And you infuse carbon dioxide to the tea, like soda?"
"Kind of."
I asked for iced coffee, with lotsa milk. Nitha ordered the tea. They were 20k each. Same price, because this was the opening day. It was until very recently that Bear & Co. had its decor completed. Friends and family helped him, Josh narrated while making our requests.
Nitha questioned, "Where do you get the name 'Bear & Co.'"?
"My kids love bear. Hence the name."
He handed our drinks in plastic cup. "Thank you, Papa Bear!", said Nitha fondly. Josh chuckled. What a jolly sight.
She glanced at me while we walked away, saying "You gotta learn skills like that." As a person prone to faux pas, social niceties is certainly not my strongest suit.
We sipped the drinks in our hands, and we were baffled. This tasted not like coffee and milk, not even coffee, or milk, or coffee and milk in unbalanced proportion, or if it was diluted by too much water. This is something else. And I tasted Nitha's iced tea. It was another je ne sais quoi that didn't taste either like its individual (lemon, ice, and tea) or combined ingredients. So that nitrogen and carbon dioxide had to do something, after all.
We looked at the cup. Nitha said that the cups were hand-stamped by Josh himself, he told her. I observed this flock of young demimonde and their air of retromania once again. And suddenly an epiphany came: this place is a new Mecca of postmodernism and hipsterdom in Jakarta.
Recycled wood planks, hand-stamped cups and business cards, traditional snacks, and the artisanal coffee are the re-adoption of the pasts and the rejection to modernism together with its boring, industrialist, mass-produced commodities. It's an imaginary resistance of course. And these hipsters - which is a subset phenomenon of postmodernism - ironically embrace the proletarian spirit through the lens of the nouveau riches - the elitist, bourgeoisie perspective that they have. Irony is of course an inseparable part of hipsterism; a movement whose complete definition is still elusive to us. Is it an insatiable quest of being different from the hoi polloi, even though it is "mainstreaming" already? Is to be hipster to reject the calling of hipster itself, a perpetual "not me" attitude? Are these people, who try to make sophisticated observational comedy sketches out of ordinary situations (but sadly sound like lame dad jokes) hipsters? Are Puthut EA and Arman Dhani, our own stalwart, intellectual writers, trying to "hipsterize" themselves here?
It came to me that hipsterism possesses both objective and subjective quality in it. First, they have to be affluent, or at least belong to middle-class. Second, they must be quite eloquent, educated, and internet-literate. Third, they have to display their "uniqueness" or contrarian stance in some point. It can be in their attires, their favorite bands, or their uncaring attitude (ironic, I know). These serve as a marker of hipsterism as a stratum of culture different from "genuine", lowbrow culture embraced by the low class. Beyond that, hipsterism steps on the subjective realm. Dialetheistically, hipsters are alike and yet different in their own way. A person who listens to Pitchfork-endorsed bands like Miami Horror (this is my girlfriend) is a hipster for me, whose musical taste is that well-known Radiohead (this still makes me a hipster, too, though). Another person who loves to listen to keroncong or dangdut or Indonesian 60-70's musics or an obscure band from Tanzania is a hipster for both of us. But you can't call a Pantura trucker a hipster for listening to dangdut, for, according to hipster, it's a proper musical taste for them. Hipsterism's outermost layer is accordingly a personal last step of Hegelian dialectics: the synthesis. It is after meeting the antithesis in the form of le grand Autre, the self suffered from lack (manque) to project her ego outward. The synthesis therefore manifests in the radically different self from the big Others: the hipster. A hipster is a hipster in relations to one's concepts about herself and one's perceptions of how Others see her. Of course, I'm pulling all this seemingly sophisticated philosophical legerdemain out of my arse, but where else can you drop Hegel and Lacan? (And am I uber-hipster yet?)
But what justifies the 200-300% mark up or so for the tie-dye scarfs, or the wee traditional glutinous rice snacks here, even though you can find similar products perhaps one floor below? And it saddened me, to see these two worlds collide in this market. Below, the dreary, weary common folks, tired from waiting for the next customer. A middle-aged lady fanned herself incessantly with a thin book due to hot air. A man fell asleep on the floor near his counter. Perhaps, the whole day was wasted without a single customer at all. It pained me to look at this sight of contrasting vistas from above here; from the place where the hypes, the creatives, the differents, spouting buzzwords and making merry in their apparent "profound" style and musical tastes.
But if you ask me whether I will come here again next time, I'd say yes. I will also buy loads of cold mineral water from a vendor a floor below, to wash away not only my bodily heat, but also the guilt of being privileged and a concern troll at the same time.
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