Another One Bites the Dust
Working the job that I do, I often get the chance to read the news the day before it comes out in the papers. So it was with a mixture of despair and disbelief that I learned about an hour ago that the New 7th Storey Hotel will be torn down by the end of this year to make way for the new Bugis Downtown Line MRT station.
Now I've only stayed at the New 7th Storey once, but the experience was such a pleasant one that I can't help but be fond of the old place. Before that I'd always passed the building when my family drove down Rochor Road. I liked it even then, a charming pastel anachronism next to the glossy facade of Bugis Junction, a '50s stalwart pasted next to the kitsch commercialism of the DHL balloon. It stood alone on that patch of land, a rather random oddity which made me wonder where all the other buildings had gone. I remember this one particular time as a child, when we drove by and I remarked to myself that the hotel's signboard had a nice font, that it had "Ban Leong Co" written in one of those old-style painted company coats-of-arms so beloved by Chinese businesses and that its very name was ironic: I had counted the floors and found that there were nine. And when it came time for the Smilodon and myself to find a place for another of our trysts that wasn't Lloyd's or Keong Saik, I decided to give the place a shot. I'd heard about its manual lift, the last of its kind here, and the man who answered the phone when I called to make inquiries was reassuringly gruff.
Sure, part of its charm was meeting the Smilodon and planning the bonanza of festivities that swept him off his feet. But there was something about the New 7th Storey that raised the experience beyond our usual covert operations in Lloyd's or Keong Saik. Just walking in through the glass doors was like stepping into a time warp: the lobby painted in cheerful colours, the prim but worn sofas and tables cluttered in artistic disarray. A huge old clock hung on the wall, its face massive and its tick deep. The lift operators were all genial old ah peks in Hawaiian shirts. The lift was everything that it promised to be and more: it obligingly broke down for us as one point and the man at the counter had to walkie-talkie the man in the lift to get him to press buttons and crank levers or whatever it is you do with those cage lifts. I know it's a cheap thrill, but there's something about being in a cage lift that's more exciting than even the smoothest gliding bubble elevator. It was all dark wood and black steel, the sort of place we wanted to hold a photo shoot in.
The room was really nice, the cheap and cheerful sort that was, amazingly enough, of decent size and utterly spotless. The same rate would get you a boxroom in Keong Saik with minuscule windows and the sound of construction, but this place was light, airy, with a nice view of the field behind it and a bathroom that you didn't feel vaguely wary in. The whole setup was utterly homely, not the crisp sterility that you get in some of the upscale hotels, the kind that I feel uncomfortable sleeping in for fear of creasing the meticulously starched sheets. It had the same sort of easy hospitality that you got in a B&B writ large, the same sort of unpretentious comfort. Outside our room, backpackers lounged about on the sofas reading novels and families with squealing kids swept in and out from their digs. The hotel staff smiled and had this laid-back air about them that relaxed you. Even the random signs hung up on the walls, all written in shaky English, had an endearing quality to them.
We only spent a night there, but I'm fond to bits of the place: from the clock to the Hawaiian-shirted lift uncles to the weird signs telling you about the history of the place in dubious grammar. The lift in itself was definitely something. To think of the place being torn down, a shiny new MRT station where the hotel's brightly lit, almost tinselled lobby with its wood counter used to be - it's actually quite a disorienting thought, one that almost feels as if the reality I have known and loved is being chipped away bit by bit. It's tough to think that a place that you'd just come to know intimately, a place that you'd grown familiar with even as a kid, is just going to vanish like that. Having only memories to live on is not enough. Sometimes the tangible reminders of evenings spent with my family on drives, of a night of mayhem with a lover, need to be there, a landmark of life that one can see and touch and connect to.
I wonder where the lift operators will go, or the chief concierge, whom I found out has worked with the hotel since it opened in 1953. I wonder where the nice Indian receptionist will head to. Or the resturant next to the lobby: Will that relocate? The centripetal forces on all these lives boggles the mind. The thought of losing that tangible connection is equally stunning and saddening. And then I find myself thinking: what next? The New 7th Storey today; what's going to be demolished tomorrow?
The Smilodon and I are going to spend another night there, hopefully. We're planning on taking photos of everything, including the lift uncles and the huge clock. It'll be like bidding goodbye to a partner in crime, a snapshot of our love. I think I'm going to hug a pillar at the end of it and cry, just a little.
Now I've only stayed at the New 7th Storey once, but the experience was such a pleasant one that I can't help but be fond of the old place. Before that I'd always passed the building when my family drove down Rochor Road. I liked it even then, a charming pastel anachronism next to the glossy facade of Bugis Junction, a '50s stalwart pasted next to the kitsch commercialism of the DHL balloon. It stood alone on that patch of land, a rather random oddity which made me wonder where all the other buildings had gone. I remember this one particular time as a child, when we drove by and I remarked to myself that the hotel's signboard had a nice font, that it had "Ban Leong Co" written in one of those old-style painted company coats-of-arms so beloved by Chinese businesses and that its very name was ironic: I had counted the floors and found that there were nine. And when it came time for the Smilodon and myself to find a place for another of our trysts that wasn't Lloyd's or Keong Saik, I decided to give the place a shot. I'd heard about its manual lift, the last of its kind here, and the man who answered the phone when I called to make inquiries was reassuringly gruff.
Sure, part of its charm was meeting the Smilodon and planning the bonanza of festivities that swept him off his feet. But there was something about the New 7th Storey that raised the experience beyond our usual covert operations in Lloyd's or Keong Saik. Just walking in through the glass doors was like stepping into a time warp: the lobby painted in cheerful colours, the prim but worn sofas and tables cluttered in artistic disarray. A huge old clock hung on the wall, its face massive and its tick deep. The lift operators were all genial old ah peks in Hawaiian shirts. The lift was everything that it promised to be and more: it obligingly broke down for us as one point and the man at the counter had to walkie-talkie the man in the lift to get him to press buttons and crank levers or whatever it is you do with those cage lifts. I know it's a cheap thrill, but there's something about being in a cage lift that's more exciting than even the smoothest gliding bubble elevator. It was all dark wood and black steel, the sort of place we wanted to hold a photo shoot in.
The room was really nice, the cheap and cheerful sort that was, amazingly enough, of decent size and utterly spotless. The same rate would get you a boxroom in Keong Saik with minuscule windows and the sound of construction, but this place was light, airy, with a nice view of the field behind it and a bathroom that you didn't feel vaguely wary in. The whole setup was utterly homely, not the crisp sterility that you get in some of the upscale hotels, the kind that I feel uncomfortable sleeping in for fear of creasing the meticulously starched sheets. It had the same sort of easy hospitality that you got in a B&B writ large, the same sort of unpretentious comfort. Outside our room, backpackers lounged about on the sofas reading novels and families with squealing kids swept in and out from their digs. The hotel staff smiled and had this laid-back air about them that relaxed you. Even the random signs hung up on the walls, all written in shaky English, had an endearing quality to them.
We only spent a night there, but I'm fond to bits of the place: from the clock to the Hawaiian-shirted lift uncles to the weird signs telling you about the history of the place in dubious grammar. The lift in itself was definitely something. To think of the place being torn down, a shiny new MRT station where the hotel's brightly lit, almost tinselled lobby with its wood counter used to be - it's actually quite a disorienting thought, one that almost feels as if the reality I have known and loved is being chipped away bit by bit. It's tough to think that a place that you'd just come to know intimately, a place that you'd grown familiar with even as a kid, is just going to vanish like that. Having only memories to live on is not enough. Sometimes the tangible reminders of evenings spent with my family on drives, of a night of mayhem with a lover, need to be there, a landmark of life that one can see and touch and connect to.
I wonder where the lift operators will go, or the chief concierge, whom I found out has worked with the hotel since it opened in 1953. I wonder where the nice Indian receptionist will head to. Or the resturant next to the lobby: Will that relocate? The centripetal forces on all these lives boggles the mind. The thought of losing that tangible connection is equally stunning and saddening. And then I find myself thinking: what next? The New 7th Storey today; what's going to be demolished tomorrow?
The Smilodon and I are going to spend another night there, hopefully. We're planning on taking photos of everything, including the lift uncles and the huge clock. It'll be like bidding goodbye to a partner in crime, a snapshot of our love. I think I'm going to hug a pillar at the end of it and cry, just a little.
verazasulich - 26. Jun, 22:46
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