Grand Amihan

Did I mention that most clubs have dress codes? It occurred to me last night that of the 3 dozen or so excursions I'd been on, I had always been dressed in the clothes I wore to the office (i.e., button-down shirt, slacks and dress shoes). Yesterday was slightly different: I had just bought myself a new pair of Ipanema flip-flops, and was otherwise dressed in a plain t-shirt and jeans. Of course, this proved to have been a slight misstep, as none of the bars along Quezon Avenue would let us in. Granted, my two friends were in walking shorts, so we didn't exactly look like a trio of well-to-do citizens, if you know what I mean. I suppose it could be said that a combination of shorts, slippers and the fact that none of us were well-known rock stars was definitely going to cause problems gaining access to any of these places.

In short order, we attempted to get into 1) Heartbeat, Quezon Avenue, 2) Club Caxiopeia near Delta, 3) Marinara back near Stardust and 4) Catwalk beside it -- none of which would let us in. Catwalk was particularly laughable: if I had had any alcohol in me, I could've easily told the girl at the door off: "What do you mean you don't allow slippers? You fucking tool, my slippers are more expensive than your entire motherfucking outfit!"

After the rejection at Catwalk, we pretty much gave up on the entire Quezon Avenue area and started driving towards Timog. Now, as of mid-May 2007, there are only really two night-clubs left along Timog: one is this hole-in-the-wall called Skylark, and the other is a joint that's been around since the dawn of time -- Grand Amihan. (Eve's Venom -- the only other option -- finally gave up the ghost a few weeks back, as we all expected it would.) And as you can guess from the title of this entry, we didn't go with the Skylark option. Boy, was that ever a mistake.

Grand Amihan is a solid notch below any club I've ever been to. It had no A/C, used plastic chairs and tables, reeked of spilled beer, and just overall had the ambience of being the kind of place one should be ashamed to be in. (Clearly, it was: aside from us, there was only one other guest.)

As soon as we sat down, I honestly wanted to leave. We were about three feet away from a plywood stage where a girl who looked like she was in her late-20's (a dinosaur by night-club standards) was swaying glumly to Bon Jovi. What really bothered me though was how her nightie was sticking to her skin; she was sweating bullets up there, and not in a sexy way. After two really uncomfortable numbers, she walked off and was replaced by the Grand Amihan equivalent of a showroom. Basically, every girl in the joint (all 8 of them) gets up on stage and sways there for 5 minutes until a) they're chosen by a guest or b) the DJ runs out of subtly-sensual R&B songs to play.

This was a particularly awkward moment for me, seeing as the other guest already had a girl with him, and all the girls were looking right at us.

To be fair, they weren't all ugly. There was actually this one girl who looked like Zhang ZiYi if she had been raised in Tondo and made to work in an RTW factory. And this other girl who kinda reminded me of Judy Ann Santos. That's not to say that I would've picked either of them, because the simple fact was: we were in friggin' Grand Amihan, ladies and gents.

As I was sitting there appreciating the strangeness of this whole spectacle, an FM came over and asked me if I saw anyone I liked. Out of pure reflex (I swear), I said, "Depends ... how much does it cost?"

Now, before I tell you what she told me, I want to first qualify this by saying that it was very noisy at the time, and I wasn't close enough to hear her very well. It sounded to me like she said either "195 pesos for a ladies' drink," or (god forbid) "ninety-five pesos."

Given what we know about clubs at this point, can you make a guess how much a girl makes out of 195 pesos per hour? Yeah, about enough to buy a Burger McDo. With this thought milling around in my head, I informed the FM that we'd think about it, and then got up and walked off to the restroom. On my way out, I saw Zhang ZiYi sitting in the dark by herself, looking right at me. In my mind's eye, she was pleading, "Will you save me from this horrible, horrible place? Please?"

Thoroughly shaken by the thought, I made my way back to our table and asked for the bill. Unsurprisingly, the beer was cheaper here than in your average Bar & Grill: we paid a grand total of PhP190 pesos for six bottles. Ugh.