Texas Lone Starr Saloon, painting by Richard Diran*

Bangkok’s venerable Texas Lone Star Saloon closed its doors this week for good. A Washington Square institution since 1985, the bar actually had its beginnings in the late 1970s, when George Pipas opened the Texxan Bar on Patpong Road. The ‘Lone Star,’ as most people referred to it (it was actually spelled Lone Staar on the sign), was a legendary hangout for CIA and Special Forces types, war vets, and writers like Dean Barrett, Stephen Leather, and Chris Moore, who often held book signings there. For those mourning the loss of the bar as well as for those who never entered, Dean has placed a wonderful 6 minute video tribute of it on YouTube. 

If you’re in Bangkok long enough, you’ll end up having your own favorite bar. It will generally have bar girls, but not go-go dancers. It will be more of a comfortable, worn, slightly or mightily seedy joint where you can talk and drink with your friends. Most of the women working there will not be young. The music will be Vietnam-era and later rock and roll, never rap or techno. And eventually it will be torn down, like the Lone Star, so that a newer building will go up. And there goes the neighborhood. 

Here at WoWasis, our favorite was a joint on Sukhumvit called BM Cocktail (the sign read BM Cocktain, exactly the way Thais pronounce the word). We visited because we liked the name. The bartender was Chai, a Singaporean Chinese. Nui was its only waitress, who Chai referred to as “grandmother” to annoy her. Over the course of a few years, it became our hangout. We brought our friends here, drank and carried on, always at Chai’s bar, rather than in a booth. A few Japanese were always in the booths with the bar girls, and BM charged customers by the hour for conversing with them, so we were always the only Western folks in the place: only the Japanese will pay for conversations in Bangkok. 

One day, abruptly, the BM closed, the victim of another land sale. Bars like the BM never reopen. Chai left to work as one of several bartenders at a disco in the north of the city. Nui took a new job as a waitress at a restaurant on Soi Thonglor. We’ve stayed friends, but it will never be like it was at BM Cocktain. And that’s how it will be with the Lone Star. Everyone’s going to remain friends, they’ll share more drinks, continue to talk about the usual nonsense, and gather at other spots, none of which will have the veneer of the old bar. 

We often chide Westerners for always crowing about “the good old days” in Bangkok, and how today isn’t nearly as good as yesterday. “You should have been here 20 years ago,” is the standard lament. The closing of bars like BM and the Lone Star, though, contradicts the point. The good old days are actually today, where the bar you’re sitting in right now may suddenly close in the inexorable march Bangkok makes daily to tear down the old buildings and businesses in order to build high-rises. You’re living the good old days right now, and these are the times you’ll be reminiscing about in the not-too-distant future.

*The paiting at the beginning of this post was done by Richard Diran, a writer and painter living in Bangkok. You can purchase a copy of this painting, as well as others, at his website.