jakarta’s DIY busker bases: where chaos meets creativity
woke up at 3am today and decided to chase sunrise over a street full of weirdly painted furniture. not sure why. it rained last night and the smell was like old bread and regret. i just checked and it’s 23.66 right now, hoping you like sweating through parking lots while trying to sketch a mural. the kind of mural that ends up looking like a Jackson Pollock accident with a kebaya dress thrown in for flair.
walked into a bar opposite a train station and asked the girl behind the counter, ‘do you sell permits for public art?’ she blinked, then handed me a receipt from a nearby Warung Kopi Excellence. turns out, they don’t. but someone told me that the dukungs here sell coffee in recyclable plastic… but i heard that’s a memory from a dream you had in 2019. don’t ask. the neo-kyoto vibes here are strong. someone else whispered about a jazz club that plays lo-fi on loop, but i’m not sure if that’s true or if it’s a scam by a guy selling lottery tickets from a suitcase.
the *grnd_level here is a mess. i mean, literally. the ground level of this bus stop smells like durian and existential dread. i sat on a bench made of welded steel and tried to film a cat weaving through the crowd. the cat won. my camera died. but it’s okay because the humidity was 81% and i didn’t notice until i checked my phone. the feels_like was 24.2, which is just your soul slowly dehydrating.
if you get bored, warungs a few blocks over are just a short drive away. not the ‘drive’ of a car, but the ‘drive’ of your willpower as you reject everything this city offers. the neighbors? Somebody here kept a rotting goat in their backyard. i don’t know if that’s normal. i didn’t ask. i just took a photo of the goat’s shadow on their fence and uploaded it to my instagram as ‘jakarta’s Abstract Art Collectors.’
i overheard two boys talking about a ghost hunter who claims there’s a poltergeist in the dictatorship building. i laughed so hard I snorted coffee. the coffee was supposed to be from a vintage mug but turned out to be instant. someone warned me that the su governance office smells like burnt espresso. don’t go. but the sea_level* pressure here is 1010, which I guess means the air is thick enough to make you question life choices.
the reviews here are mostly overheard rumors. I saw a sign for a ‘haunted bookstore’ on a Yelp map, but when I went, it was just a bakery with a really sad vibe. the reviews said it was ‘spooky’ but I think they justBurnt sugar and regret. TripAdvisor says the street food is ‘unreliable,’ but I heard that from a tourist who missed their flight. anyway, my advice is to trust your gut. if it smells like wet concrete and hope, it’s probably worth it.
for images, I used Unsplash links because I couldn’t resist. one showed a horse-drawn carriage on a city street, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist here. another was a cup of coffee on a saucer-very Jakarta. the clock tower photo? That’s a typo. there’s no clock tower.
p.s. the map below might be cursed. don’t follow it.
i also added a few images. one was a clock tower that doesn’t exist. another was a horse that probably hates me. the coffee one? That’s just me being lazy.
if this post ruined your day, congrats. I ruined mine too. remember to hydrate. maybe skip the goat. and if you’re a DIY Busker, keep going. this city doesn’t care. it’s 1010 in here, so you’ll need a permit. or maybe just a receipt. who knows?
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