From Strait Street to Paceville and back

V18 approaches, and with it comes another round of talks about how to revitalise our capital city's ailing nightlife culture. On cue, Jason Micallef - chairman of the V18 board - this week informed a journalist that his own aspiration for Strait Street was built around the concept of "a new Paceville"... and the words had scarcely left his lips when howls of derision reverberated across the social networks.

But amid all the face-palming and the collective cries of 'OMG!', there were also sudden nostalgic remembrances of times past in both places. An older generation took umbrage at hearing its old favourite haunt dismissed as a 'pissing trough for British sailors'. And younger nocturnal prowlers were equally incensed to hear their own little Mecca, Paceville, talked of as a den of iniquity.

Clearly our preconceived notions of both places need to be revisited. Strait Street may well have gone down in history - and also in literature, thanks to Thomas Pynchon's V -as a cheap and rather squalid red-light district, rife with drunkenness and crime. Likewise Paceville is often frowned upon as the permanent source of all its neighbours' traffic, parking and vandalism woes. But these views, on their own, are clearly insufficient to account for the full historic realities of both places.

Separately, one might question the wisdom of revitalising Strait Street without conducting anything resembling a feasibility study. Will people flock to establishments simply because they exist? Or does there have to be a confluence of certain factors already in place - not least, passing trade - for an area to successfully take off as an entertainment hub?

The Gut, deflated

A cursory glance at Strait Street today will suggest that more than just good intentions are required to sustain an entertainment district, let alone to create one from scratch. Sporadic attempts were made over the years to revive what was once a thriving cabaret and dance hall underworld; but none has ever succeeded. And unlike previous years, we can no longer blame the eternal stench of urine emanating from the public toilets behind the law courts, either.

These have been cleaned up and even given a vaguely Art Deco feel... if that is possible for a latrine. But with the notable exception of Tico Tico on the corner with Old Theatre Street - recently refurbished, but still sporting its 1960s photographs and cabaret posters - the once raucous bars that lined the Gut have long since closed, and both their staff and clientele have moved elsewhere.

This points towards an inescapable truism about the entertainment industry that seems to have nonetheless escaped the notice of the V18 committee. Such places cannot spring to life unless there is an infrastructure to underpin and sustain them. In The Gut's case, this was for almost two centuries provided by British and (briefly) American naval presence in the nearby harbours: which guaranteed a steady flow of exclusively male clients with a taste for cheap beer and arguably cheaper women... thus up to a point also dictating the type of entertainment on offer.

Likewise one could argue (the area's long-suffering residents certainly do) that what originally turned Paceville into its present status as entertainment capital of Malta was the siting of large hotels in the vicinity from the 1970s onwards. As tourism trends evolved, demand grew for cheap watering holes to service an ever-growing population of mostly underage foreign language students... triggering an explosion, not just of bars and clubs, but also (briefly) of a wine-shop culture whereby largely teenage crowds would consume their alcohol cheaply on the streets, before moving on to the more expensive nightclubs.

Such demands changed as time wore on. Recently an affluent and mostly ex-pat online gaming and financial services community has appeared on the island. It could be a coincidence, but at much the same time many of the existing rock or dance-music bars found themselves transformed into 'gentlemen's clubs', offering lap and pole dances by an overwhelmingly Eastern European retinue of go-go girls.

There are, however, differences. Paceville in many respects simply sprung into existence as an entertainment district over the past four decades alone - prior to which, the area was a mostly tranquil residential neighbourhood. The same cannot be said for the Gut, which (as historians have often noted) was home to a thriving "knight-life" environment up to at least 400 years ago.

This in turn suggests that any attempt to revive Strait Street today would have to be incorporated into a wider effort to reawaken the sleeping capital city as a whole. Opening bars and clubs without any guarantee that large numbers of clients will materialise on demand is a risky enterprise that has been known to fail on too many occasions.

Nostalgia and notoriety

It is perhaps testament to the nostalgia (and notoriety) still associated with Strait Street that its memory was never quite erased. Not only are many of the original bar names still discernable in faded lettering on walls and doors... but two recent publications have emerged to bring the place back to life in almost palpable detail.

The first was Strait Street: The Gut which once lit up Valletta (2004), by George Cini. The second, 'Strait Street: Malta's Red Light District Revealed' (2013), by John Schofield and Emily Morrissey. Both conjure remarkably vivid images of what the place must have looked, felt (and smelt) like up until around 40 years ago, when the gradual pull-out of the British naval presence slowly squeezed the Gut's life out. [Note: The following quotes are all lifted from Schofield and Morrissey, though Cini provided much of their original source-material.]

It was by all accounts a busy place. "There were hotels later converted into music and dance halls or large bars. And there were smaller, ad hoc and more intimate spaces with a room immediately through the front door and adjacent to the street frontage. Sailors recall many of these smaller establishments as being adjacent to each other for much of The Gut..."

Many of the descriptions lend weight to the street's rather dingy reputation: "Film and photographs typically show a long wooden or formica-topped table with chairs and benches along each side. For the amount of alcohol consumed, there was a marked lack of loos - a bucket behind a makeshift curtain in most cases..."

Perhaps the most intriguing glimpses come from reports of patrols by the British military, which also attest to the Gut's status as a sometimes volatile red light district. This is from the 1972 Christmas Eve report, signed by Les Webb:

"Getting dark, street lighting comes on... Sheila, a 'lady of the night', takes up her pitch, a doorway with a light above it... Sheila is a great source of information about the goings-on on the street, and as the patrol passes, she calls me over... 'It's Christmas - you can come up at a time for your present...'"

Later that same evening: "As we return past Sheila's pitch, I notice she is distressed, sobbing, and shaking. Her pimp (husband) has given her a beating for talking to us when she should have been working. We sympathise but can do nothing. We have no authority and the Maltese police in the area, all hand-picked thugs, have no interest."

Later still: "We are met by yet another bar-keeper who now has the group [of sailors] in his bar and, he says, are causing him problems... the Regulator pushes me aside and orders the group from the bar. The place explodes. Tables are overturned, glasses are broken, and punches are thrown..."

Gut feelings

But prostitution and violence were not the Gut's only offspring. Equally vibrant was the street's musical scene, with such memorable dance parlours as The Egyptian Queen, Larry's Bar, Dirty Dick's and New Life Music Hall, among others.

University lecturer Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci - whose recollections provide material for both books - remembers The Gut as a vibrant breeding ground for artistic talent, and is unimpressed by comparisons with Paceville.
"Malta's Strait Street is Paris' Rue Mouffetard/Montmartre, it is Moscow's Starii Arbat. Imagine changing all this into a Caqnu conglomeration of Paceville 'gangs'... Strada Stretta is the cradle of all our musical heritage: Oscar Lucas, Freddie Mizzi, The Curmis (Puse), The Fitenis, The Schembris, The Bonacis, The Dowlings, the Galeas, The Farrs... all hail from this phenomenal history and all their descendants all today form an integral part of all our proud cultural artistic culture."

This culture, he implies, is antithetical to the business plan seemingly proposed by Micallef. "Yes, let us abort everything and 'Paceville-ise' everywhere: what genius, what beauty, what intelligence. Where is the Strada Stretta lobby? Where are the City people? Snoring?"

Elsewhere, saxophonist Joe 'Il-Puse' Curmi likewise remembers Strait Street as the "college where one learnt the finer points of music".
Curmi began his musical career during the Second World War, aged just 13. "At that time,'" he says, "Strait Street did not sleep. The music then was swing and boogie-woogie and the repertoire included internationally recognised numbers from the likes of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Duke Ellington, and Art Shaw'."

This tradition was maintained until the late 1960s. Schofield and Morrissey observe that: "nearly all the bars provided musical entertainment. The larger establishments hosted cabaret and floor-show events, while other bars had live music: jazz, Dixieland, bepob..."

The Gut reborn?

Though the comparison may be odious, part of this same culture richness can be seen to have migrated to Paceville following the demise of The Gut in the late 1970s. Jazz was for decades one of the mainstays of the Paceville live music scene: largely in the form of BJ's on Ball Street (now closed). Again, there were factors in place to sustain this culture. The emergence of the annual Malta Jazz Festival in the late 1980s furnished a constant supply of top-notch international jazz musicians, and it was not unheard-of for impromptu jam sessions to follow at what was by that time practically the only such live venue on the island.

As the decades wore on, musical and entertainment tastes inevitably evolved. If cabaret and swing dominated Strait Street from the 1930s to the 1960s, the 1980s ushered in a sudden culture of discotheques and rave parties: and it was in Paceville that two of the country's most iconic discos, Styx on St Augustine Street, and Axis on St George's Street, reigned virtually unchallenged for over 20 years.

And when the Grunge revolution set in during the early 1990s, Paceville sometimes smelt of more than just teen spirit. Crowds now choked the narrow throat of Wilga Street, just off the main square (then dominated by Paul's Punch Bowl, and its underground sidekick the Ace of Clubs), on weekend nights.

In an age before enforced closing hours, the resulting mayhem often went on late into the night and well past dawn. Bars like The Alley on Wilga Street (now closed), and also Coconut Grove on the site of present day Burger King (it has since moved down the road), attracted a younger generation enthused by Kurt Cobain and co. - though musical eclecticism remained high on the agenda, with Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd and The Eagles remaining staples of the emerging DJ culture's repertoires alongside Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and all the rest.

And like Strait Street, Paceville was (and perhaps still is) a crucible for emerging local musical talent, too. Remedy above Coconut Grove on Wilga Street is one bar to have cultivated a rich live music scene, catering mostly for the esoteric metal genre. Past live venues included V-Gen on Ball Street: testament in part to a recent punk revival.

Some bars seemed to even make conscious allusions to their lineage. Throughout its many incarnations, the Alley always retained more than just a nod of acknowledgment towards its ancestors, the cabaret halls of Strait Street.

If the name alone was not enough, there was once the oddly misplaced lamp-post and telephone box (not to mention the occasional 'whore and pimp' theme-nights) to remind the young upstarts where they really came from.

More recently another little 'Gut' seems to have opened up in the very the heart of Paceville. St Rita Street - the narrow, stepped alleyway leading from St George's Street almost directly to BayStreet below - is now choking with bars and outlets of all descriptions, where just a few years ago it was widely regarded as a public convenience.

There are other more pertinent similarities. Sheila's pitch on Strait Street has since been upgraded to bright neon signs advertising dancing girls outside gentlemen's clubs such as Steam and Stiletto; and police patrols can still tell tales of sporadic scuffles breaking out among rival cliques in busy bars.

Then as now, there is ample evidence of an underground reality beyond the capabilities of the police to control.

One violent murder outside Bar Bamboo on Elija Zammit Street in 1992 - when a notorious local gangster was machine-gunned down by the owner following an argument inside the bar - seemed to confirm the widely-held perception of a protection racket in what was effectively a little gangland.

Police stats also confirm that the neighbourhood ranks highest in the island for petty crime.

Spiritual richness

All of which inevitably brings us back to the starting point: what of Strait Street today? Schembri Bonaci argues that any regeneration of The Gut would have to take into account its historic legacy.

"I do believe that Jason Micallef has valid managerial qualities, which he is incomprehensibly and unfortunately again undermining himself by not soliciting an expert think-tank around him, so that he could elicit ground-breaking decisions in a potential cultural revolution in Malta."

This revolution, he adds, cannot take place simply by importing an alien entertainment concept and expecting it to take root.

"To transfer the Paceville debacle onto Strait Street now would just be to butcher both history and Malta's only bohemian oasis. Strait Street is not just a conglomeration of buildings to be exploited by new nouveau-riche parochial entrepreneurship, which would just suffocate its evolutionary characteristic. Its spiritual and cultural richness has to be safeguarded."

All photos of Strait Street taken from John Schofield and Emily Morrisey's 'Strait Street: Malta's Red Light District Revealed'