The pace of Paceville's evolution

Like Herbert Ganado’s generation, we have all ‘seen Malta change’ in our lifetimes.

But nowhere has the pace (pun intended) of change been more dramatic than in Paceville: a thriving entertainment Mecca in the heart of St Julian’s, that now stretches from Spinola to St George’s Bay, and from Dragonara Point to Swieqi... when it quite simply didn’t exist at all until the early 1970s.

Driving into Paceville today, one is hard-pressed to tell where it actually begins, and where the adjacent towns fall behind. Yet even my generation can remember a time when the approach took you out of St Julian’s altogether. All that was visible at the time was Paul’s Punch Bowl – on the corner now occupied by ‘Stiletto’, a gentleman’s club – and a cluster of apartment buildings that would later be redeveloped into St George’s Park: the first of several tourist accommodation facilities that would change the area’s face forever.

Some people’s memories go back further still. Prof. Sandra Dingli, a lecturer at the Edward Debono Institute, was born in Paceville at a time when the place was still considered remote. To her and others, Paceville is more than just the sum total of its bars, clubs, hotels and restaurants. It is also home.

“I remember my parents saying that when they got married in 1950 and moved from Sliema to Paceville, everyone told them they were moving to a really far off place,” she recalls. “In my childhood, Paceville was an adventure playground. There were a few Maltese families, mainly with dads who worked at Cable and Wireless (Mercury House – a historic building in a very sad state due to be ‘developed’). Quite a few British services families lived there too.

“As children we would spend our free time exploring caves, secret passages and whatever else there was to explore in the grounds of the Dragonara, Villa Rosa, Fort Pembroke, the Pembroke ranges, and the area occupied by St George’s Park, then fields with a small farmhouse. Lourdes lane was full of old olive trees. Plush (not sure if that is its name today, as clubs change names regularly) used to be a laundry for British services personnel. There were two or three small bars: Tony’s Bar (later Hiccups), Joe’s Bar (now Barcelona), and Dick’s Bar close to Spinola. All very quiet places. There were no hotels. It was a simple and enjoyable childhood with lots of adventures when Paceville lived up to its name – ‘pace’, or peace...”

Apart from having changed beyond recognition since then, the emergent nightlife hub has also undergone a series of radical internal transformations of its own. Former frequenters now in their 40s may have fond memories of prototypical nightclubs like ‘Styx’: with its legendary ‘Beach Parties’ every Friday. They might remember ‘Cresta Quay’ as a quiet secluded corner for romantic encounters (or attempts thereat), before every square inch of the shore was taken up by restaurants and kiosks. 

More recent generations have witnessed iconic clubs like Axis transform into shopping centres, or rock bars like the Alley giving way to gentleman’s clubs. Whatever the memory, however, there will always be some kind of emotional connection with the given phase in question. Perhaps the most vivid testament to Paceville’s enduring – and perhaps inexplicable – appeal was what looked like an online outpouring of grief and nostalgia at the news that Coconut Grove would be closing its doors after 25 years. 

People quickly took to the social media to share their photos and memories of that classic rock bar when it still occupied what is now Burger King up the road. I myself felt a lump in my throat as I recalled that it was there I had first heard Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album.

Others promptly followed suit with anecdotes and photos of other, similarly vanished Paceville venues: BJ’s – where some of the best international jazz fusion musicians, including Al Di Meola and Trilog Gurtu, had occasionally jammed after the Malta Jazz Festival... Footloose, where the pool tables occasionally doubled up as impromptu dancefloors... ‘Ghal Kafe’, for years, the only place in the entire country to serve food 24/7...

As with many such reminiscences, however, there is a tendency to glamorise certain details. Mario Vella, frontman of Maltese rock band Brikkuni, admits he is not over-sentimental about the loss of another live music venue in Paceville.

“You know how every five to 10 years we hear about the death of guitar music... only for guitar music to rise from the ashes and reclaim its deserved position? I feel pretty much the same about rock bars. It’s true that they were a more frequent occurrence during the 80’s and 90’s, but electronic music at the time was still on the rise. There was a musical chasm in the process, but I don’t necessarily feel that’s a negative thing. Cultures change. Tastes change, but rock music will still be around one way or another...”

Indeed, the recent trend for music-oriented bars has been to abandon Paceville in droves. You are likelier to encounter live acts in Valletta or even Marsaskala these days. Vella reasons that this change was dictated more by the laws of economics, than by musical tastes. 

“From an economic point of view and the little experience I have I can tell you that most businesses are not too keen on the ‘rock crowd’, as we rockers (I include myself in the equation) tend to part less easily with our money. Ask any bar owner. I am confident you’ll get the same reply. Rockers? NAH. They’ll stick to a couple of pints all night...”

On another level, the transition also underscores a change in perception of Paceville itself. As Vella puts it: “Paceville is no longer THE place to be, therefore there’s the likelihood that any pretender to a new music club will consider opening elsewhere... as already witnessed with the now defunct Coach and Horses (Msida), Django (Valletta) and Funky Monkey (Manoel Island).”

Again, it is but one of the many vicissitudes in Paceville’s brief but chequered history. And not all our Paceville memories are pleasant, either; one must also consider the darker side of Malta’s largest entertainment district. Apart from regular fights and alcohol-fuelled vandalism sprees, Paceville has built up something of a reputation for organised crime over the years. Bar owners tell grim stories of a low-level protection racket that culminated in the 1992 murder of Diego ‘Ix-Xadin’ Farrugia: gunned down by club owner Frank Grima outside Bamboo... for which Grima would later be acquitted on self defence grounds.

Meanwhile, national crime statistics consistently place St Julian’s (Paceville is not considered on its own merits) towards the top of the list of crime hotspots. Prof. Dingli confirms this is not just a perception.

“My Dad, who passed away two years ago, lived alone in Paceville. He was burgled three times. He often found used syringes amongst the shrubs across the road. The public benches there are often vandalized. If you speak to the shop owners, they are continuously alert for petty theft. Young people who frequent Paceville use the residents’ verandas as toilets and trash cans. If you walk down to the swimming area between the Dragonara and the Hilton, it is filthy and full of broken glass bottles...”

The area’s general infrastructure, she adds, does not help much either. “There is a safety issue at stake here. There is only one exit for traffic out of Paceville... near the Rokna, opposite the Portomaso tower. So traffic is often at a standstill. What if there were to be an emergency. How would emergency vehicles enter and exit a gridlocked area?”

Meanwhile, with the demise of Coconut Grove, it seems the last bastion of an older, perhaps more innocent Paceville is crumbling before our eyes. The ‘new’ Paceville is increasingly dominated by ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ offering ‘adult entertainment’ – even though the average age of the typical Paceville-goer has not noticeably increased in the interim. Then as now, Paceville remains a curious hybrid creature: consciously trying to attract a wealthier, more adult clientele... while still attracting the bulk of Malta teens and tweens, not to mention the mostly pubescent language student sector. 

Nor is this the only contradiction. Prof. Dingli points towards a mismatch between Paceville’s aspirations as a tourist centre, and the actual condition of its environment. “I think Paceville offers a huge contradiction: the luxury of five star hotels such as the Hilton, and the chaos and lack of discipline one finds as one exits from those enclaves. My feeling is that the people who own the entertainment establishments wanted Paceville to become a 24-hour clubbing area, to the detriment of residents who are mainly elderly. Whether a clubbing area, now dotted with so-called Gentlemen’s Clubs, could co-exist with supposedly up market hotels remains an open question. Not to mention the three gaming casinos in a very limited geographical area...

This raises the question of what changes we can expect in future. It was in part to address some of these issues that the Planning Authority has just launched a consultation process for a new development framework for Paceville. So don’t blink just yet. The place that has changed so much in so little time, may well change beyond recognition once more.