Silom Soi 4 is the historic centre of Bangkok's gay bar scene and from its early beginnings in the late 1960s to the early 1970s Soi 4 has been at the heart of Bangkok's gay beer bar and pub scene.
Scene setting:
Until the early 1960s Bangkok’s Silom Road was merely a row of two-storey shophouses, a very few examples of which can still be seen at the lower end of Soi Sala Daeng, they shared the road with orchards and paddy fields.
Even up to the late 1970s Silom Soi 4 and indeed Silom Road itself was mostly dark and unlit as the businesses closed at 6 PM and the dreadful Patpong ‘night market’ did not exists. Robinson’s department store at the corner of Silom and Rama IV roads - what would eventually become the famous or rather infamous ‘Robinson’s corner’ - was still occupied by a large secondary school.
From obscurity to celebrity:
To discover how Soi 4 turned from green fields to pink baht we need to go back to the beginnings of Bangkok’s gay scene. Some kind of gay sub-culture has existed in Bangkok for eons, perhaps hidden from view. By the mid ‘60s Bangkok’s local and foreign gay population was beginning to make itself known. However, every large city has a corner that gay men and women claim for themselves. In Bangkok the first port of call for gay visitors is Silom Soi 4. How then did this small cul-de-sac gain such global fame?
The 1950s and 60s:
During the late 50s and early 60s Bangkok’s Bang Rak area hosted a few ‘mixed’ bars notably the Club 99 opposite what is now the Narai Hotel, Balcony, the one on Charoen Road and one or two bars on Oriental Avenue. The Sea Hag was a seamen’s bar that shifted focus in the mid ‘60s to become Bangkok’s first proper gay bar. Whether or not the Sea Hag was a host bar or an ordinary gay-friendly beer bar is not known; but what is clear is that those that followed were a mixture of both beer and host bars.
There had been bars where it was possible to dance with men since the mid-1960s however, a 1978 change in the law seems to have made same-sex dancing illegal. Although it was perfectly lawful to watch semi-dressed men jiggle on stage and to enjoy their company (ah the ways and wiles of Thailand). It is this legal change that kick-started the transformation of ‘dance bars’ to ‘a go go’ bars and the change was complete by the mid-1970s.
Then came the 1980s and 90s and the Rome Club.
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