Simon Pitchforth
Metro Madness: A Stroll Through the City’s ‘Parks’
About a month ago, I attempted to attend an invitation-only private screening of the film “Balibo,” only to find that the screening had been canceled at the last minute. The film is about the appalling events that took place in East Timor in the 1970s.
Well, there’s always a punchline in Indonesia, and it came when I found a copy of “Balibo” on sale at my favorite DVD stand in Pasar Festival.
I picked up a copy of the film, along with “South Park Series 13” and “Big and Bouncy Volume 37.” I haven’t gotten around to watching “Balibo” yet, as I’ve been enjoying terrific South Park episodes, such as the Elizabeth Gilbert lampooning in “Eat, Pray, Queef.”
I also popped into a book shop and picked up a copy of “The Green Map of Jakarta,” which commendably strives to guide people around the city’s green areas. When I first spied this map, I thought it must be a joke, along the lines of those books like “The Wit and the Wisdom of George W. Bush,” which is full of blank pages.
I snapped it up for a mere Rp 15,000 ($1.60). However, many of the green spots on the map are pretty tiny by international city park standards and I’ve probably mowed larger patches of grass in my time. Let’s give this brave attempt at a green guide the benefit of the doubt, though, and have a look at some of the more bucolic chill-out zones featured.
Taman Menteng
I thought I’d pop down here to take a look at the new statue of Mr. Obama as a Menteng schoolboy that was unveiled a couple of weeks ago. The park itself is small, but not unpleasant. Underneath Obama, a plaque proclaims: “A young boy named Barry played with his mother Anne in the Menteng area. He grew up to be the 44th President of the United States and a Nobel Prize winner. Barack Obama.” The Nobel Prize is a bone of contention and the subject of fierce debate at the moment. Previous recipients of the prize include Henry Kissinger, which brings us right back to East Timor (and Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos), and so maybe the prize is a somewhat poisoned chalice.
Ragunan Zoo
The zoo naturally features on the map, as it is the biggest park in town. It’s worth having a stroll around Ragunan for this reason alone. I wouldn’t recommend going for the animals, though, which seem to have stress-related alopecia. There is also a high, “Hello Mister” factor here and if you are a pale face visiting on a weekend, you may start to wonder which side of the cages’ bars you are on.
Taman Medan Merdeka
We all know the park where Monas is at. Monas itself is basically an enormous sundial with an ice cream cone on top. The surrounding park is tidy but rather sterile and there aren’t many trees to add pubic topiary to Sukarno’s impressive column. To be fair, though, you have less chance of being murdered or raped here than if you were strolling round a park in New York.
Taman Suropati
This popular Menteng hangout is supposedly used for “light sport.” But ultimately, it’s not much bigger than a traffic island. In fact, it is a traffic island, as the park sits in the center of a large roundabout. A brief mention should go here to Jakarta’s soon-to-be newest and smallest ever park. Down at the Semanggi cloverleaf, the gas stations are in the process of being dismantled as the area is turned “green.” So head down and breathe in those fumes. Ahhhh!
Senayan
The Senayan complex is certainly large on paper, although it’s hardly a park. There are a few green sports fields, but the rest is taken up with concrete stadiums, the Jakarta Convention Center, ever-encroaching shopping malls and parking space for nine trillion cars. Not my idea of a fun picnic spot.
Kota Tua
Jakarta’s old town is of great historical and architectural interest, of course, although it would hardly count as a green area of environmental interest, so I’m not sure exactly how it made it to my map. In fact, the area more closely resembles some slow motion coastal-urban ecological disaster in the making. Give it 50 years though and the submerged Art Deco buildings will make superbly cinematic artificial reefs. Then the area will finally be green.
So here’s to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Let’s hope that we don’t blow it, as good planets are hard to find. Let’s pray that the irascible old goat Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t being characteristically prophetic when he suggested the earth’s epitaph: “We could have saved it, but we were two doggone cheap.” He’d obviously visited Jakarta.
Simon Pitchforth has lived in Jakarta for 13 years. His Metro Mad Jakarta blog is at metromad.blogspot.com.
