So many memories
And so much time to write them down now while self-isolating....
If you walk into the Nord Sea bar, at the back you can see a painting... That was done by Frankie, Belgium Frankie the painter.... Great, very sweet guy, he lived in Bandung for many, many years and there was a time when you could see his paintings all over Bandung, in many cafe's, it's one of the many ways how he kept himself going here... When I started living in Bandung, back in '96 he owned a cafe/restaurant, the Copacobana, up in Ciumbeluit. Lovely place, but he started cooking himself there and was caught by immigration, lost everything.... So he was surviving with his painting, incredibly beautiful jazz paintings were his speciality, trouble was, he was also a heavy alcoholic and things just spiraled down and down, he got divorced from Nana who was the daughter of the folks running the Sakadarna guest house close from the train station (gone for many years now) and Frankie ended up on the streets, in Jalan Jaksa, the then backpack area in Jakarta. Begging, sleeping under kaki lima's and smoking stoogies from the street... Just terrible.... Then his mom died in Belgium and he got 40.000 Euro's. Opened up a restaurant up in Ciumbeluit in a complex which went well, but he still was a drunk, sometimes you'd see him walk with his girlfriend in Bandung, out of their heads and stark naked, so he lost that place too after they threw him out of the complex for walking around naked and he ended up on the beach at Pelabuhan Ratu and his money was getting finished... He said "I'm never going back to those streets" and he started really drinking, and I mean REALLY drinking and he drank himself to dead... We all got together, all his old friend when his body was in some place close to the train station and he was all blue, 'cept for the tip of his nose, that was really white, never seen anything like it.....
Next day they cremated him, I wasn't there for the cremation, couldn't make it, but what they told me that once every while they would open the doors of the oven and then throw some benzine from a bottle in there.... When I got there the burning process was all done already, and they gave us a huge bag with his ashes and lots of pieces of bones in it. We, a pretty big group, maybe 20, 30 people all went to Pelabuhan Ratu to throw his ashes into the sea.... Insane weekend, can't write about that here, too much crazy shit and some folks that still live in Bandung to this day so... yeah....
Belgium Frankie... What a guy.... If he had money he would go to Braga, get drunk and then he would give all his money away to local beggars, specially the kids forced to beg there in those times....
His best buddy was Gordon from Vancouver, another great guy who went through so much drama here, truly another incredible story and who lived in Bandung for many, many years, passed away many years ago too....