The Beach

Sunday, 7^th October

Sentosa – Tanjong Beach Club (TBC)

Disneyland with a death penalty. Sentosa, ostensibly Singapore’s answer to a seaside park, is an “experience” rather than a place.  First a concession. It isn’t at all unpleasant. Like Singapore’s other slick, manicured spaces, Sentosa is well-landscaped, green, easy and cheap to get to, open to the public and altogether attractive. It is nice to sit by the sea with a cold beer, feel the breeze, watch the ships in the queue to the port. Listen to the relaxing beach beats, a little piece of Ibiza. Look at washboard abdominals, bronzed breasts and rippling pecs, on Singaporeans and Westerners alike.

And yet.

Compare this to say, Toronto’s Island Park, or any one of London’s great, rambling parks. (Or Chicago’s lakefront, or.) There is a universal studios here and about a dozen other for-profit attractions, not to mention a monorail and giant merlion. There is a W hotel and some other resorts and an enclave of exclusive residential neighbourhoods.

Beach music is piped in on hidden speakers, and a DJ says “Sentosa sounds” and extolls the many attractions on the island. This is a place meant to be experienced as planned, a scripted experience. Nothing left to chance. And yet.

The beaches though are public spaces, and are being used as such. Spontaneous ‘pockets of interaction’ occur. Here, an impromptu date on the rocks, with a kiss. There, a Muslim family gathers with a picnic, shrouded in headscarves and hijabs.

Different races and classes, belief systems and backgrounds rub elbows and share sand.

Some are buying expensive beers from the beach club, others having brought picnic lunches. There is a pleasant lack of exclusion here, that is often found in similar places in North America or Europe. A sort of harmonic egalitarian feel that is, I believe, one of Singapore’s unique attributes.

There is a free tram system that takes visitors to various parts of the island, from the “beautiful people” to the more average and workaday. It may be fake – but at least it is fair.

Sentosa seems to embody Singapore’s paradox:

It is hyper planned, sterile, somewhat ersatz, and evoking other places (it reminds me of the “Polynesian” resort at Disney World, which is meant to mimic this part of the world… the Irony!). But it is at the same time not a place that repels, but a sensory and experiential feast. One wants to dislike it, to judge it, but it is likable, easy, safe, clean, and enjoyable. This is Singapore’s duality, its contradiction.

**

Tanjong Beach Club is about half Asian and half Eurasian, slanted toward the middle and upper middle classes. Australian accents, British, and European tongues. Some Americans. Age mainly 20s and 30s, some families with young children. People that seem to come here often and know what they are doing, know each other. This must be a Sunday routine.

Very low bodyfat. Half of these people could be models. Maybe some are. There is also, a definitive queer presence here, as one would also find on a Balearic beach such as Ibiza. This is a cruising spot, thinly disguised. The kind of place spread by word of mouth, with some notoriety. Not obvious, but can be sensed nonetheless. There is something camp not only about Tanjong Beach, but about the whole island… down to the mer-lion.

This is sort of an island in drag.

An emasculated, bejewelled, caricatured island, dressed to the 9s. A bright tackiness. A beer pong table. Beach volleyball. Some femme types. No hippies. Does this erupt into a gay club at a certain time?

Or into a subversive place? Is it, by its very nature, unplanned and surprising? Or scripted, like everything else? Contested?

Is it for everyone? The shrouded, quiet Muslim family over there, having a picnic. How do they feel about the abs, buttocks, and booze of the beach club?

Appropriation of space, use of space, strategy, tactics. Foucault, LeFebvre. I am realizing I am out of place sitting and writing – someone just came up to me and seemed amused that I was doing so. Perhaps I am the odd one out. Why even think about these things?

*