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Escape from L.A. (1996):
Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?
Commander Mac Malloy: The United States is a no-smoking nation. No smoking, no drinking, no drugs. No women - unless of course you're married. No guns, no foul language... no red meat.
Snake: [sarcastic] Land of the free.
18 May 2023 (Thursday)
The Bear Awaits
Combat Zone’s Last Stand - Patina
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - The last Last Stand pub in the Combat Zone fights-on even as condominiums rise around it walling in the decadence.
A 3 a.m. curfew for the pub calls back to the good old days of when getting glued, screwed, tattooed was literally true.
The Patina Lounge is meticulously managed by Jimmy (below in white t-shirt):
His Lǎoméi babes behind the bar are old school, but not the hags you meet in the other watering holes in the Zone.
The Bear earned her Call Sign and her English is good:
The Combat Zone bar district in northern Taipei City was once the watering hole for U.S. personnel under the US-Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC) in the final years of the U.S. military presence in Taiwan. The base was just a few blocks north of the Zone
However, during most of the history of the USTDC (1954-1979) the bar districts were actually on Zhongshan North Road north of Nanjing East Road.
As the USTDC slowly reduced force levels after the fall of Saigon in 1975 until the closure in 1979, the bars gradually migrated to an area closer to the base. See the 1969 Taipei After Dark: 50th Anniversary Edition (2019).
When it earned the moniker “Combat Zone” is unclear, but when Taiwan went through the business boom of the 1980s the area was hog wild 24/7.
Courtney Love, the wife of the late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, was a “dancer” in these pubs, including a stint in Hong Kong where she claims to have gotten hooked on heroin.
In the 1990s as business shifted from Taiwan to China, the foreign businessmen followed the money.
Then in the late 1990s, U.S. military delegations began returning to Taiwan via the DSCA’s Foreign Military Sales Program Office and the Taiwan Desk under the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). And over time the delegations only grew bigger and the Zone became a haven for them to congregate.
These included legends like Charles Pitman the U.S. Marine Corps commander in the failed attempt to rescue the U.S. hostages in Tehran. His biography reads like a Honey Badger on Meth.
This was a generation that still smoked and drank, and the presence of prostitutes was not shocking. Most had served in the darker corners of the world while on active duty and the Combat Zone felt like home in a strange way.
But over the past ten years the next generation of U.S. military personnel coming to Taiwan are politically correct, non-smoking, non-drinking, inoffensive pussies.
BUT…if they are looking for a safe Last Stand, I heartily recommend the Patina Lounge.
Good Luck Comrades!