MAlfaRK to Omega: August 2008

If you lived in Pretoria, South Africa between 1977 and 1980 and were aged between 16 and 21, then you are likely to have destroyed a significant number of brain cells at the premier night club of the era, namely The Grand Wazoo. If you were in the city at the time but never went to the club, then I can only assume that you were suffering from severe case of social leprosy (or you were one of the "breekers" smashing people’s heads in down at the "Bell Hotel")!

The Wazoo was located in the basement of the Kingsley Centre, between Church Street and Pretorius Street, opposite the Ster City movie complex. I guess the club was named after the Frank Zappa album of the same name released in November 1972. Back in 1977 it was still a year until I discovered the great man's music, but it was there and then that the club left an indelible impression on my psyche.

How did I end up there in the first place? Well, in the Ides of March 1977 I had a major motorcycle accident and missed a few months of my second last year at high school.

I dedicated my time off to honing my pinball skills at my local corner café, and it was there that I made an entirely new circle of friends - wilder and less anally retentive than my high school acquaintances. This was fortuitous, as a large proportion of my high school “friends” had decided to disown me anyway. My new scarred and remodelled face did not fit in with their image of perfection.

My new friends were happy-go-lucky, lived like there was no tomorrow, and were the best thing that could have happened to me right then! They were bikers, womanisers, drinkers and/or substance abusers.

It was an intriguing and alluring world for me - I was fascinated by the culture and took a crash course in "street". At the age of 16 I had never been to a real night club, but my new mates soon fixed that.

It would have been tough for the Wazoo to fail as it was in the heart of Pretoria's teenage fun-strip. Just 500 metres up the road in Sunnyside was the city's premier shopping mall - Sunny Park - where bored colonial kids used to hang out. Trendy boutiques, record stores, hi-fi dealers, coffee shops, arcade games and fast foods. However, during the Grand Wazoo days the primary attraction for us was the Solly Kramer's liquor store on the second level. Even I, as a baby-faced 16 year old, had no problem buying anything there - from beer to wine and hard liquor, it was all available to anyone. Our tipple of choice back then was a really cheap petillant white wine called Paarl Perle that used to sell for 99 cents a litre!

Just across the road from the Kingsley Centre was the city's largest cinema complex, Ster City (known as "Sterland" in Afrikaans). Wow - there were at least half a dozen cinemas in this multiplex, the largest of which was Ster 1000, which seated that many people. This cinema was on the upper level of the complex and was flanked by the Barcadi 72 Restaurant (owned by Werner Weinbeck) and the restaurant's satellite bar that was the hang-out for motorcycle gangs such as "Satan's Slaves" and "Scorpio". One of the guys behind the bar - a vertically challenged gentleman by the name of "Shorty" - had no problem with dishing out drinks to minors! It was here that I learned an important life-skill...eating glass!!

Underneath the Ster City complex was another of Pretoria's pre-television attractions - the ice rink. South Africa only got broadcast television in 1975 and, in the days before that, complexes like Ster City were where kids used to congregate, play pinball, ice skate and take in a movie. Television seriously eroded the client base, and Ster City changed. The ice rink became the domain of the dope pushers, and the bars dropped their dress code to increase patronage, thus admitting tattooed, denim and leather clad bikers for the first time. This was fine with us, and it was an exciting time!

Opposite The Grand Wazoo in the Kingsley Centre was another teen attraction - Pretoria's first 10-pin bowling alley. We whiled away many (drunken) hours there and today, almost a quarter of a century later, I still play a respectable game of American skittles! The Kingsley Centre also had a discount store called "Rave" where 33 RPM's were sold at teenage prices.

The final reason why the Wazoo could not fail is that it was on Pretoria's main transport route...it was easy to get there by bus, car, bicycle or motorbike. An added bonus for us was the secure underground parking where the access boom was short enough for 50cc motorbikes to slip by without paying.

The Grand Wazoo was perfect for it's time, and it could not fail. The fact that it hosted a "Saturday Session" (or matinee) was another big selling point!

My Saturday’s were full. From the age of twelve I worked on Saturday mornings to earn my pocket money. From 1973 through 1977 I was a cleaner, packer and counter hand at the "Jix Hobby Shop" on the corner of van der Walt and Pretorius Streets. In 1978 I moved around the corner to "AutoAlign" on Pretorius Street where I fitted and balanced car tyres. After I finished high school at the end of 1978 I worked full-time at "Waterkloof Pharmacy" on Brooklyn Circle. Working on Saturday mornings always frustrated me, and the end of business (around lunch time) could never come fast enough as I had a regular appointment to keep!

I would race my Suzuki TS50 down to Sunny Park where I would meet up with Peter Kohler, Mark Barker (deceased), John Troy (deceased), Anton Marais (deceased), and others (including Erik Vuyk, Tony Leonard, Harry Watson (deceased), Lex Maas, Damon Fourie, Stuart Schoeman, Michael Zeller and Evan Honey). We would park our bikes on the second floor of the shopping mall’s parking garage…in the dark corner near the stairwell. We would then saunter, cocksure, into the Solly Kramer’s and, without batting an adolescent eyelid, each buy two litres of Paarl Perle (or sometimes Autumn Harvest "Crackling" for a bit of variation). We would then strut back to our bikes where we would each down a litre of wine in the stairwell!

The next item on our weekend agenda would be to stir a little shit in the shopping mall! This frequently involved going up to the fourth floor of the atrium in the complex, eggs, and the assembled diners at the "Wimpy Bar" below. Fun, fun, fun…and some nerve wracking escapes from shopping centre security guards!

High on adrenaline, testosterone and alcohol, we would then kick our bikes to life and scream down the road to the Kingsley Centre. We would park in the basement and make our way upstairs to the 10-pin bowling alley. There we would meet up with some of the regular babes and other Wazoo acquaintances…and bounce a bottle or two of Paarl Perle in the men’s toilet! Then came the difficult part of the day – getting ourselves (and the remaining Paarl Perle) into the Grand Wazoo across the corridor.

This usually involved trying to act very sober, and sticking a bottle down the front of your pants. We would walk in as a phalanx of rowdy 50cc bikers, with leather jackets and helmets conveniently concealing the bulges in our nether regions. Those without bottles would also cover those that did. The entrance fee was 50 cents, and the ticket seller at the desk to the right of the entrance got to know us all very well. The entrance area was painted matt black and, moving from there, the next challenge was getting past the bouncer who manned the access door to the club. Sometimes we were bust with our bottles and on other occasions we weren’t, but we generally managed to get our own booze into the place. If we were bust, we would just go back to Kingsley Bowl or to the parking garage to force down our plonk as quickly as possible…before the matinee began!

The interior of the Wazoo was windowless and dark. Our favourite spot was to the right of the entrance where a number tables in cubicles lined the eastern wall of the club and extended up to the foot of the DJ’s podium. This section of the Wazoo also had great access to the compact stage and dance floor. The all-important bar was towards the southern quadrant of the matt black den of inequity, with the toilets and kitchen to the north.

We liked the eastern side of the Wazoo because the tables were in alcoves that made them darker. This in turn made it easier for us to hide and drink our smuggled bottles of Paarl Perle! The fact that these tables enabled us to do things undetected also encouraged other behaviour. It afforded us the opportunity to engage in fumbling sins of the flesh, that the tables out in the open just would not have allowed! I have happy memories of starry-eyed friends sliding further and further under the tablecloth as their female-fellator of the day went to work under the table! Amazing times.

Now the Saturday Session at the Wazoo was more than just a disco. Sure, they had their resident DJ, "King Louis", but they also had live music! Wow! That was just the best, and resident acts included "Lincoln", "Letch" (formerly "Pedigree"), "Fresh Evidence", "Ragdolls", "Wax", "Sheriff", "Geneva", "The Radio Rats" and my personal favourite "Circus". Wooah!! In 1977 they released a great album entitled "In the Arena" that contained a magnificent cover version of the classic Procol Harum track "Conquistador". This seminal SA album was released on CD in 2001 and is worthwhile re-visiting. Circus’ live performances were something to behold – the opulence of glam rock meets the conservatism of Pretoria! We were blown away!

A fun aspect of the Sessions at the Wazoo was the fun events held between the band’s sets. Hosted by resident DJ "King Louis", they invariably involved a lot of beer and sometimes the removal of clothing. The events invariably involved two teams of 4 or 5 competing against each other in a relay format, and some of the scenarios were:

Eating a slice of pizza and downing a half litre of beer.
Drinking a litre of water chased by half a litre of beer.
Team members of the opposite sex down a half litre of beer, then run to the ladies toilet where they exchange clothes (including underwear).

In all instances, the first team finished won a bottle of sparkling wine and complementary Wazoo tickets for the following weekend. That was all good and well, but it was often difficult to enjoy the sparkling wine over the stench of the puke that had been spewed over the dance floor during the competitions! Fun, fun, fun!!

Our group of friends was always represented in these decadent contests and, with guys like Mark Barker around, we often came away with the spoils of victory. Mark was able to destroy a half litre mug of beer in three seconds without spilling a drop!

By the afternoon we were all shit-faced and, with the sounds of JJ Cale, Santana, Eric Clapton and Boston cover versions ringing in our ears, we gathered up our jackets and helmets and staggered downstairs to our bikes. The final phase of our Saturday’s entertainment was about to begin.

As it was just across the road from the Kingsley Centre, our bikes wouldn’t even be warm by the time we reached the Ster City cinema complex. We would park our bikes on the Pretorius Street side, amble past the observation windows that looked down onto the ice rink, enter the complex and take the escalator up to the "Barcadi 72" bar on the first floor. A final round of drinks would follow, often punctuated with a tequila or a peppermint liquor (generally served as a "depth charge" in a pint of beer).

From a strategic vantage point in Barcadi we were able to keep an eye on the entrances to each of the cinemas in the complex. Back in those days the programme would start with a series of adverts projected from large format slide. Once the audience had settled, the filmed adverts would start, and these would lead directly into the movie previews (also called "trailers" in South Africa). Once they had all been screened, there would be a 20 minute intermission during which cinema-goers recharged their "Slush-Puppies", refilled their popcorn cartons or took a leak before the main feature started.

It was this break in proceedings that we waited for!

On leaving the theatre for intermission, ushers gave every moviegoer a "Pass Out" which entitled them to return to the cinema after the break. You can imagine the queue of people at Ster 1000 pushing to get out and how frantic the ushers became trying to ensure that everyone leaving the theatre got a "Pass Out". This was the situation that we prayed upon! Once the ushers were engrossed in what they were doing or were focussing on the crowd leaving the theatre, we would do either one of two things behind their backs:

Climb over the rope that cordoned off the cinema exit, blend into the crowd and be issued a Pass Out.
When the usher moved away from his position, we would slink over to his podium and help ourselves to a wad of Pass Outs that would be quickly distributed among us all.

Pay to see a movie? You’ve got to be joking!!

So, we’d slink into the cinema and find unoccupied seats where we could eat popcorn and drink lime “slush” in a futile attempt to annul our inebriation! If the movie was crap, it was also a good place to get some sleep to try and clear your head before the end of the show when we had to get back onto our bikes and head back to the eastern suburbs. On some Saturdays we were lucky…a babe or two may have joined us at Barcadi and in the movie!! Copious groping and hand jobs were not uncommon! Aaaah…those were the days! ;-)

Sometimes we’d go to the ice rink after the show, but we generally headed back home to eat and prepare ourselves for that night’s party. The ride back to Lynnwood was never tame…it was more of a high-speed attempt to do ourselves serious damage! West down Pretorius Street, circle to the left around the Caledonian Grounds, shoot eastwards down Park Street, chicane south past Loftus Versveld, east down Lynnwood Road, under the bridge and past Tukkies, cross Duncan Street, past the UP residences, up the hill past Menlo Park High School, down the hill and over the highway to Daventry Street and the Glenfair Shopping Centre. A game of pinball to end the afternoon!

Sometimes the ride didn’t go that smoothly, and I still bear the scars of a major wipe-out at the Loftus chicane. He-he! I look at that blemish now with fondness. It takes me back to a different time and place. To a forgotten era. To the age of 16-17. To the unforgettable Grand Wazoo. To thrills, spills and a carefree life. To a time when there were no rules and no responsibility. To a time when nothing was impossible.

Luckily not everything has changed.

LINKS:

Collection of Tickets from The Grand Wazoo (1978 - 1978). At the time I had the foresight to write the date on the back of each ticket as well as a comment or two about the band I saw, the people I was with or the events of the day.
Menu folder from The Grand Wazoo, circa 1978-1979.
Snack Bar Menu from The Grand Wazoo, circa 1978-1979. Check out those prices!

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