Did Anyone Know Trink?

[HugoFastor]

Well over 20 years ago, as I was leaving the Miami Apartments on New Petchaburi at about 4AM, the cramped elevator doors opened on the ground floor for me to exit and I was startled by a short, portly man blocking my path who was wearing a neck chain with a huge round pendant of an owl hanging from it just above his abdomen. After nearly plowing into him, we didn't exchange words, and I just chuckled as I went on my way.
 

I never knew him personally, but he had probably just finished up his rounds at Soi Cowboy, getting the latest intel from Shadow Jack for his next installment of his Bangkok Post Sunday column. It left me wondering though if he was residing there or just visiting an honorable consort? 
 

If you don't know the infamous Miami Apartments, which are long gone now, there are some references to it on the link below. 
 

https://thailand.travel.narkive.com/k7FajqkA/miami-apartments-where

 

Well, as Trink would say, "I don't give a hoot."

[josephbloggs]

25 minutes ago, HugoFastor said:

Well over 20 years ago, as I was leaving the Miami Apartments on New Petchaburi at about 4AM, the cramped elevator doors opened on the ground floor for me to exit and I was startled by a short, portly man blocking my path who was wearing a neck chain with a huge round pendant of an owl hanging from it just above his abdomen. After nearly plowing into him, we didn't exchange words, and I just chuckled as I went on my way.
 

I never knew him personally, but he had probably just finished up his rounds at Soi Cowboy, getting the latest intel from Shadow Jack for his next installment of his Bangkok Post Sunday column. It left me wondering though if he was residing there or just visiting an honorable consort? 
 

If you don't know the infamous Miami Apartments, which are long gone now, there are some references to it on the link below. 
 

https://thailand.travel.narkive.com/k7FajqkA/miami-apartments-where

 

Well, as Trink would say, "I don't give a hoot."

Never understood the Trink worship. His column was an abomination, just cut and pasted rubbish from emails, lame jokes, and silly cliches. Even his book reviews were poor. He was a talentless man who somehow made a living from it (kudos to him for that), and I never understood why the Bangkok Post kept him for so long.

But no, never met him.

[HugoFastor]

1 minute ago, josephbloggs said:

Never understood the Trink worship. His column was an abomination, just cut and pasted rubbish from emails, lame jokes, and silly cliches. Even his book reviews were poor. He was a talentless man who somehow made a living from it (kudos to him for that), and I never understood why the Bangkok Post kept him for so long.

But no, never met him.

TBH, I never read his stuff either so I can't rate the quality of his work. I never actually met him prior to that day either, but he was known for his large owl pendant, so I assume it was him.

But if he really was a talentless writer then Asia was a great place for someone like that from the 60's through the 90's. At that time there were a lot of people in Asia who could get by with low level skills simply because they needed a foreigner for the job.
 

But he was well liked I believe. Many people followed his column. I wasn't so interested in learning about bar anniversary parties, happy hours, and which bars had changed hands though.
 

Me and my mates just went out and everything was so easy to navigate that you didn't need a guide for any of that. 

[Denim]

Saw him drinking in Cowboy once or twice. Never met him and didn't really want to.

 

But in an age before the internet when nobody even had a television , the evening newpaper he had a column in ( The Bangkok World ? ) was a useful guide to the cities nightlife.

[george]

Yes, I knew him well from my time in Bangkok, sometimes near Soi Cowboy, sometimes in the elevator at Bangkok Post. He was sadly missed.

 

some memories:

 

[HugoFastor]

4 minutes ago, Denim said:

Saw him drinking in Cowboy once or twice. Never met him and didn't really want to.

 

But in an age before the internet when nobody even had a television , the evening newpaper he had a column in ( The Bangkok World ? ) was a useful guide to the cities nightlife.

I think I might have seen him there after that too once or twice chatting with Shadow Jack. 

 

Yes, Bangkok World and then over to the Bangkok Post when the Bangkok Post bought out Bangkok World.
 

I think he wrote for BW for about 37 years and then for about 20 years for the BP up until 2003 when his column was cancelled.
 

I think he still did book reviews for the BP after his column was shut down. I never bought newspapers though. I was always more interested in books at that time. I found one of his old BP book reviews from 2005 online here though:

 

https://thailandfever.com/book_reviews.html#trink

[proton]

Saw him once in Angel Witch in Nana Plaza, he did have some interesting stories from the old days. He had sex with a young girl in the docks area once for next to nothing. After he saw she had leprosy!

[josephbloggs]

29 minutes ago, HugoFastor said:

TBH, I never read his stuff either so I can't rate the quality of his work. I never actually met him prior to that day either, but he was known for his large owl pendant, so I assume it was him.

But if he really was a talentless writer then Asia was a great place for someone like that from the 60's through the 90's. At that time there were a lot of people in Asia who could get by with low level skills simply because they needed a foreigner for the job.
 

But he was well liked I believe. Many people followed his column. I wasn't so interested in learning about bar anniversary parties, happy hours, and which bars had changed hands though.
 

Me and my mates just went out and everything was so easy to navigate that you didn't need a guide for any of that. 

Here's an interview with him: https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/night-prowl-legendary-lechery-bernard-nite-owl-trink/

Interesting story in there about the 10 baht hooker with leprosy.

 

Sadly he totally lost the plot when he started preaching that you don't get HIV from unprotected sex. I mean how can you have someone saying that in a national newspaper? So irresponsible. And it wasn't just a blip, it was a constant theme. He said use condoms to prevent pregnancy or other STDs, but don't worry about HIV - it's a myth.

He also had some very dubious encounters with underaged girls.

Maybe he was a nice guy in person, but for me he should have been fired from the Post years before he actually was - he was actually pretty creepy.

[Dolf]

89, good effort. Never heard of him. 

[ozimoron]

17 minutes ago, george said:

Yes, I knew him well from my time in Bangkok, sometimes near Soi Cowboy, sometimes in the elevator at Bangkok Post. He was sadly missed.

 

some memories:

 

I had the feeling he was already fairly old when I first arrived in Bangkok in 1980. Do you remember the shrimp calendars?

[HugoFastor]

4 minutes ago, josephbloggs said:

Here's an interview with him: https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/night-prowl-legendary-lechery-bernard-nite-owl-trink/

Interesting story in there about the 10 baht hooker with leprosy.

 

Sadly he totally lost the plot when he started preaching that you don't get HIV from unprotected sex. I mean how can you have someone saying that in a national newspaper? So irresponsible. And it wasn't just a blip, it was a constant theme. He said use condoms to prevent pregnancy or other STDs, but don't worry about HIV - it's a myth.

He also had some very dubious encounters with underaged girls.

Maybe he was a nice guy in person, but for me he should have been fired from the Post years before he actually was.

 

Interesting, I didn't know very much about his backstory. Only a little bit about his writing. Below is something that was written about him on his Wikipedia page, sounds a bit conflicted:

 

Trink was often critical of the city's seamier, sleazier nightlife and always warned foreign men about becoming romantically involved with bar girls, whom he held in low regard.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Trink
 

Shadow Jack, who seemed pretty close with Trink, was also a pretty, let's say, unusual character. I went in his bar a couple of times. Some pretty bizarre things in there to say the least. I'll leave the sorted details out though.

[NickyLouie]

superfluous

[couchpotato]

56 minutes ago, josephbloggs said:

Never understood the Trink worship. His column was an abomination, just cut and pasted rubbish from emails, lame jokes, and silly cliches. Even his book reviews were poor. He was a talentless man who somehow made a living from it (kudos to him for that), and I never understood why the Bangkok Post kept him for so long.

But no, never met him.

 beg to differ.......Actually his column was the prelim to the bar social media stuff these days (and one or two other sites of distinction) that gives the people that want to know, all the info they need.

I would come back to my Silom Road apartment after a few weeks of work and my maid had keep all the Friday editions for me..good reading if you were in that scene.

He came into my bar in Patpong (Pitstop bar) every 2-3 weeks in the mid/late 70's and would chat for a while (have a soda) take a few lady pics and wander off to his next bar..never found out if the pendant was gold..probably not.  Yes he was a character, that's for sure.

[HugoFastor]

If anything his owl pendant was probably brass and the chain was perhaps made from tin or steel. 
 

[it is what it is]

 

i used to see him and his lady companion quite often at scala cinema, siam square, never spoke to him.

 

used to look at his column in the bangkok post, not sure how he got away with it, he simply regurgitated material from other sources, and seemed disproportionately interested in nigerian  scammers, his film reviews were pretty un-insightful. given the written output i saw i'm surprised he was regarded as a journalist/writer. stickman used to rave about him in his column, never understood that either.

[josephbloggs]

30 minutes ago, it is what it is said:

 

i used to see him and his lady companion quite often at scala cinema, siam square, never spoke to him.

 

used to look at his column in the bangkok post, not sure how he got away with it, he simply regurgitated material from other sources, and seemed disproportionately interested in nigerian  scammers, his film reviews were pretty un-insightful. given the written output i saw i'm surprised he was regarded as a journalist/writer. stickman used to rave about him in his column, never understood that either.

My sentiments exactly, spot on.

[HugoFastor]

36 minutes ago, it is what it is said:

 

i used to see him and his lady companion quite often at scala cinema, siam square, never spoke to him.

 

used to look at his column in the bangkok post, not sure how he got away with it, he simply regurgitated material from other sources, and seemed disproportionately interested in nigerian  scammers, his film reviews were pretty un-insightful. given the written output i saw i'm surprised he was regarded as a journalist/writer. stickman used to rave about him in his column, never understood that either.

I think Stickman was sort of the Trink replacement. He started it a few years before Trink’s column was cancelled. He probably helped to dull the interest in Trink’s column too because Stick could write whatever he wanted and post whatever photos he wanted without a family-friendly editor looking over his shoulder. 

 

Can’t say I ever really read Stick much either. For the same reason I never read Trink really; I just did’t need the info. Occasionally I would read a specific excerpt on Stick when a link to something written on that site would come up in a Google search. But that was about it. But Stick was a way for people who didn’t want to have to hunt down a newspaper to be able to read similar content to Trink, but online and for free. 
 

Stick is still going it seems, but I think there were periods where it stopped flowing and another site called Stickboy appeared as a temporary replacement. There had also been talk that Stick was often being written by various different ghost writers under the one Stick moniker. He seemed to have changed his story a few times too about who was really behind the writing of the Stick site. I don’t know much about it though, I never really delved into it. The site design also looks very eighties and hasn’t ever been revamped. All the information on there also seems pretty pedestrian for someone living in Thailand. Probably it’s more interesting to people living overseas who are missing the Bangkok nightlife scene and want to stay in touch. That’s probably its main target readership.

[couchpotato]

Old Bernie must have done something right, we're still talking and discussing about him 50 years later.

And liked or not, he was a character in a time very different from now.

I enjoyed my chats with him.

[couchpotato]

3 minutes ago, HugoFastor said:

I think Stickman was sort of the Trink replacement. He started it a few years before Trink’s column was cancelled. He probably helped to dull the interest in Trink’s column too because Stick could write whatever he wanted and post whatever photos he wanted without a family-friendly editor looking over his shoulder. 

 

Can’t say I ever really read Stick much either. For the same reason I never read Trink really; I just did’t need the info. Occasionally I would read a specific excerpt on Stick when a link to something written on that site would come up in a Google search. But that was about it. 
 

But Stick was a way for people who didn’t want to have to hunt down a newspaper to be able to read similar content to Trink online and for free. 
 

Stick is still going it seems, but I think there were periods where it stopped flowing and another site called Stickboy appeared as a temporary replacement. There had also been talk that Stick was often being written by various different writers under the one Stick moniker. He seemed to change his story a few times too about who was really behind the writing of the Stick site. I don’t know though, I never really delved into it. The site design looks so eighties and hasn’t ever been revamped. All the information on there also seems pretty pedestrian for someone living in Thailand. Probably it’s more interesting to people living overseas who are missing the Bangkok nightlife scene and want to stay in touch. That’s probably it’s main readership now. 

"seems pretty pedestrian for someone living in thailand"

Absolutely...Stickmans column is just tripe, nothing of substance and of course these days written from 10,000 kms away, so has to write on hearsay.  Trinks Friday column was walking the beat type of stuff, and really liked by the guys around the scene in those days.

 

[Tropicalevo]

I did not arrive in Bangkok until 1993.

If I met him, I never realised it. Lots of 'interesting' folk around in those days.

No internet or social media back then (thank God).

As a newbie from the UK, I found his writings entertaining. I never thought of them a gospel or serious.

They were just social gossip.

'Nuff said.

[HugoFastor]

17 minutes ago, Tropicalevo said:

Lots of 'interesting' folk around in those days. No internet or social media back then (thank God).

Totally agree. Back then technology was very limited, there was no Intel around and nothing easily at your fingertips. I once had to walk a mile on Sukhumvit Road just to find a fax machine to send some information to someone overseas. Mostly it was word of mouth. At best you had the latest Lonely Planet, already sporting 2 year old data. As a result, you met lots of interesting characters, and characters they were. Back then you had be intrepid just to be able to navigate somewhere in the East like Bangkok. It might have felt a bit rough and rugged then at times, but in hindsight it was a fantastic time to be around. Those of us who were here back then know how fortunate we were. The ones coming here in the last 20 years haven't got a clue how eclectic the place really was at one time. 

[Rhys]

Burma Shave....

 

[d4dang]

yes...he was a real character...used to see him on the old small green buses from Pat Pong and on the street.

[pomchop]

https://www.oocities.org/doxyblue/alltrink.html

 

archives

[ABCDBKK]

Some images of him in his element. Not the most flattering:

 

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/bernard-trink?assettype=image&sort=mostpopular&phrase=bernard trink&license=rf%2Crm

 

 

[Dolf]

35 minutes ago, ABCDBKK said:

Some images of him in his element. Not the most flattering:

 

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/bernard-trink?assettype=image&sort=mostpopular&phrase=bernard trink&license=rf%2Crm

 

 

Looks sleazy

[JemJem]

13 hours ago, HugoFastor said:

 

Interesting, I didn't know very much about his backstory. Only a little bit about his writing. Below is something that was written about him on his Wikipedia page, sounds a bit conflicted:

 

Trink was often critical of the city's seamier, sleazier nightlife and always warned foreign men about becoming romantically involved with bar girls, whom he held in low regard.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Trink
 

Shadow Jack, who seemed pretty close with Trink, was also a pretty, let's say, unusual character. I went in his bar a couple of times. Some pretty bizarre things in there to say the least. I'll leave the sorted details out though.

Come on, man. Don't leave us curious. Some details would be nice. 'Bizarre' can be fun 🙂

[Dolf]

4 minutes ago, JemJem said:

Come on, man. Don't leave us curious. Some details would be nice. 'Bizarre' can be fun 🙂

I can guess.

[JemJem]

11 hours ago, Tropicalevo said:

I did not arrive in Bangkok until 1993.

If I met him, I never realised it. Lots of 'interesting' folk around in those days.

No internet or social media back then (thank God).

As a newbie from the UK, I found his writings entertaining. I never thought of them a gospel or serious.

They were just social gossip.

'Nuff said.

Yeah, man. I really miss the Bangkok of the 90's. It is not just that I was much younger. It is mainly that the social life and the nightlife was so much fun and interesting. Yes, the (lack of or minimal) Internet was a big factor. 

[HugoFastor]

7 hours ago, ABCDBKK said:

Some images of him in his element. Not the most flattering:

 

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/bernard-trink?assettype=image&sort=mostpopular&phrase=bernard trink&license=rf%2Crm

 

 

Yes, he's not looking great in those photos.  He was likely around 70 years old at the time. Looking sweaty, possibly intoxicated, and some fresh blood on the tip of his nose. He made it to age 89 though. So he won the game of life.