THE THIRD
FLOOR
The third floor consists of a music store and fengshui shop.
#03-09
Music Ensemble
Naveej Aurol, owner of the music ensemble.
The Music Ensemble is a jamming studio that has been around for quite some time. The owner and his son took it over from the previous owners as they were thinking of closing the studio down. They kept all the equipment and repaired those that were damaged to ensure that students could continue to come back and jam. Something noteworthy about the studio was that they used to be the only location in Singapore where Daisy Rock guitars were available, which are guitars that tend to have slimmer necks for people with smaller hands. At around $20 a pop for an hour in their rooms, they are not the cheapest studio around but students still come back because the mall is located close to several art schools in the area.
The owner decided to take over the shop as he was a music lover and used to play in a band. Keeping this studio alive would essentially be giving youths another location and opportunity to further their talents. While they are open till 11pm daily, the KTV hostesses around the area do not bother them. This is a common theme amongst the other stalls as well, and it seems like the hostesses are more interested in being discrete rather than just blindly touting for business. In that way, studios like the Music Ensemble can continue to exist in peace next to these other seedier activities.
#03-25
san tcm:
clinic llp
"I've seen young boys, in uniform visiting the massage parlors"
- farah, employee of sans clinic
According to Farah, the shop was opened in Parklane because it is in the central area, which makes it highly accessible. However, most of their customers are regulars and their business is sustained through customer recommendations and word-of-mouth.
At night, it is very much alive, and you can hear loud music of all kinds coming from the top and bottom floors. So long as the night activities doesn’t disturb the daytime businesses, the owner is alright with the sleaziness. She also believes that so long as such sleazy businesses are contained in the mall, and that the molestation cases doesn’t increase outside, it is a good thing. She is not against it since it is the women’s choice to take up such jobs and their choice should be respected.
According to her, there is no such thing as a genuine massage shop in Parklane, and these “massage” shops are run by women wearing skimpy clothes. Although solicitation cannot be done openly, prostitutes call out to men when they walk by. Furthermore, many women of different nationalities (Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese) go into the toilet to dress up and put on their makeup. Their customers range from boys to men, and even students in their uniforms. The police raids don’t solve anything either. After the raids, the shop will reopen with new prostitutes.
