Back in the 80s, I remember them standing on little platforms in the middle of the road directing traffic too.
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Here’s a smattering of pics from Tommy’s 70s and 80s in Taiwan with a few others thrown in
Check out the fashions of the day
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Those are giving me fashion trauma flashbacks… 
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As they should 
I think I have pics of myself in stone-washed denim hanging around somewhere…best left buried.
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I thought the 80s is cool again. Or has that ship sailed and the 90s is back?
See the word Nikon on it ?
Sweet. Matches perfectly with the shades and white pants…chef’s kiss.
Tommy in the Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit…
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Hey Tommy was somewhat fashionable k? 
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Total badass…not like dumbass me in my stone-washed denim.
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im sure you were quite the scene , just modest 
Santos Café now that was a place Typical of the café culture of Taipei in the early 80s and later and before
The days back before the cell phone and even the BB call if you were out of your house, you were basically in orbit and you were out of contact with your friends and family and whoever so a lot of people like myself liked to establish a place outside of home to hang out at and one of those places Was Santos Cafe
It was a smallish corner café with big picture windows very comfortable chairs and it was very well managed by an owner who didn’t show up every day but was well respected by his crew and he had a great manager who was a real people person so everybody that went, there would go there again and again because you felt so much at home there
The coffee was excellent, and the food was actually excellent too and prices were very very reasonable
People in those days and perhaps today as well were expected to remain at the café for hours at a time or as long as you could sometimes you went there only for a short time , but generally, the idea was if you went to a café, you were gonna go there for at least an hour or more, I would sometimes spend basically much of a whole day there.
If my friends wanted to contact me, they will call where I lived and if I wasn’t there, they would call Santos Cafe, and if I wasn’t at the Santos Cafe, the receptionist would take a message and tell me when I got there it was sort of like an office in a way And I wasn’t the only one who did this. This was kind of the way things were done back then
The world was a different place without the cell phone
You didn’t go to a place and stay connected you went to a place to connect with people and a café was such a place. You could go there and meet people meet new people chitchat with the people there and generally carry on the café was sort of a mini clubhouse. You would meet regulars there and and would meet new people there and the anchor was sort of the manager there who sort of knew everybody and he would welcome you and also introduce you to other people that he knew and you expanded your social circle that way.
It was also a place for possible adventure with the opposite sex you could meet somebody and have an affair or have a arrangement for the day there were lots of possibilities
Today’s Cafe culture is very different. Everybody’s got their cell phone and they’re in their little world and it’s very hard to crack into their world and basically as my dad used to say why bother going to the café anymore cause you don’t wanna go there to meet anybody or talk to anyone
The cell phone has made everybody more antisocial even when we go to gyms. We don’t talk to anybody at the gym in general we go to cafés we’re still glued to our phones and in our little world we don’t socialize when we’re with people and we don’t want to socialize And that’s the modern world
Santos had a basement which had more seating and Pac-Man machines and that’s where I met Jon the monkey man. The white guy cussing up a streak in Taiwanese. The manager sent me down there to say hi
And that’s where our friendship started
All names have been changed to protect the guilty
To be continued..
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Cool that Santos was like a pre-BB call center for your gang.
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Sounds pretty awesome to me. Pretty much what we are missing in the modern world.
Imagine a Taiwanese manager or boss even talking to you and remembering your name and everything about you let alone going around introducing you to other people. Everything is too depersonalised now.
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To be honest it seems I have a bit of an affinity for bleak movies lol. That’s a movie I’ve got on my backlist I hadn’t looked into it properly yet though for some reason I thought it was from China. Looks like it could be my type of movie though I’ll add it to the “watch sometime soon” list
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if you like bleak also look for Tsai Ming Liang’s “Stray Dogs". Probably need the Criterion Channel but idk if it’s currently available.
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Thats why I always recommend to people when they move to a new town/city. Go find a place to make it your second home, get to know the owners and they will introduce you to their friends and other regulars. Be a regular yourself and pretty soon you find yourself going there often. I had another two such cafes in taipei and those was also second homes. I went in one day in one of them , had a beer checked the place out, liked it and that became a late night watering hole for me. So i had santos the daytime place for lunch and into the early PM< then dinner i had another cafe to frequent and late night i had this other place. Three places to occupy a day. And at each i made friends with the regulars there. At the dinner place i told the bosslady i found a dog wandering around and had been looking for its owner, she mentioned some girl who loved dogs and could probably take him. I met up with this girl the next day, but the dog had found its owner so no dog but gained a GF. NOt bad I say. Brought this GF to the late night hang out and she being the life of the party soon got into the fabric of the place and pretty soon we and the gang over there were touring Hk and Macau together.
Them were good times ! And its all from me being able to put my nose into places and make myself a regular.
As for Santos, the manager, Frank was a pretty cool guy and the owner as well pretty cool. The owner is from taichung and apparently he is involved in a lot of trade with Japan and like others of his generation spoke fluent japanese. And he wanted to have a cafe to hang out at and invite his friends to and didnt find one to his liking so he started his own in the chung. Called Santos. Moved to taipei and started up a Santos at another location in the mid 70s and this was where my bud Pete and i used to go to after school at TAS (night time it was Univ of Maryland). And the bus took us to our stop (we lived close to each other just another separate bus to our respective homes). so there was a cafe there called the Aegean Sea and that was an awesome place for food and coffee and what not. We usualy had a Vienna cappucinno there and then often went across the street at Santos and ordered the same.
SAntos moved to its later location which was close to my later studio apt in the early 80s and that one of my fav hangouts in the 80s, into the 90s.
Frank was a man able to talk about something with just about anyone and he often had a lady friend visit him at the cafe in the early to late evenings. She was very classy and well spoken and very cute for a late 30/early 40s lady. They were both married to other people i gather but this was where they would often have some time together to yak bout stuff. They were each their personal friend outside of the spouse at home. Very french i suppose.
The bossman had his own table at the restaurant and the manager tried to keep that table empty in case the boss showed up. Bossman would at times invite me to his table (i had my own table as i had been going there so often) and we would have a couple shots of whiskey. I was 30 years younger than him so cant say we were buds but he would at times invite me over to some clubs to see some people (of the female persuasion) he knew. And that was always nice. He said i was his excuse to get out of the house and get away from the dragon lady (wife). lol .
He had a very cute 16 year old daughter who sometimes came over to the cafe. She had not started dating yet (supposedly) so i asked him what would be his opinion if his daughter wanted to marry someone he didnt favor. He said, oh that is very simple, i told my daughter she can marry whoever she wants BUT…if i dont approve she is not getting one penny of my money :). And that apparently was enough at 16 to keep her in line. His son meantime did not really listen to dad. He told me his son wanted a motorcycle and he didnt approve and yet two days later his son showed up on a motorcycle? I said what happened? He said, well his mom approved so he got the moto.
I sided with him because motos are dangerous and especially dangerous to 18 year old young men. Too many of them died on motos.
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I love old identification pictures
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