There was no ribbon cutting, speeches, drama, pomp or ceremony. Not even a puny balloon – we were already way over budget, and I had zero savings, having been a teacher the last seven years of my life. We had no investors nor silent partners; what you see is what you get! Either our product spoke for itself, or else we were done for. It was as simple as that.
We may be wrong, but we believe The Hot Spot was the first operation to offer Frozen Yogurt in our parts, about a decade before the Tutti Frutti lot arrived. The interesting thing about Frozen Yogurt and why it would be a good alternative in countries with scorching climates is that it is more cooling than ice cream as it has a lower freezing point, has fewer calories and is generally healthier. It has a tangy freshness, while ice cream tends to be sweeter.
Unless somebody claims otherwise, The Hot Spot claims to be the first to make & offer Fresh Frozen Yoghurt in Pakistan! (our oldest customers can testify to this fact).
The Hot Spot starts to make some waves in sleepy Islamabad - our first write up appear in The Friday Times - print media ruled in those day, social media not yet invented!
The Scream - The Hot Spot's official Infotainment magazine sells out within a week of its launch.
The Hot Spot breaks from local trends using Fresh Fruit rather than flavouring and essence.....Our Strawberry Ice Cream is only available in season.
One of the contribitors to the Scream had his finger on the pulse like no other. Rezz Aly Shah's column proving a major hit. Coulld he claim to be Islamabad's original "Influencer"?
The Pulse claims "A Hole Through My Wallet" and this in the day when a scoop of Ice Cream was Rs. 40. The $ was around Rs. 12 and Oreo's weren't available in Pakistan in those days.....we would lug them back in suitcases from trips abroad. Cookie's and Cream would be pre booked by avid customers and sold even before it was made!
The Hot Spot hit the radio waves (yes, we had radio back in those days!) as the Voice Of America calls for an Interview while Islamabad sizzled in a pre-global warming heatwave.
The Hot Spot gave a large chunk of earning to the LRBT fundraiser at a Cricket Match arranged a part of the Annual LRBT Fundraiser. We made buckets of waffle mix but had to have reinforcments sent for by the afternoon!
Pulse bestows The Hot Spot with "The Best Ice Cream in Islamabad" accolade which makes us feel warm and fuzzy!
We celebrated our first birthday and with a big Thank You to all our customers who made it possible!
Dawn covers The Hot Spot with a nod to our cinema club screenings in the days when there was barely a decent cinema in the entire land. It was the era of LaserDisks being shipped in from the US and rentals from VideoLink in Jinnah Market. We can take credit or discredit for introducing Islamabad's youth to true Cult Cinema and Midnight Movies at a time when the only films people had access to were very mainstsream. We had a hand in corrupting the youth, something we take considerable pride in.
Our stall at the Foreign Office Fair was a total sellout with Chocolate Peanut Crunch being the runaway best seller. We fondly remember one customer who returned her ice cream claiming there were eggshells in her portion which were actually smashed snickers bars. We do believe we were the first to introduce the concept of "mixed in" Ice cream to Pakistan. Back then, nobody thought of mashing our favourite candy and chocolate bars and adding them to ice cream..........how things have changed!
Our first Litre Packs are introduced as demand continues to grow. Our first merch Logo' are hand painted by Sara Khan who has gone on to forge a successful career as an artist with exhibitions all around the globe. Sara was kind enough to paint some Logos for us keeping in mind our theme of Horror and B Monster movies etc.
A giant step for The Hot Spot as we open our first ever shop in Islamabad F 7/3 after operating for a year and a half from a house on Street 60 in F 6
We had finally moved from home to our first outlet which used to be a spot in a market that was considered "cursed" as no business would succeed and indeed the entire area was pretty desolate. Our own space was a dilapidated failed restaurant turned plant nursery but we felt it suited us perfectly. Fortunatley a considerable amount of our customers made a home away from home in the space and it soon became a space where you would always bump into someone you knew. We had VHS horror movies instead of food on display and most of my beloved horror movie decor was plastered all over the small space. Some hated it, others took to it..........we were totally unconventional then and we remain the same today. Everything that we have done has been from the heart. We rejected Tom, Jerry, Mickey and Daffy and went for Leatherface, Divine and Creepy Carrie instead!! You Can't win them all and there is little point trying..............so we did things our way despite the occassional howls of protest. Likewise our music was our music...........many hated it, many still do, but James Brown, Prince, Soul, Blues and Funk has always been in heavy rotation at The Hot Spot and that hasn't changed.
Pulse Magazine Votes The Hot Spot as "The Hottest Spot in Town" again!
The Herald proclaims The Hot Spot as "The Coolest Hangout in Islamabad"
No Publicity, No Media, No Cameras, No Politicians, Movie Stars, Generals, Fanfare, Advertising, Ribbon Cutting – The Hot Spot opens quietly in sleepy T Block on a chilly February Evening on the 2nd of February, 1999.
The Hot Spot “Think Tank”, after days of scrutiny, testing and analysis, deem the Caramel Almond Crunch a worthy “Flavour of the Month”. It proves to be an instant success, and thus from being a one-off, it is made a permanent part of the flavour list.
The Hot Spot’s Movie screenings which later morphed into "The Incredibly Strange Cinema Club" had collected small amounts over the months, and once in a while, we dropped by their main Edhi Welfare Centre office in Islamabad to donate the collected funds. The money was specially earmarked to help with animal welfare.
The Hot Spot Islamabad Horror Film Festival – a landmark in Islamabad’s “culturally” emaciated calendar manages to notch on a few thousand more rupees to the Edhi Fund. The event is organized as a fitting tribute to the Millennium’s last Halloween. It is hoped that the Horror Film Festival will become an annual event. *update – The Horror Film Festivals were discontinued as our cities finally got cinemas, and people were able to stream even the most obscure horror movie from anywhere in the world in their living rooms. So, it became less feasible to host a film festival from then on. The Hot Spot held 6 Horror Film Festivals in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Still, these came to their natural conclusion, with films finally being available to people all over the land, thanks to the internet. The Festival featured a staggering 34 films screened over two weeks that ended with a finale on the last Halloween of the century.
The main reason and the thrill of hosting a Cinema Club was to introduce films to an audience who may never be exposed to such cinema otherwise. So we relished the opportunity to screen films like Eraserhead, Brian De Palma and Francis Coppola, Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. Terrence Mallick and Peter Bogdanovich, Todd Browning, John Waters, William Castle, Russ Meyer and Terrence Fisher, and so many other excellent masters who weren’t subjects of conversation at the coffee table or over dinner, and we wanted to nudge things along so that they might be someday. We aimed to spread the love and joy of cinema – slightly off mainstream, from mild to fairly off-centre—all kinds of cinema from any part of the world.
The Hot Spot did a spin on the Islamabad Khokha scene by revamping a local non descript Kiosk into something previously unimaginable........The City Admin was in shock but we played by the book and nowhere in the rules did it say that all kiosks must serve only daal roti! A memorable night was when the President of Pakistan and his Prime Minister visited with scant security and munched down on waffles and ice cream and listened on loop and sang along to "Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein Khayal Aata Hai" on repeat for the duration of their visit. The president thanked each member of staff personally upon leaving. A surreal night....and how we miss those days when the nations top brass could simply sit in an open public space without huge amount of security, pomp, protocol and ceremony!
There was a stage when our unscrupulous "landlord" (not really a landlord as the land is owned by the CDA) threw us out, literally sending thugs brandishing guns! We left our beloved space and hibernated to another shop in the basement of a nearby plaza. In place of The Hot Spot somebody tried to replicate exactly what we had been doing and called themselves very imaginatively as THE COOL SPOT. The entire episode was an embarssment and The Cool Spot died within a year of starting up. Our loyal customers rejected this tragic enterprise and returned a year later when our "landlord" realised he had acted hastily. The Cool Spot didn't pay their dues and the electricity was also cut off...the whole episode was a farce. The space was reinstated as The Hot Spot within a year. The amount of sleaze one has to cope with in our environment is sometimes beyond the realm of imagination....but we survived to return to our original spot after a year long blip.
Having been unceremoniously dumped from our previous location yet honoured to be replaced by the groundbreaking “The Cool Spot”, we found refuge underground. Our “Basement Shop” was featured on Dawn’s front page. Please note, not a cellphone in sight.
Someone With a Sense of Humour at Dawn Ranks The Hot Spot’s Crazy Website as one of Pakistan’s Top 10. he Website was an extension of the Printed Magazine we had started called The Scream. Except it allowed us to express so much more of our interests, from Horror Movies to nonsensical trivia, rants and raves about any topic imaginable and some beyond that.
These were days before humour and satire were bludgeoned to death, and anything expressed that was not by prescribed “State Values” could leave you wearing the Dunce Cap in the corner of the classroom.
The initial Website was a marvel of creativity from the mind of Omar Tufail, an ex-customer with talent and ideas exploding like fireworks in his brain. His lovingly created work was ahead of its time, and we will always appreciate the excellent time we spent together, thrashing out what the Website needed to be composed of. It was the infancy of the internet, and our being able to discover a brilliant ally in OT was the making of the Website, which went on to gain some notoriety with a block in the UAE and too-close-for-comfort reviews of popular Pashto and Punjabi movies.
The Website has changed, morphed, and gone through its ups and downs, but the essence of the original Website lives on at www.thehotspotcafe.com, forever a work in progress.
The Hot Spot’s Hand-Painted Pakistani Movie Posters Exhibition at The Commonwealth Institute, London. This Exhibition was a dream come true. To display the garish, loud, larger than life hand painted posters to the genteel streets of London was a huge thrill. There was a twist of fate though....9/11 happened and suddenly the OTT insane imagery of Sultan Rahi brandishing his array of weapons in comical but blood splattered posters didn't appear all that funny in light of what had happened in Manhattan just a day or two before. None the less, it was a huge honour to host this exhibition at such a beautiful and prestigios venue. It was also fascinating to see how the British Public reacted to the insane imagery adorning the exhibition hall.
The Hot Spot’s subsidiary Bubonic Films acquired the Worldwide Rights to a long-lost and forgotten Pakistani “Dracula” film from 1967. Together with The British Company Mondo Macabro, we set about restoring and re-issuing the film better than it had been seen since its first run in cinemas. Eventually, the film was released as a very special edition DVD containing interviews with the stars and director of the film as well as a commentary track and other extras. The film was received very warmly indeed and embraced by horror movie fans all around the world and ended up as DVD Release of The Month in Fangoria, the Bible of Horror publications. Since its restoration, the film has gone on to be screened at film festivals worldwide and has finally received the recognition and acclaim that it never received when initially released in the summer of 1967.
The Hot Spot opened an outlet in Karachi, again perhaps the first such outlet to be exported from Islamabad to Lahore and now to Karachi as well.
The Hot Spot's subsidiary Bubonic Films snapped up Worldwide Rights to Rangeela’s madcap spoof-satire fantasy from 1979 which deserved a wider audience. We got hold of what is likely to be the last remaining 35mm film version of the film which is currently stashed away safely in London.
We were invited by the organisers of the Kara Art Festival to participate in the ambitious Art Festival they were staging. This Exhib would be a piece of cake, coming just a few months after The Hot Spot’s considerable effort in curating an Exhibition at London’s prestigious Commonwealth Institute.
People have been very generous in mentioning our efforts to promote Lollywood art and restore a couple of old films we have been a part of—all these efforts borne out of love for cinema, whether Pakistani or otherwise. The Poster Exhibition was well attended, yet in 2003, it felt like the whole exercise was part of getting people to stop feeling ashamed of our cinema. It reflects nobody but us, and it is time we owned up to that fact. This exhibition was one more step towards legitimacy as an art form and acceptance, rather than outright rejection by the public and the media, as it has been in the past.
The Indian Cricket Team toured Pakistan in 2004, playing a hard-fought Test and One-Day series. Both teams had an evening of feasting on dinner, followed by copious amounts of dessert and Ice Cream. Sachin Tendulkar, who runs a restaurant in Mumbai, was particularly impressed with the Philadelphia Cheesecake and scoffed two slices in quick succession.
Incredible but true......The Hot Spot has given Islamabad a name that seems to have stuck and now even Google Maps recognises the Hilly side of the Park in F 6/3 as The Haunted Hill. Long after we have gone, the name Haunted Hill may well remain. Now you know a great slice of trivia.......The Hot Spot created HAUNTED HILL. Sadly the kiosk we had at Haunted Hill was demolished as some people considered it a "terrorist threat". Our heart remains in that park forever because we helped rescue it from the dump it had turned into and planted trees, stopped ball games and gave it back to the people of Islamabad. Haunted Hill is a stones throw from where the Hot Spot started up and will always have a special place in our heart.
Zibahkhana has it's World Premiere at the NATFILM Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark which is the nations National Film Festival.
Zibahkhana: Hell’s Ground (2007), a low-budget, Indie splatter/slasher film from Pakistan, was screened at the Andy Warhol Museum on the 5th of December in 2008. Arguably the first and only Pakistani film to screen at the Warhol Museum to date? Maybe, maybe not.
This will always be a huge honour.
The Hot Spot was thrilled to be able to contribute to the stunning publication that was issued on the 1st of March, 2010. A painstakingly curated and brilliantly presented publication up to the standards that the world has come to expect from anything associated with the Taschen brand – and The Hot Spot is so proud to have made a small but significant contribution. If you are into the craft and sublime beauty of Bollywood Posters, than you must already own this gorgeous book. If you don’t, what are you waiting for?
After rigorous training at the Gelato University in Bologna, Italy The Hot Spot launched authentic Italian Artisan Gelato in Islamabad. Strictly following our teachers instructions - No essence, No preservatives, No colour, Nothing unnatural, no pre-mix powders, nothing from a tin or frozen packet and using only seasonal fruit and never artificial flavouring. The ultimate endorsement has come from our Italian customers visiting our stall at The Islamabad Farmers Market. Some have said "we feel like we are in Italy" and perhaps the icing on the cake was the Italian Ambassador sampling the pistachio (which he said we spelled incorrectly) and giving us a big thumbs up. Ultimately the aim is to stay true to our teachers and do them proud. Many have grumbled about our NO TOPPINGS policy, that our pistachio isn't green enough, that we dont serve round scoops like ice cream, that the product is too soft, that we don't do an Oreo Cookies and Cream or Snickers, but we remain uncompromising in following the path that our teachers insisted we take. We also do not advertise keeping in mind the words of our guru, "your only advertisment is your product and if that isn't good enough, you don't deserve to succeed". A special shout out to Claus Euler was who has been a huge support right from the start........especially when something wasn't quite right, his blunt honesty was invaluable! Also a big thanks to The Islamabad Farmers Market for keeping faith in us.
The definitive guide to the wild, wonderful world of Pakistani popular cinema.
From Dracula to disco, snake women to superheroes, art films to exploitation classics, Loose Cannons and Dangerous Curves uncovers over 70 years of Pakistan's most outrageous, beloved and forgotten movies. Drawing on decades of original research, Omar Khan's landmark volume is equal parts film history, cultural archaeology and unabashed celebration of one of the world's least explored national cinemas.
