Johore Road was a street in Singapore that no longer exists today. It was distinguished by its notoriety as the less well-known cousin of its glamourous counterpart, Bugis Street , just a stone's throw away. It was the seedy haunt of transwoman sex workers formerly pejoratively and incorrectly referred to in the press as " male prostitutes " or " homosexual prostitutes " who solicited sex from locals, away from the glare of Western tourists.
No photographs or media attention were focussed on this street of ill-repute; only a no-frills approach to an economic exchange. Queen Street is contemporarily well-known as the gateway to Malaysia 's Johor Bahru , thanks to the cross-border bus services that operate from the modest-looking Queen Street Bus Terminal.
An express bus would have taken one from Queen Street to Johor in under 45 minutes. However, up to the late s, one could have just walked across the road to " Johore ", or rather, Johore Road , to be more exact. The pink strip shows the location of Johore Road as it used to exist, superimposed on a contemporary aerial view of the vicinity.
In January , a member of the Facebook group On a little street in Singapore [1] posted the following photos of Johore Road as it existed in [2] :. Traces of the above shophouses faceing Queen Street still exist today as vestiges of an old drain and mosaic floor tiles photo credit: Chris Lee [3] :. Johore Road was one of the few thoroughfares to be expunged from the map of Singapore in the late s, joining the likes of some memorable places like Bukit Larangan , an early 19th century name for Fort Canning Hill ; and Hock Lam Street , a road on the current site of Funan Centre.
A policeman stationed in the vicinity in the early s recalls that there were three big fires during the period - one in late and two in This, coupled with the fact that minor floods from the overflowing open drains during downpours were a regular occurrence. The latter was replace by an open field of grass after a few years which is all that remains of Johore Road today.
