I love a good pub. Ones with an open atmosphere where you can sit with your mates and matettes and natter away the hours. I even occasionally like ones with huge plasma screens if watching footy is my heart’s desire that day. But as I grow older and wiser (I can dream), the attractions of a nice little bar grow. One in which I could sip a nice red and not have to worry about being assaulted by pokies and stark layouts that suck the soul out of an establishment and its customers. Tough luck finding such a place in Sydney.
There has been some comment before on the stranglehold the AHA has over Sydney’s archaic licensing laws. The fight to have the laws changed still goes on. Jason at Catallaxy has a good post on how the NSW Liberals will not support Clover Moore’s private member’s bill to relax NSW simply archaic licensing laws. The NSW Liberals, who given their success at the ballot box in recent years, obviously have their finger on the pulse of the voters argue:
But the Opposition’s gambling and racing spokesman, George Souris, said Cr Moore needed to accept Sydney was a world away from Europe.”The concept of trying to introduce some sort of European liquor accord involving coffee shops and food outlets is unworkable. NSW is not Paris,” Mr Souris said.
“Alcohol-related problems like binge-drinking, antisocial behaviour, domestic violence and youth alcoholism would potentially be exacerbated by a streetscape lined with alcohol outlets.”
Of course. It is not as if the beer barns and pokie palaces endorsed by the AHA ever have anything to do with alcohol related problems. What Souris, and the odious, antediluvian president of the AHA, John Thorpe, fail to understand is that there are quite a lot of people who can drink responsibly and would love a nice cozy bar to settle in for a couple of hours. Their dim view of the cultural sensitivities of Sydney and concern for its inhabitants well being are nice but false sentiments. The opposition to these laws stem from lobbying by the AHA who want to protect their nice little arrangements. Heaven forbid if pubs are open to competition with cheaper liquor licenses.
As for what Sydneysiders really think, there seems to be more support for changes than opposition. Facebook of course now has a number of groups agitating for the much needed change to the licensing laws.
And in a strange confluence that shows this issue crosses the usual political boundaries, Jason links to a Miranda Devine piece on this issue that I must agree with. Another SMH article is an impassioned plea for change.
No, dear residents of Sydney (and one must not forget NSW. Terrigal would be a lovely place for a wine bar overlooking the beach). You do not have to fear an escalation in drunken behaviour. What you do need to fear is the influence of outdated organisations on political parties. Those who making ill-informed decisions with no regards for the wishes of the community simply for a few more dollars in the coffers.
Go Clover!
This is just unbelievable. First the AHA were arguing that Sydney wasn’t Melbourne, and that hole in the wall bars were “effete” (take that Melbourne poofters!). Now Sydney isn’t Paris…
Come to Brisvegas, for chrissake. Licensing laws were liberalised some years ago (not making it as easy to get a licence as Melb, but if you want to open a standalone bar, or have a bar as part of a cafe or restaurant where you don’t have to order food, you can). It’s a really bad look for a “world city”, Sydney. Are the AHA, the Libs (and I assume the Iemma government) saying Sydney is full of boofheads and violent yobs and couldn’t possibly cope with the sort of bars that exist in Brisbane without the apocalypse happening?
This issue has plebiscite written all over it. Who will intervene first, Howard or Rudd?
Seriously, it is the most neanderthal debate. The same as the response to the NSW pokie tax which threatened the apocalypse for pubs and clubs.
Agreed, Kim. The blanket refusal to consider that if relaxed licensing laws work in both Melbourne and Brisbane without precipitating the apocalypse they can work in Sydney as well is kneejerk denialism at its most petty.
Miranda Devine turned her piece as an anti-Union one. However the liquor laws in Melbourne have certainly facilitated a number of wine bars and boutique outlets.
This has been beneficial specially for some lanes in the CBD that were lanquishing and forgotten.
Examples of this are Degraves Lane [link]
Hardware lane [link], and the Block Arcade [link]
Sydney has plenty of intimate spaces where this can be reproduced.
An article in the New Statesman last year is interesting:
“It is one year since the licensing laws were changed and it’s hard to imagine a scene more at odds with the continental café culture that ministers had hoped would flourish once drinking hours were extended.”
Sydney pubs are overwhelmingly revoltingly sterile and well, sad cages for the dissolute. Pokies have killed Sydney pub culture. As anybody who has returned from London will attest, the number of pubs in Sydney that are passable is minimal.
The wretched state governments and their addiction to pub licensing fees should be publicly hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Go Clover!
Desperately Seeking Rent?
I would have thought a rise in the number of relaxed, smaller venues would tend to lower the rate of “binge-drinking, antisocial behaviour, domestic violence and youth alcoholism”. I’ve never seen a fight at a city hole-in-the-wall. Seen plenty at the big suburban pubs and nightclubs, though. Maybe that’s ‘cos the little city venues are intolerably ‘effete’.
Cheers
BBB
Join the Facebook group now!
Sorry Phil for getting the jump on you. Boozing is important to us Sydneysiders!
Kim, the first time I had a drink with Mark in BrisVegas was at the Bowry. I thought at the time Sydney could do with similar bars.
The Bowery was one of the first, Shaun. It’s also great for the music scene, which I think was one of the dumbassed arguments against having them in Sydney.
Definitely. Part of the planned revamp of the licensing laws is to make it easier for venues to have live entertainment (the current fee is ridicously high at the moment). Funnily enough the AHA opposed that as well.
If the laws do change, I could finally have my Hawaiian themed AC/DC covers hand, Highway to Ohau, happening.
I feel compelled to point out that effete doesn’t actually mean effeminate; it means barren, esp creatively.
It’s funny sometimes to see the term applied to poofy types - poets, artists, etc. Hell, I used to call myself effete until I looked it up!
The bars that ate Paris. Yep, those Parisian style bars are singlehandedly responsible for all those rioting Algerian Muslim youth.
Wa has changerd its Liquor Licencing Laws to allow small bars and alchol service without a meal. Great idea and congrats to the State Government for the initiative.
Not one new establishment has opened. The Local councils aren’t approving them.
The AHA’s just upset because they lost the smoking ban fight, so they’ve got to have something else to whinge about.
patrickg, as someone accused of effetism de temps en temps, I feel obliged to correct you there. The origin is latin “ex-fetus”, i.e. worn out from bringing forth. Applied to a man it implies lack of vigour/virility, decadence, effeminacy etc.
That might actually go down ok at The Alibi Room in New Farm - the bar has a Tiki theme!
I could not agree more..You can’t walk 5 minutes in Melbourne without tripping over some cosy little drinking establishment - but the patrons tend to actually behave themselves. And if your surroundings are a bit less depressing and sterile, maybe people don’t feel the need to get quite so plastered?
Whatever the reason, its time for a change. Quality, civilised drinking establishments for all Australians, bring it on.
already happens in glebe with the different drummer open v. late most nights. it is melbourne-type bar in Sydney. it is tiny, very sociable, and always busy. we need at least another three like it on glebe point road.
agree with the general sentiment that fights generally happen in ’suburban’ pubs, even around here with the houso, back-packer and student populations.
binge drinking would become less of an issue. reminds me of the chilli peppers song about catholic school girls. repression leads to explosion…
This is bizarre. I live in Melbourne and haven’t been to Sydney for years, so I assumed all those relaxing litle bars had started in Sydney first. The best thing about them is just how calm and relaxed they are, not like pokies-filled pubs. They’re great for the older crowd too, so you get a bit more diversity. George Souris needs to get out more!
The key word being “civilised”. There is nothing civilised about drinking gallons of beer shoulder to shoulder in a sydney pub or a leagues club or the conversation to be had in such places.
Maybe you all need to get out more there are loads of great places. Try Foveaux on Foveaux Street in Surry Hills, and then go upstaiors and eat afterwards. No we dont have the same saturation of wine style bars as Melbourne but we also have a very different mindset here, we have many more outdoor palces due to the weather. Besides, if you quit winging about it you could alwasy move to Melbourne!
the only thing to recommend most Sydney pubs is their solid construction, space and just occasionally, a vibe or atmosphere which exists largely in spite of the surrounds. The vast majority of establishments add nothing to the city, being only the (number limited) outlets existing for socialising (ok…boozing) to take place within.
Sydney may be an “international city” but its defining characteristics are bland and dull. Stoic.
The wellspring of creativity, business opportunities and cultural expression will transform Sydney once a liqor licensing change is made, it will be a wonderful time, and Sydeny will become a wonderful place. It may even develop into something as interesting as Melbourne!
Correct Scooter!
George Souris is clearly doing yeoman service preventing misguided Sydney entrepreneurs from wasting their hard-earned borrowed dosh on setting up Melbourne-style bars that no right-thinking Sydneysider would be seen dead in.
Let’s raise a schooner to George!
shaun - I can’t wait - tiki bar, hula skirts, umbrellas in drinks and getting lei-d to a uke slide version of It’s Long Way to The Top of Mokuaweoweo If You Wanna Rock n Roll.
Here in good old Dullsville,the with great fanfare They changed the laws to introduce small bars,4 applied the rest the good old councils killed stone dead,great place Dullsville,think frank may know more
“Sydney may be an “international cityâ€? but its defining characteristics are bland and dull”
Sorry, but the word dull has already been taken we in Perth, who refer to our own dear city as Dullsville. I’m happy to see local councils not approve any of the newly available licences (Freo has approved one, I think) since more availability of liquor will probably lead to more problems. In Perth’s case, a bit more investment in our cultural organisations would be more likely to create a more interesting city.
I live in Melbourne but as a New Zealander I don’t have any particular stake in a Melb. vs Syd. rivalry, but I have to say that the sort of comments coming out of Sydney from the likes of Thorpe and Souris are so, there’s no other word for it, stupid in the extreme that one is tempted to conclude that these people must themselves be stupid in the extreme. Their low opinion of their own constituents, their numbskull attitude towards any diversity of sensibilities, and their keenness to state these opinions in public is astonishing. I know they have an ulterior motive (ie money) which in the presumably cut-throat world of the booze business might give them an excuse of sorts, but the fact that they cannot see that their publicly expressed views tend to make themselves look like lumpen oafs and their city a cultural backwater, leads me back to my original conclusion … Thorpe and Souris are, in fact, plain stupid.
Fuck the AHA. They’re the battery farmers of the alcohol world. Talk about your no-brain sense of entitlement.
It’s this kind of thinking that had the ‘out of town Sunday session laws’ that had people in Perth driving 50km on a Sunday to get to a pub that was open and driving back.
Anthony - isn’t alcohol abuse a huge problem in Perth? Isn’t is likely that increasing the availability of liquor could exacerbate the problems. It’s understandable people are cautious.
Perth isn’t Paris in many ways - one of the ways surely is that so many young people here abuse liquor. I can’t imagine many people objecting to a stylish little bar in Cottesloe (the expense would keep it off-limits to the likely troublemakers), it’s the potential of the laws to see a proliferation of cheap and nasty outlets that worries me.
Right, because there aren’t any cheap and nasty outlets now?
What a load of nonsense.
Very persuasive Anna.
Anthony, I think you might be on the same side as the AHA. The article on page 3 of today’s West quotes Bradley Woods of the AHA “Mr Woods said the State Government should introduce similar closing times to Melbourne for small bars in entertainment precincts. He expressed concern about the public interest assessment requirements under the new legislation, saying they were onerous …..”
Sorry, Russell, as I said in my comment earlier, liberalised licensing laws have been in place in Brisbane for years and there are no “cheap and nasty outlets” in the bar scene springing up. That’s well taken care of by pubs.
“Perth isn’t Paris in many ways”
As anyone who has been to Northbridge can attest.
Cruel but true.
Kim - I did take note of your comment, and thought that maybe the model of adults drinking in a civilised way could be a good thing. I’m still a bit wary of sending the message “Alcohol - now unrestricted” to a society that has such problems with alcohol.
I wish we could put as much time and money into thinking how to solve our alcohol problems, as we do encouraging each other to keep drinking.
Hasn’t this argument popped up every 5- 10 years ?
Can anyone explain exactly why there has been so little change in the past ?
The AHA pays money to both major parties but how else are they influencing matters to such an extent that apart from the wowsers the bulk of the population probably isn’t too worried about the outcomes of more boutique bars opening?
Many Sydney restaurants allow BYO so you can take your own wine or beer to quiet places and have a drink but you will have to order a meal.You avoid the marked up alcohol but pay for the food and service.
Can any reader explain the if this is just a problem of corruption, pay offs and the usual NSW grime?
Russell – “I wish we could put as much time and money into thinking how to solve our alcohol problems…”
That is exactly what people are attempting to do – put time, money, thought, common sense and imagination into providing a variety of venues and modes of socialising over a drink that will not only give people the choices they deserve in a modern society, but may also be a small step towards alleviating some of the problems associated with the “cheap and nasty” outlets that already dominate the drinking culture. You give the likes of Thorpe and Souris too much credit. They are not looking out for the interests of the poor little Sydneysiders whose moral fabric and perhaps even manhood itself, they suggest, are threatened by the very notion of a winebar, they are protecting their own vested interests and doing so in a very ham-fisted way.
By the way, what makes you think that only people with little money in their pockets can be “troublemakers”? You need to get out more. This kind of snobbishness is just as bad as the reverse snobbism of the John Thorpes of this world.
George,
I don’t think only people with little money are troublemakers - footballers come to mind. I was assuming liquor will be more expensive in these boutique venues and so the people who like to drink a lot and often won’t patronise them.
I think you understimate the damage alcohol does, and the desirability of having a society where less alcohol is consumed.
Russell – my last post on this so I’ll just make a couple of points.
I don’t underestimate the damage alcohol does, I know it well enough. I am however convinced that offering a variety of civilised, comfortable and interesting environments for the consumption of alcohol will in no way worsen that problem, and may well be a step towards improving the situation.
How people like John Thorpe, who has such a patronising attitude towards his own customers and a stunted vision of the possibilities within his own industry, has attained his position in that industry is beyond me.
I do know that “the people who like to drink a lot and more often” are very often the most cashed-up people around town, they’re not too fussed over bar prices and are fully capable of being a pain in the neck in public. Anyway, the point is not to have a tiny number of very expensive places for a select clientele with steep prices to keep out the “troublemakers”. Despite your protest your assumption here is still that only the well off can be trusted to behave themselves. I reject that. Decent places to have a drink should be available to people from all stratas of society, not just the wealthy. A lot of big cities manage it very well and I’m sure Sydney would do so too.
Now that Sydney has horses coughing up equine flu germs everywhere, it’s even less likely that the AHA will lose this fight. Not only does the AHA & the Registered Clubs Assoc pour rivers of coins into the deep pockets of Sussex Street, they have an each way bet with the Libs as well. Comfy vested interest position.
But they are also very very important to the process of filling State coffers from gambling revenue. Not just poker machines, but in-pub TABs ready to take whatever the opkies haven’t. 770 MILLION DOLLARS was gambled on horses last year in NSW alone. & most of it was off-track. & a huge slab of that happened through clubs & pubs. Meets cancelled, no gambling, no revenue.
So pubs
bribedonate to our pollies of all hues (except the Greens) & they also raise buckets of revenue that somehow the Feds don’t give back to NSW from its GST takings. Thorpe is well aware that its the smaller venues in the inner suburbs & the CBD who will suffer in comparison to any venue not stuffed with pokies or a TAB. & if their licences came up for sale, shock horror more competition for the barn venue such as his own, out there in suburbia.& glen - try the Duck & Swan in Chippendale. Food’s pretty good, & no wee umbrellas in your glass.
I lived in Sydney for 18 years and slowly watched the demise of good local pubs. The back room with pool tables and small live bands were replaced by the fowl pokie machines. Yuppies moved into inner Sydney areas and lobbied against the live music. Property prices soared, developers turned sites into new hotel complexes and retained liquor licenses to open up sports bars aimed at gambling. All my local bars and pubs transformed into soulless replica venues, that encouraged vertical drinking (no seats) & turned a blind eye to underage drinking not questioning obvious fake ID’s. The AHA have produced a culture of irresponsible drinking. Anything that takes the power away from them and allows more small business to offer the much needed alternative venues I support. The idea that European style bars will solve the binge drinking problem is silly. Europe has alcohol problems just like Sydney. What the proposed change will do is allow responsible drinkers choice. They can choose safe bars away from the violent pubs, they can drink locally, so less need for transport (drink driving, violent argument for a cab at midnight or conflict on a bus). Crowds of drinkers will be dispersed over an area rather than being focused in one area. When the large venues close large crowds form a hot spot of violence and bad behavior. The current high cost of a license requires a large turn over, and big venues result. Please bring back the small venues, and I might actually come back to Sydney one day.
“The AHA have produced a culture of irresponsible drinking.” - well that lets the drunks off the hook. Big pubs and clubs no doubt contribute by creating an environment conducive to alcohol abuse, but howabout the people doing the irresponsible drinking taking some responsibility?
George you are completely wrong in assuming that I think that “only the well off can be trusted to behave themselves”. This month we had yet another state MP fined for DUI. Not so long ago we had Australia’s highest paid public servant - that’s our WA health supremo, who is paid twice as much as the Prime Minister - coming home from some social event with his wife; she was driving - because she had drunk less than he had? - and was caught for DUI. Nor do I assume there is less alcohol-fuelled domestic violence in Peppermint Grove than in Padbury.
Isn’t it strange that we can have endless discussions about global warming, or US military adventurism etc etc, but the huge problem of alcohol abuse, by a very large number of Australians (who just think it’s harmless social drinking) is almost never discussed. The ‘rivers of grog’ flowing through aboriginal communities isn’t a problem anywhere else ? It seems almost hopeless that faced with this problem, people demand more bars.
Never thought there might be a connection here, dude?
Never trust a teetotaller. These people have not a clue and would=, if they could, lead us all to disaster with their obtuseness, lack of passion and sense of adventure and their failure to understand or even feel the need for risk taking topped off with the banality of their self-denial.
I don’t drink personally so whether there is one new bar or a veritable river of grog will not change my lifestyle one iota, I also have doubts that it will affect anybody else either. Don’t share the Pearson or Brough argument about the Northern Territory either. I think the more options available to people the better. Thanks for the vote of confidence in teetotalers though Jinmaro, even though it is a generalisation which doesn’t fit every case.
“grog will not change my lifestyle one iota” - unless you or someone close to you is cleaned up by a drunk in a car.
The AIHW says: “In terms of risk of harm in the long term, 10% of males and 9% of females drank alcohol in a pattern that was risky or high risk. In terms of short-term risk, 24% of males and 17% of females drank at least once a month in a manner that was risky or high risk for short-term harm ….Alcohol use is also a major cause of drug- or alcohol-related deaths in Australia.”
The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (NSW) : “The estimated immediate cost of treating these alcohol-related injuries and alcohol intoxication cases at St Vincent’s Emergency Department is at least $1.4 million each year. If other costs associated with injury (e.g. inpatient costs) are included, however, the alcohol-related injury and intoxication costs incurred by St Vincent’s Hospital may be as high as $3.2 million each year. ”
I just googled that up because my niece used to work in emergency at that hospital, and the depressing experience of continually cleaning up after the effects of alcohol on people brought to emergency, nearly had her giving up medicine. So Steve, when you add up all the costs - the hospitals, the rehabilitation, the medications, the broken relationships etc - you and all of us are paying a high price for the widespread irresponsible use of alcohol.
Jinmaro, I’m not a teetotaller; I can’t imagine you’ve met very many - I haven’t.
Nice try but I don’t really think that that is dependant on how much I drink! Or in my case zero.
To expand on that a little further, I just cannot see the point of prohibition or forming a nanny state to protect people from themselves. As far as I am concerned even the personal responsibility argument is also a nonsense.
Drink until you can’t drink any more and then give it away and get a life is more the attitude I subscribe to. Therefore I do not subscribe to the social drinking theory. It all becomes boring and pointless after a while.
Let people live life as they see fit and if they go too far then either the Legal system or health system can look after them is how it has always been and always will be.
So while they are drinking they may as well do so, safely, in cosy wine bars without having to travel huge distances and in the best atmosphere that they can afford. God knows of all the problems associated with drinking but whilever it is a source of fun, excitement and pleasure why deny anyone these experiences?
“why deny anyone these experiences?”
Because of the obvious harm it’s doing to others. Because it’s a rotten model of behaviour to present to youth - a culture that brings up young people to think that drinking to oblivion is just a normal, OK thing to do, is a culture in serious decline.
I haven’t proposed prohibition (it doesn’t work as we know), nor am I a teetotaller, so it’s interesting to get these responses. The New Statesman article I linked to earlier claims that the two main factors influencing alcohol consumption are price and availability - hence my concern that we should open up new types of venues for drinking.
Kim said that the small bars in Brisbane haven’t been a problem. Maybe they haven’t been a problem in the way the big drinking barns are, but they increase the prevalence, the visibility of drinking - the idea that social life and drinking are the same thing. Which I suppose would be OK if only people didn’t drink too much, but they do. Not just in pubs and bars, but at dinner parties, working lunches, just about everywhere - I’ve been told bowls clubs are amongst the worst!
So would it hurt to hold off on providing more ways to drink until we manage to change attitudes, generally, that getting regularly tipsy is not OK.
Only because that theory is a proven failure too. People who want to drink always find a way to drink. People who don’t drink don’t worry about how much or what other people are drinking. Drinkers will not stop until every avenue of drinking is exhausted so I won’t be holding my breath for your theory to begin working as there are thousands of years of human history to prove it unworkable, puritanical, wowerism etc. but not based on anything real. Sounds great in theory but a dog in practice.
Attitudes change when the truth is revealed not when statistics are gathered and shoved down people’s throats.
AHA and others need appreciate that it is not what is the best type of drinking venue but allowing choice e.g. in Budapest derelict buildings become beer gardens [link] , and this year top of a dept. store [link]
“Attitudes change when the truth is revealed”
You oughta go into advertising Steve.
Attitudes can be changed - look at smoking.
Choice is a great thing but what if the consequences of your choices are a cost to others. Hospitals, in WA at least, are under enormous pressure, especially emergency departments - and especially from Friday night to Monday morning thanks to alcohol abuse. Is this a good or necessary thing?
It’s pretty pathetic if we’ve got to the stage where people can’t imagine having a good time without being at least slightly inebriated.
I was just reading Jason at Catallaxy about how alcohol consumption wasn’t rising in Victoria which seemed incredible, so I went to the WA Health Dept site and found:
“Between 1991-2 and 2000-01, Western Australia was the only state in Australia to indicate an overall increase in per capita alcohol consumption”
so perhaps my attitude to alcohol abuse has hardened as consumption continues to rise, here in WA.
Brisbane laneways:
[link]
We could do with a few laneway bars!
Russell, I’ll have to have a look at the literature but I doubt that the number of bars has anything to do with shifts in alcohol consumption. Alcohol is more likely to be consumed responsibly in bars in many instances than in people’s homes. There are very strict conditions in Queensland on responsible service, big fines and requirements for extensive training for workers.
There are some broader issues here about urbanism and urban life which I hope to discuss in another post.
Mark - we have the same strict conditions, which apply to the drinking barns too - maybe they’re just not adequately policed. I don’t have much experience with bars, but wouldn’t they find it hard to turn a profit if clients just had one or two drinks? And I still think we need to get a strong message across to young people that socialising doesn’t necessarily mean drinking.
The “new urban life” ideology might be an interesting point of difference between young progressives and people my age, who have thought of themselves as progressive since before you were born. I enjoyed many aspects of living in bigger cities overseas, but I also like the peace of suburban Perth. I don’t want a cent of my tax dollars going into schemes to make Perth “more exciting”.
In Perth we have some unproductive stalemates between people with views like mine, as opposed to the views of Peter Newman for example. Our most well known beach, Cottsloe, is looking very shabby because owners of the beach front commercial properties are agitating for changes to laws so they can build taller buildings, more apartments. Residents don’t want to change the low-rise character of the place - so it just deteriorates. Peter Newman is in advertisements for a developer who wants to build what looks like a suburban shopping centre on the wharf at Fremantle, complete with multi-storey carpark. We are told that this will bring new life to a run-down Freo. That’s not the sort of new life that we want - and so it goes. I think most of these problems can be met by good design and planning - but that’s not on offer from developers or the WA government.
Of course Queensland licencing laws weren’t always so rational. Even when they were first reformed under Goss there were some peculiarities. The On Premises - Primary Purpose Meals allowed alcohol to be served only to dining patrons. The Zoo dealt with this when it first opened by making it compulsory to by a meal with entry to the venue. It was quite strange really.
As a local muso, I’d love to see less pokies and more room for live musicians.
I’ve heard the horror stories from other musos. A drummer was playing at a regular pub for several months, only to have the stage space gradually taken up by more and more poker machines. He was bewildered - how can someone play a pokie while a five piece rock-band is pumping out AC/DC covers at 120 decibels?
I have a feeling the only way for more low-key venues to be set up (the kind my style aims at) is for the AHA to lose its strangle-hold and the State Government bring in cheaper licensing fees.
But like a few others have mentioned, there are places in Glebe and Surry Hills which do this ‘low-key’ thing quite well. Of course, they tend to be restaurants and cafes rather than ‘wine bars’. I remember playing at La Vera in Glebe and seeing a guy reading a book, eating pizza with us playing in the background, with the AHA prez’s comments coming to mind. Well - some people do just want to relax, read a book, sip wine, eat a good meal and listen to some live music.
MK
First things first: the Different Drummer on Glebe Point Road is a shit bar. $16 martinis, an iron spiral staircase and Rhapsody in Blue turned up to 11 does not a funky atmosphere make.
Sweet Jesus playing Queen of the Nile in the Lidcombe Catholic Workmen’s Club, what a lot of sick-making double standards we have here on this thread. I hope you can all see the irony in agreement between commenters who condemn AHA rent-seeking from the government and commenters who prefer a café culture so they can get more gigs (Mark K, nice work there).
Sydney has big pubs with lots of screens because there IS a culture of drinking, gambling, and watching sport in public. If there WERE demand for the middle-class sophistication so loved by LP and Catallaxy folk, it’d exist, driven by actual drinkers asking the bar manager to turn the music down. Is anyone but me surprised that legislative solutions are preferred there and here to that kind of interaction in the marketplace? I don’t think so.
Russell is perfectly right, BTW. Your cheap drinks in Sydney (and compared to Melbourne’s holes-in-the-wall, they’re VERY cheap) are paid for by problem gamblers and heavy drinkers, and without them, you’ll wind up unable to find an outside drink anywhere where you’re not paying for the ambience and cocaine chic. Oh, and spiral staircases.
Real alcohol consumption by normal people is evidently not to the taste of the Clover-Moore-loving bourgeois folk like John Greenfield, who’s captured the luvvie zeitgeist with this cracker:
“Passable”? Get back to London if you like chucking-out time so much. Leave the honest pubs of Sydney for Sydney’s honest drinkers.
That’s a very confused argument, DD.
The whole point of the current legislation is to circumvent the marketplace and prevent competition.
Just try it!
In any case, the sound level isn’t the only issue.
Again, nonsense. In Brisbane the existence of hole in the wall bars hasn’t driven cheap pubs out of business - because they cater for a different market. A minute’s walk away from the Bowery is the RG where you can listen to crap cover bands, eat greasy pizza, drink schooners for $4 something, and sit in a crowded noisy beer garden. If that’s your thing. It’s not mine these days.
Let a thousand bar flowers bloom, I say!
DD, people are arguing that the market is distorted and thus there are few “wine bar” type-venues. Are you seriously suggesting that customers could ask a bar manager to turn the live music down, turn the tvs showing sports off, and get rid of the pokies? In which bar might that work?
There are a few wine bar type places in my neighbourhood and they more-or-less work - there’s a market for them that’s for sure. Mind you - they’re not tiny places - one’s the size of a small pub and another intimate one is attached to a restaurant.
I do what I can.
That’s only partially true. The point of the current legislation is to raise the price for entry into the market. Within the limited marketplace of players with large amounts of startup capital, there’s enormous competition, which serve already a great number of different consumer markets. Sydney, for instance, has the most vibrant gay and lesbian bar scene in Australia. Furthermore, the myth that live music is unavailable because of pokies is just that, a myth, as anyone who reads Flop Eared Mule’s blog can tell you—it’s there for the finding.
And I say they’re blooming in Sydney, despite the bigoted misrepresentations of commenters. If you want to see a vibrant, historic culture of civilised drinking in NSW, don’t look to the boutique industry of other cities, look straight to the community-run small RSL, Leagues and bowling clubs of the suburbs and country towns.
In any bar where the publicans want to keep and maintain a clientele of regulars, Sacha. Try it out; I think you’ll find the bar manager at your local surprisingly obliging about the environment of her or his workplace, especially if you’re drinking there regularly.
As it happens, the regular drinkers of Sydney tend to like to watch sport and have a punt… the brutes, the vicious vicious brutes!
I still can’t see why those drinkers who don’t want to watch sport and have a punt can’t be catered for, DD. The whole point of liberalising the laws is to lower barriers to entry, and thus provide more choice. Your argument is really just a specious defence of the economic self-interest of existing licencees dressed up as populism.
My two responses here are:
1. I’m not defending the AHA. I think they’re a bunch of dinosaurs, and I’m all for liberalisation. That’s a function of my desire to see more drinking going on, however, not of a desire to establish or change culture.
I’d especially like to see the corrupt system of gambling licences thrown out, and stop the buying-up of small pubs in country towns for the use of their poker machine quota.
2. Populism? I think a lot of the arguments on this thread are really thinly-disguised snobbery, and ones that show tremendous ignorance of the actual diversity of the actually existing hotel and club industry.
Actual pubs and clubs in the real city of Sydney are far more interesting than the Hogarthian ones being imagined here.
Well, DD, although on my various visits to Sydney, I have found some pubs I like, there are many times when I’d prefer to go to a small bar. I suggest you sample some in Brisbane or Melbourne.
And while the point about queer clubs is taken, I’d also point out that lots of us on the wrong side of 35 (a) prefer bars to clubs; (b) sometimes encounter difficulty getting in to clubs because we’re not young and adorable and funky.
Now you’re talking sense. An exhaustive qualitative survey is called for.
Perhaps readers could be called upon to review their own preferred watering holes, and thorough comparison achieved by other readers visiting those same places?
I hesitate to joke about double-blind testing.
And another thing DD where have you been while this debate has been raging - I expected you to be leading the charge.
The thing that people anti-melbourne style bars are missing is that they are not just about drinking alcohol.
Unlike Sydney style drinking barns (love that term, very accurate), in Melbourne it is not uncommon to see a bunch of people sitting in a cozy little bar, with one or two enjoying a glass of wine, another with a beer, and the others nursing a coffee or hot chocolate. People linger for hours, read the paper, have a gossip. Bars on Brunswick and Lygon street have mums with bubs in pushers sitting down to have a coffee next to uni students having a quiet beer. And its perfectly civilised.
It dosn’t encourage excessive drinking, it encourages enjoying a nice glass or two. I’ve seen much less drunkeness where people spend the night hopping between little bars, then where they go to a large pokies style venue and just drink drink drink.
MsLaurie, that’s utter stereotype.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re elevating a thoroughly middle-class and romanticised mode of alcohol use, and expecting legislative changes to the market to deliver it as a norm.
What’s wrong with drinking without babies or education? The childless and ignorant have a right to get their drunk on too. They might even be noisy and rude.
I’ll tell you what civilisation is. Civilised drinking cultures don’t get all judgmental when adults consume alcohol directly, honestly, and effectively, for the purpose of enjoyably getting drunk.
Another thing: if you’d ever spent any time at a poker machine, you’d have noticed that most of your neighbours drink very moderately indeed.
So?
I just don’t see what your point is. You might like noisy pubs. That’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with people who don’t. And other drinking preferences should be catered for. Are you arguing against that? Or just expressing your own cultural preferences? If the former, you don’t have a coherent position. If the latter, fine, but why demean others’ desires?
The thrust of what you’re saying seems to be that it’s snobbery to want some other form of drinking culture than the current Sydney one.
I’ve got no problem if people want to drink in beer gardens, or swill grog on the cheap, or play the pokies, or whatever. But those shouldn’t be the only options for drinkers.
Absolutely DD!
Why shouldn’t the charming Melbourne estaminet share a party wall with the Sydney swillatorium?
Clients of each could choose to watch clients of the other enjoying booze in their own way, through plate glass windows, should they wish.
Knowledge promotes understanding.
BTW, who knew that an estaminet was originally a pole for tethering a cow?
DD, you’re chasing ghosts dude.
Provide us with one coherent argument for keeping liquor licenses. Preferably one which doesn’t stem from paranoia about people judging heavy drinking sports bars and actually engages with what’s at issue.
I, for example, love BOTH big-screen-$12-jugs-$1-pool-table-type pubs AND Moa-Tse-Tung-themed-lychee-martini-serving-only-room-to-seat-20-skinny-models-type bars. Thankfully I’m in Melbourne, where I’m free to worship you in the manner of my choosing, but really your attitude is disappointing.
Sorry.
“… keeping liquor licenses cripplingly expensive and needlessly restrictive“
Oh, I think I’m one of the least offenders here, when it comes to demeaning others’ modes of alcohol consumption.
Charming, you mean like the drinking habits of a Collingwood crowd or charming like 6pm of a Melbourne Cup day? Or, did you mean charming like the last train home from the city to Reservoir?
See, more than one can play at *that* game of snobbery.
The thrust of what I’m saying is that it’s perverse and counter-productive to try to use legislation to normalise one mode of alcohol consumption, especially a middle-class one. By all means make liquor licences cheaper, I’m entirely supportive of such a move. If it’s done to try to reduce alcohol consumption or encourage ‘responsible’ imaginary-bourgeois drinking habits, I’m telling you you’ll be disappointed.
Bless you, my child, FDB. Your piety has not gone unnoticed.
Difficult, as I’ve never endorsed such a thing. In fact, I’d like to see lots of parts of booze law liberalised, especially the bizarre zoning regulations lots of Australian councils have, that let yuppies’ noise complaints shut down perfectly civilised bars, pubs, and clubs well before even SBS is allowed to show foreign nudity on TV.
Which game would that be DD?
Why should you assume that the view would be more fascinating from one side of the windoes than the other?
Reeks of snobbery to me.
Myself, I often hold my nose and pay short anthropologically-driven visits to Melbourne’s charming estaminets.
“that let yuppies’ noise complaints shut down perfectly civilised bars”
Ooh, don’t even get me started on that shite DD.
I’ve been there. With Lefty E. Nice bar!