Melbourne: It's not as bad as you think
*HEADNOTE: This blog entry is essentially a month late, due to university commitments and Sam’s general all-round laziness*
As most you who know me will know, I typically despise Melbourne. There are numerous reasons for this, into most of which I shan’t go (Oh dear me, I’ve started with the shitegeist already, it seems) but instead will focus on one: My first experience of the city. As a brief recap for those of you unfortunate enough not to have experienced the utter delight of my anti-Melbourne-rant, my brother and I travelled down on the XPT one night in 2002 to see Leeds United play Chilean club champions Colo Colo at the Telstra Dome. Essentially, the one full day we were down there was spent drinking quite ridiculous and nausea-inducing amounts of coffee (mostly with caramel flavouring as well, which any dietician with an intense desire to lose his license is sure to tell you is very good for you and makes you feel great afterwards), hanging around a very dull hotel room and of course, as the crowning festering piece of dog shit in the septic tank, watching the infamous Scooby-Doo, otherwise known as “The reason Raja Gosnell is the number one candidate in the known universe to have his testicles bitten off by a rabid gorilla”.
Anyway, that was before. The bottom line, and the major point of this post, is that my opinion of Melbourne has changed very dramatically in the past week from my second trip to the Victorian capital. I would rather enjoy writing a long spiel on all of my experiences, my thoughts, observations, and musings, but firstly, while that idea could potentially amount to the greatest collection of philosophical manifestations since Les Chemins de la Liberté, it is far more likely to be about as interesting as categorising and filing the plumbing details of a group of accounting students, and secondly and excessively more importantly, I just can’t be fucked.
So instead I give you the abridged, annotated version of “Things I learned in Melbourne”:
1) Melbourne, in its entirety, does NOT consist of the 250-metre area around Spencer Street Station. Yes, that particular area is rather cruddy, but naturally it is a rather foolhardy thing to do to judge an entire city by one particular aesthetically unappealing area of it. Naturally I would be rather put out if a Victorian visited Belmore and viewed it as the centre and epitome of the Sydney style of living. I have spanked myself a suitable number of times with a wooden paddle for being so small-minded.
2) Sharing an ensuite bathroom with two girls is not nearly as horrible as I thought it might be. (‘might’ being the operative word, I mean it ‘might’ also have been the hottest time in my life) This, however could be attributed to the fact that we all shared different, and very compatible morning schedules, and also the fact that I had packed more bathroom products than either of my female companions put together. Hence subsequent to this new piece of knowledge is also the fact that I am even more frighteningly effeminate than I ever dared to believe. Shocking.
3) There are a number of excellent night spots in Melbourne. The first of these is E-55, which somehow manages to straddle the border between a trendy upmarket bar (They seemed to stock a minimum of Adjunct Lagers and there was plenty of Little Creatures Pale Ale to go around) and a Hippy lounge in Newtown. While we were there I also learned the fact that, apparently “We are so cool. Everyone in this bar wishes they were as cool as us”. So let’s all remember that fact, eh? Secondly, there’s the Night Cat in Fitzroy, which was everything that was promised – drinks, dancing and the fact that it was in Fitzroy. (Well we had to go there at least once, surely) Unfortunately though, it must be stated that a bottle of VB there goes for five dollars – and no, it’s no special type of VB that doesn’t make one want to beat one’s wife with a wooden spoon, it’s ordinary, run-of-the-mill, godawful VB. Yes, I don’t understand it either. The third, and of course most important (despite what the Melbourne yuppies who led me here were spouting on about) night spot is the Portland Hotel/James Squire Brewhouse, simply because it brews a range of beers that are to be found… well, nowhere else? I’d have to check that. But anyway, along with that side of my personality that desperately wants to own films like Det Sjunde Inseglet and Ladri di Biciclette because they’re unavailable in this country comes another side that wants to try beers such as Portland Pale and James Squire Speculator simply because I’d have a very difficult time laying my hands on them back in Sydney. All in all the pub is a bit dowdy, I must say, and reminds me of the Coolangatta Hotel (which we seemed to dub during our Queensland trip as the ‘hangout for drunken angry old women’) only without the light. And the drunken angry old women. But the beers were all worth drinking. Portland Pale is quite an excellent drinking ale, smooth and fruity and subtly complex (I’m sounding as pretentious as possible just to please my greatest critic of course). Speculator was a very complex but also very unlikeable sort of beer. No front palatte and suddenly hitting you with an unwelcome fruit hit, and an aftertaste that makes you want to eat gravel to take the taste away. No, it certainly wasn’t that bad and I’m glad I tried it simply because it was interesting. As for “The Craic”, well, all I can say is what I’ve said countless times when people ask about it. It’s black coffee. With a head. And there’s nothing more than can be said. Well, essentially the other ‘spot’ we visited at night was the Crown Casino, but since this particular annotation has gone on quite ridiculously long enough, I shall start afresh in number 4 on my Crown rant.
4) Crown Casino can very accurately and justifiably be compared to a special kind of black hole that leaves one’s body and clothing completely unharmed but manages to engulf anything on your person made of shiny metal or plastic with a famous Australian person’s face on it. From the “Five free dollars credit” for the pokies that can only be accessed once you have amounted thirty ‘pokie points’ (which approximates to about one hundred dollars’ loss) to the bar upstairs at which bottles of Heineken require $7, and games of pool require not only $4, but the ability to use one of those slot devices where you need to create enough forward momentum to propel, in one short, sharp motion, a freight train full of gold bullion from Mecca to Beirut, with enough speed that nobody in its intervening journey is able to see what the train contains and hence raise their spirits in a cruelly vain way, or else only a few of the balls will come out, without a second chance being given. The abridged version of the preceding sentence says, we had to pay four dollars for a game of pool with five of each coloured ball, and a second cueball instead of the black. Now of course I hear you all saying “But hang on, it’s a casino, it’s supposed to sap your money’. Now that is true. But stop interrupting me and get out of my goddamn house or I’ll call the police. (Oh yeah, cos they’ll do a lot, fucking fascists. Remind me later to do a blog entry on why I hate the police by the way) But in direct comparison to Conrad Jupiter’s, the casino is ridiculous. Did we get a free meal for joining the Casino? No. Did we get two free beverages, each night we visited, per members card we had? No. Were there $3 Daiquiris that were actually really nice? No (There were $5 Daiquiris that were okay) All that Crown contained was a large number of devices to sap your money. And that’s all.
Now, owing to the fact that this blog entry has taken about a month of my free time (of which I’ve hardly had none, incidentally), I’ve forgotten how I was going to end it now. But as my brother has smartly suggested, I could simply post this half and perhaps finish it off later when I have remembered all else that I learned about Melbourne. Especially since it’s been about three months since I posted anything here. I can’t disappoint my beloved faithful now, can I?
As most you who know me will know, I typically despise Melbourne. There are numerous reasons for this, into most of which I shan’t go (Oh dear me, I’ve started with the shitegeist already, it seems) but instead will focus on one: My first experience of the city. As a brief recap for those of you unfortunate enough not to have experienced the utter delight of my anti-Melbourne-rant, my brother and I travelled down on the XPT one night in 2002 to see Leeds United play Chilean club champions Colo Colo at the Telstra Dome. Essentially, the one full day we were down there was spent drinking quite ridiculous and nausea-inducing amounts of coffee (mostly with caramel flavouring as well, which any dietician with an intense desire to lose his license is sure to tell you is very good for you and makes you feel great afterwards), hanging around a very dull hotel room and of course, as the crowning festering piece of dog shit in the septic tank, watching the infamous Scooby-Doo, otherwise known as “The reason Raja Gosnell is the number one candidate in the known universe to have his testicles bitten off by a rabid gorilla”.
Anyway, that was before. The bottom line, and the major point of this post, is that my opinion of Melbourne has changed very dramatically in the past week from my second trip to the Victorian capital. I would rather enjoy writing a long spiel on all of my experiences, my thoughts, observations, and musings, but firstly, while that idea could potentially amount to the greatest collection of philosophical manifestations since Les Chemins de la Liberté, it is far more likely to be about as interesting as categorising and filing the plumbing details of a group of accounting students, and secondly and excessively more importantly, I just can’t be fucked.
So instead I give you the abridged, annotated version of “Things I learned in Melbourne”:
1) Melbourne, in its entirety, does NOT consist of the 250-metre area around Spencer Street Station. Yes, that particular area is rather cruddy, but naturally it is a rather foolhardy thing to do to judge an entire city by one particular aesthetically unappealing area of it. Naturally I would be rather put out if a Victorian visited Belmore and viewed it as the centre and epitome of the Sydney style of living. I have spanked myself a suitable number of times with a wooden paddle for being so small-minded.
2) Sharing an ensuite bathroom with two girls is not nearly as horrible as I thought it might be. (‘might’ being the operative word, I mean it ‘might’ also have been the hottest time in my life) This, however could be attributed to the fact that we all shared different, and very compatible morning schedules, and also the fact that I had packed more bathroom products than either of my female companions put together. Hence subsequent to this new piece of knowledge is also the fact that I am even more frighteningly effeminate than I ever dared to believe. Shocking.
3) There are a number of excellent night spots in Melbourne. The first of these is E-55, which somehow manages to straddle the border between a trendy upmarket bar (They seemed to stock a minimum of Adjunct Lagers and there was plenty of Little Creatures Pale Ale to go around) and a Hippy lounge in Newtown. While we were there I also learned the fact that, apparently “We are so cool. Everyone in this bar wishes they were as cool as us”. So let’s all remember that fact, eh? Secondly, there’s the Night Cat in Fitzroy, which was everything that was promised – drinks, dancing and the fact that it was in Fitzroy. (Well we had to go there at least once, surely) Unfortunately though, it must be stated that a bottle of VB there goes for five dollars – and no, it’s no special type of VB that doesn’t make one want to beat one’s wife with a wooden spoon, it’s ordinary, run-of-the-mill, godawful VB. Yes, I don’t understand it either. The third, and of course most important (despite what the Melbourne yuppies who led me here were spouting on about) night spot is the Portland Hotel/James Squire Brewhouse, simply because it brews a range of beers that are to be found… well, nowhere else? I’d have to check that. But anyway, along with that side of my personality that desperately wants to own films like Det Sjunde Inseglet and Ladri di Biciclette because they’re unavailable in this country comes another side that wants to try beers such as Portland Pale and James Squire Speculator simply because I’d have a very difficult time laying my hands on them back in Sydney. All in all the pub is a bit dowdy, I must say, and reminds me of the Coolangatta Hotel (which we seemed to dub during our Queensland trip as the ‘hangout for drunken angry old women’) only without the light. And the drunken angry old women. But the beers were all worth drinking. Portland Pale is quite an excellent drinking ale, smooth and fruity and subtly complex (I’m sounding as pretentious as possible just to please my greatest critic of course). Speculator was a very complex but also very unlikeable sort of beer. No front palatte and suddenly hitting you with an unwelcome fruit hit, and an aftertaste that makes you want to eat gravel to take the taste away. No, it certainly wasn’t that bad and I’m glad I tried it simply because it was interesting. As for “The Craic”, well, all I can say is what I’ve said countless times when people ask about it. It’s black coffee. With a head. And there’s nothing more than can be said. Well, essentially the other ‘spot’ we visited at night was the Crown Casino, but since this particular annotation has gone on quite ridiculously long enough, I shall start afresh in number 4 on my Crown rant.
4) Crown Casino can very accurately and justifiably be compared to a special kind of black hole that leaves one’s body and clothing completely unharmed but manages to engulf anything on your person made of shiny metal or plastic with a famous Australian person’s face on it. From the “Five free dollars credit” for the pokies that can only be accessed once you have amounted thirty ‘pokie points’ (which approximates to about one hundred dollars’ loss) to the bar upstairs at which bottles of Heineken require $7, and games of pool require not only $4, but the ability to use one of those slot devices where you need to create enough forward momentum to propel, in one short, sharp motion, a freight train full of gold bullion from Mecca to Beirut, with enough speed that nobody in its intervening journey is able to see what the train contains and hence raise their spirits in a cruelly vain way, or else only a few of the balls will come out, without a second chance being given. The abridged version of the preceding sentence says, we had to pay four dollars for a game of pool with five of each coloured ball, and a second cueball instead of the black. Now of course I hear you all saying “But hang on, it’s a casino, it’s supposed to sap your money’. Now that is true. But stop interrupting me and get out of my goddamn house or I’ll call the police. (Oh yeah, cos they’ll do a lot, fucking fascists. Remind me later to do a blog entry on why I hate the police by the way) But in direct comparison to Conrad Jupiter’s, the casino is ridiculous. Did we get a free meal for joining the Casino? No. Did we get two free beverages, each night we visited, per members card we had? No. Were there $3 Daiquiris that were actually really nice? No (There were $5 Daiquiris that were okay) All that Crown contained was a large number of devices to sap your money. And that’s all.
Now, owing to the fact that this blog entry has taken about a month of my free time (of which I’ve hardly had none, incidentally), I’ve forgotten how I was going to end it now. But as my brother has smartly suggested, I could simply post this half and perhaps finish it off later when I have remembered all else that I learned about Melbourne. Especially since it’s been about three months since I posted anything here. I can’t disappoint my beloved faithful now, can I?
posted by Sean's Beard at 1:19 PM
2 Comments:
When you post your entry on why you hold the police in less than the greatest awe, remember they are everywhere and probably read blogs.
Ladri di Biciclette is available on DVD in English through the US Amazon but not UK Amazon and neither has the other film available at all.
"finish it off later"? *looks sceptical*
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