101 Things I Love About Sydney

After the closing of the Hopetoun and countless other venues, yet another Sydney music institution is under threat from gentrification and developers: the Abercrombie Hotel.

Arguably the smelliest dance floor in the state, the Abercrombie was nothing but an ugly, under-utilised "old mans drinking" facility of the six o'clock swill age, attached to the site of a former inner city brewery and on a very busy street corner - Abercrombie and Broadway.

It was however in a great location for students, literally just across the street from the University of Technology and down the road from the Uni of Sydney. Being on a main intersection also meant it could trade late into the night. It wasn't long until promoters discovered this smelly, nostalgic dive bar and turned into a hipster dance hangout - and it started with niche electronic music parties.

The Foreign Dub DNBBQ crew were the first guys to seize this grungey smelly den for one of their all-day, all-night jungle-music-and-cooked-meat-athons (sometime around 2001 I'm guessing), bringing in crowds to dance the night away in the carpeted bar and the outside beer garden (and of course to try and navigate between the two via the incredible small single staircase). Uber Lingua's world music fiestas soon followed, as did the anti-establishment performance night Creative Dissent.

But the Abercrombie remains synonymous with one night: Purple Sneakers. Named after a You Am I song and with a lineup generally stretching around the block, the sneakers became Sydney's see-and-be-seen Friday night for the Strokes/Franz indie uni student generation, getting to the point where wanker celebrities like Andrew Stockdale from Wolfmother were turning up to hang out, non-professional DJs like Chris Taylor from The Chaser came to spin tunes, local bands did DJ sets, record companies launched albums and many, many drunken pick ups took place. It's not much of a stretch to say that for indie kids, there really is nowhere else to go out late on a Friday night in Sin City.

Being down the street from my work means I've hung out at The Abercrombie far more than I should have for someone with a full time job, and looking back it was more than a venue, but rather a microcosm of my whole sordid twenties. At the Abercrombie I've kissed girls, reunited with old friends, cried my heart out, performed slam poetry, thrown up in the bathroom, danced like a crazy man to The Who at dawn, been ushered into a VIP room during a police shut down and been called a "good lookin' man" at the bar by Aussie rock legend Tim Rogers. We even had a work Christmas party there once, complete with professional decorations (but still the same godawful stench mix of sweat, beer, piss and puke).

Hopefully the Abercrombie will be back - with a new, less smelly carpet. Until then, Sydney seems to have run out of dodgy old man pubs for hipsters to reclaim for dance parties. What are we to do?

In what could actually be the straw that broke the camel's back of me deciding to move to Melbourne, The Hopetoun Hotel has closed suddenly and appears to be on the market, with the likelihood of it re-opening as an intimate music venue looking pretty damn unlikely.

Current uni-aged indie hipsters might have trouble believing me, but around the turn of the millennium, when both DJ culture and pokies were at their peak, i distinctly remember there were only two or three decent music venues left in Sydney where you could go see local independent bands seven nights a week - the Basement, the Annandale and The Hoey. Having survived that onslaught, it makes the sudden closing this week all the more unbelievable.

All throughout my twenties, the Hoey was always worth going to no matter what band was playing - as it always guaranteed a decent vibe, a laid back local crowd, intelligent music, cheap entry and a decent range of beers (including three Coopers on tap). On a quiet night you could sit on the floor with a drink in your hand - on a busy night you could never get to the bar and the dance floor was packed and sweaty. For years it was home to the Sunday electronica night Frigid, itself also a Sydney institution.

My favourite memories of the Hoey (in no particular order)

• The Hive (aka Baggsmen) + Pivot, winter 2001. Also, the Baggsmen's cinema shows playing along improvised music to movie scenes from Peter Seller's The Party and Indiana Jones.
• Also in 2001, rocking up randomly to see some up and coming band called Faker, which my friend Chris just happened to be in at the time.
• Jason Molina solo - frustratedly couldn't get his guitar to work for like 10 minutes, but managed to win over the crowd anyway
• Spod + Bluejuice on Christmas Eve, 2004, which also featured some birthday cake-wielding gatecrashers.
• The fact it welcomed great Melbourne bands that probably couldn't get a gig anywhere else in Sydney, like post-rockers International Karate and Laura, etc
• Sarah Blasko covering Kermit the Frog's The Rainbow Connection at a friend's private 30th.
• Rocket Science, September 2008 - last gig I saw before I left Sydney was at the Hoey, and it rocked out.
• seeing Thirsty Merc back when they were simply called "thirsty".
• Waiting For Guinness' annual anti-Homebake night crunk-jazz fests
• The Hauntingly Beautiful Mousemoon passing out improvised scrap metal percussive instruments to the crowd while also cooking pikelets onstage.

R.I.P. The Hoey.



Above: Betchadupa featuring a very young Liam Finn - onstage at the Hoey - Feb 5th 2003.





Above: A very early incarnation of the international prog-tronic exports Pivot onstage at the Hoey - winter 2001?

While Melbourne had Nadal and Federer battling it out in the final of a sweltering Australian Open Tennis final this summer - Sydney invented a brand new type of sport. A craze that for two days at least, was sweeping the Harbour city: Shark Fighting!

In early February there were two near-deadly shark attacks in our fine city, two days in a row. One was actually in the harbour, against a navy diver who was believed to be involved in a counter terrorism exercise. If anything, having live sharks in the harbour will arguably protect our battle ships against USS Cole type attacks better than anything the navy could possibly come up with. I don't see Al Qaeda wanting to fight sharks anytime soon. The diver punched the shark a couple of times and escaped needing surgery to his thigh and hand.

The very next day Sydney's iconic Bondi beach was the target of a daring dusk attack which left a surfer with a horribly wounded arm, and he was rushed to hospital. As the attack happened at 7:30pm, i.e. well past "beer o'clock" for Aussie film crews, we unfortunately have to assume that the Bondi Rescue documentary crew had already gone home and it won't wind up on next season of the hit show.

So, take that Paris, Tokyo, New York and London - we invented a new sport this summer!

Sorry so many of these things are in the inner-west, but hey, it is the COOLEST part of Sydney.

Every Thursday for as long as I can remember, omnipod piano maestro and Sydney identity Chuck Yates has held court at the unpretentious local the Bald Faced Stag, playing three sets of impro-heavy trad jazz, with a rotating array of horn players, including on at least one occasion - no less than three trombonists. For free. Til very late. Usually with a free supper at midnight. Needless to say, Sydney's starving students and jazz-starved music fans ate it up - literally. One of the best free nights out Sydney had on offer, last thursday was supposedly the last of Yates' nights at the Stag. But i get the feeling he'll back.

Rumour has it one Thursday after playing a set of their pop-heavy hits at the Annandale, the multi-talented Thirsty Merc then wondered up the road to the Stag and played a jazz set, which I reckon probably would have been more enjoyable than hearing them play Thirsty Merc songs.

The Bald Faced Stag is at 345 Paramatta Road, Leichhardt.

NOTE: I leave Sydney in a week to go live in Canada for a year, so don't expect any new entries for a while. I started this blog as a piss-takey way of remembering the things i love about Sydney, and hopefully despite increasing commercialisation and over-crowding, most of these things will stay so i have something to look forward to coming back to. Rock over Sydney!

Located on the corner of Parramatta Road and Norton Street, to call this cafe unassuming would be to hype it up too much. It's pretty average in every respect - the coffee, the foccacias, arancini and croissants are all merely sufficient. But in a city where every place tries to outdo everywhere else - this is a refreshing change.

If you're ever awake before dawn and in the area you're probably familiar with this place because it opens at 4:30am. As a result, I wound up spending a large chunk of my high school muck up night here in 1997 as i had nowhere else to go, and on many a sleepless night have trecked over for a super-early pre-work brekkie of lame ham and cheese croissant with the ham only slightly warm, and strong coffee.

After getting dumped once many years ago and not being able to sleep I rode my bike over to Leichhardt at 4:30am to have brekkie, and there was a nature doco on the tele in this cafe which featured lengthy shots of elephant fornication, and i thought, 'Great! Even the elephants on the tv in this shitty cafe at 4:30 in the morning are getting more sex than me right now." I don't know why that memory stays with me, but it does.

Bar Dei Castelli is at 395 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt.

Seriously, most of the fun nights I've had in my twenties have somehow involved this man in some way, as DJ, organiser or generally just the glue holding it all together. He's just always there. No matter where you are - a crazy warehouse party, an illegal beach party, a rowdy pub, a bush party, a crazy gallery opening, Health Club - you just turn around and he gives you a high-five. He's ubiquitously Sydney.

Okay okay okay, so the bits of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony i saw out of the corner of my eye in the pub last night were pretty damn impressive i have to admit. But let's not forget the Sydney Olympics, its Opening ceremony and how uniquely Sydney they were.

Sure Beijing has a rotating 3D multimedia globe with cascading aerialists, thousands of glowing percussionists, perfect military-like synchronisity and the world's largest 3D LCD keyboard, like the one Tom Hanks played in Big (but with little chinese people popping out).

But we had lawnmowers, mambo shirts and hills hoists. Also compared to Beijing, one thing that was uniquely Australian about the Sydney Olympics was our little slices of non-comformity and protest. Remember all the volunteer geniuses wearing Triple J t-shirts trying to win a publicity competition? Midnight Oil wearing Sorry Suits in direct defiance of the attending Prime Minister? Nikki Webster turning into a smarmy mole? The torch almost not lighting and being stuck halfway up a waterfall, but getting there in the end.

Yes, the Sydney Olympics were great and very Sydney. And look at the great legacy we have: great public transport and... errr... a fuck off big stadium. And Fatso the Fat Arsed Wombat. Viva 2000!

Link: http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Sydney-Australia/Chinese-Noodle-Restaurant/7778269335?ref=s

You can just picture this hole in the wall, crammed in dumpling shop being in the next Seinfeld. It's famed for it's bizarre yet cheap menu: Chicken Spring Pancakes anyone? Or how about the combination noodles - basically an Asian Spaghetti bolognese. Why not try the meat pastry - like a northern chinese pork quesadila? But the real reason you come here is the amazing home made dumplings (i'm a rebel - i like the steamed vegetarian), and well, the kitsch vineyard decor. And the fact you're so crammed in so close to your dining companions it's basically a second-base-fest with your co-workers.

A lot of people, myself included, believe winter sucks in Sydney. There's no fireplaces, we're not fashionably equipped and most of our houses and apartments have paper-thin walls. Our cafes and pubs, with their spacious outdoor areas, balconies and harbour views, are also arguably built for the summer months. So we generally spend winter at home freezing.

Then, on what is meant to be the coldest weekend of the year, you get a beautifully sunny 23 degree day (thanks global warming), warmer than many parts of Europe and America right now during their summer months.

Thanks Al Gore!

Say what you will about the road closures, flag waving tourists and very un-Australian outward displays of public religion, I'm taking inspiration from the thousands of visiting pilgrims and like them, I'm not paying for public transport this week.

Free public transport? Hallelujah!