Every may, the World Press Photo exhibition arrives in town, showcasing the previous year's most powerful, creative and inspiring photo journalism from around the world. It will leave you in shock and awe. For some reason I always seem to be a bit hungover when I go every year, which makes all the shots of African civil war mutilations and beheadings a little harder to take.

The best part: its at the State Library and it's free. And it doesn't visit Melbourne. Go Sydney (and to a lesser extent: Brisbane).

This is the last weekend it's on, if you haven't seen it, go (but take a box of tissues).

Look, it had to be in here sooner or later. The Townie was the source of many of my ex-girlfriends and a depository for most of my food money in my early 20's. Between the age of about 21 and 22, for me, the Townie quickly went from being the dirty place you went to at the end of the night, to the place where you knew everybody and everybody knew you. How lame were we! But it arguably still is the most friendly and unpretentious late-night dive bar in all of Sydney.

Look, I haven't gone back since Coopers broke the $5 mark and everyone managed to stay the same age but somehow got five years younger than me, but if i do ever go back here is my $2 juke box triple play that would always get the night going:
1. Sweet Child Of Mine: Guns N Roses
2. Warewolves of London: Warren Zevon
3. Hey Ya: Outkast

Sydney's only daily newspaper (i count the Telegraph and MX as being nothing but gossip-columns to be used for wiping windscreens or mopping sewage overflows), The Sydney Morning Herald started life in 1831, and has been consistently going downhill ever since. Long ago a bastian for strong international correspondence and indepth coverage, in recent years it's grown to be a haven for underpaid 21-year old "sociology" journalists who endlessly hate on Gen-X and the baby boomers, the odd contradictory opinion piece, and lots of wire stories. The only original and strong journalist left from the class of '31 is Economics Editor Ross Gittens, a rare leftie and humanist economist who explains every nuance of the global economic system in a way that even a whingey, desperately lonely, late-night blogger can understand. I reckon he should be our treasurer one day, except for the fact he actually cares for people - that might work against him in politics.

And despite being left-leaning, The Herald is also elitist, something The Chaser pointed out beautifully back when it was a satirical newspaper and not an adjective. In a satire on the Herald in 1999, it jokingly pointed out the Herald's editors also had concerns for its readers in the western suburbs - West Pymble, West Turramurra and West Gordon. Ha!

But despite the fact quality has gone down at The Herald, and despite that content has been reduced and/or is endlessly recycled and that freelances are getting paid much less than they used to... god, I'd kill to write for 'em one day. Because it's the only proper newspaper we've got left in this town.

Formerly with the much more confusing name of "Sydney Harbour Casino", Star City is where dreams come true. Especially if your dream is losing all your money to the pokies and travelling home in a minibus.

Essentially the same as Melbourne's Crown Casino - but without the glorious riverside locale, food court, cinema complex or array of bars, Star City is Sydney's premier gambling location. But that's not all. There's also the Showrrom theatre which has the latest jukebox musical or 30 year-old musical revival, popular undoubtedly because of the parking. There's also a fake fountain, a cafe with some of the most expensive and worst coffee in Sydney, a sports bar that's always empty, a convenience store, an Irish pub with all the ambience of a Westfield shopping mall (with music to match) and a Chinese noodle resteraunt with one of the most mediocre laksa's around. But I hear the gym recently had a firing range put in, so at least that's something new put in.

The only pub that has more propagandist billboards attached to it than downtown Baghdad during the Saddam Hussein regime (somehow branded by Coopers, Jagermeister and Cog!?!?), the Annandale was one of only about three music venues in Sydney to survive the pokies/DJ explosion of the late 90s. Just.

Since getting music back in 2000, it's slowly become Inner-Western Sydney's busiest music venue. Located just down the Great Western Highway, and right near Stanmore McDonalds and with plenty of street parking, it's hardly an inner city den of bohemia or progressive electronica.

But it does have live music most nights of the week, and as the profanity-labelled t-shirts remind us, it is a Sydney institution. Most Sydney gig-sluts will happily lie about the night they saw Elliott Smith, Jet or The Dandy Warhols here.

It's loud rock (and the odd hip-hop gig), and in a sign that it's both pure Sydney and pure angry, the beer is served in schmiddies made of plastic.

The sound might be average, it might be in the middle of a cultural desert and the crowd might vary from boring to mediocre, but we've all had a great night out at the Annandale at somepoint in our life.

Okay, so a fifth of the way through and about time i mentioned a sports related "thing i love about Sydney".

To live in Sydney, you have to love the Sydney Swans, even if, deep down, you realise they suck and you wish you lived in Melbourne so you could at least chose a half decent AFL team to go for. But that might be just about to change, with news that the AFL is looking into installing a team into Western Sydney (The Mullets? You can keep that one!), our city could become a lot more competitive in the world of AFL.

If you live in Sydney and have never seen the Swans play then for shame on you. Just today i saw them get thrashed by the Bulldogs at the SCG, and might i say, there's no better way to spend a sunny Autumn Sunday afternoon. Sure, winning would have been nice, but have you seen the Swans play lately? That would be asking for a miracle.

The annual Archibald Prize really is Sydney's only known visual art event. Once a year, every broadsheet newspaper reader in Sydney ventures down to the NSW Art Gallery, pays their $8, scans the paintings, passes judgement on the winner, ooohs and aarhs over one photo realistic entry, and then returns home to their live of Star Wars DVDs and/or reality TV shows, feeling cultured. Well, at least we've got one visual arts event that gets people out of the house.