Many pubs and bars claim to make you feel like you're in your own lounge room - but the Clare really DOES resemble my lounge room. It's full of mismatched op-shop furniture, strewn pizza boxes, fellow ABC co-workers and a solid collection of current streetpress. And with mix CDs with the likes of Rock Steady Crew and Cyndi Lauper chosen by the bartenders, it has a house party vibe as the night goes on.

Yeah look, it's the only pub near my work that has a cool crowd and a non-pretentious vibe, and it was one of the first pubs to react against the gentrification of Sydney bars and "de-renovate" back to its tiled walls and back alley furnishings. The Clare is a comfy (though at times loud and crowded) corduroy oasis in a city of chrome and stainless steel.

File Under: Dive Bar.

The Clare is at 20 Broadway, Broadway.

A slice of serenity in the back streets of Surry Hills, Cafe Lounge really is the only Melbourne-like little bar/cafe in Sydney. In fact, it feels like exactly the kind of place the Australian Hotel Association is petrified of. Yes, it's a dark little hole and it serves chardonnay!

It's a cafe, open late, that serves beer. HOW NOVEL! It can get packed out by Surry Hills trendies on a Friday or Saturday night, but for a quiet beer after work (and i do mean quiet - this is probably the only place you can actually hear someone across the table speaking to you), or a romantic date, this place is great. In fact, for those closet alcoholics who don't mind a drink alone, you often see youngin' tucked up on a couch reading a book with a beer: yes, such un-Sydneylike behaviour is tolerated here. Beer prices, while not cheap, have remained steady over the years, at $7 for a Little Creatures at the moment, and the coffee and cocktails are pretty good too. If you're a VB Addict, please look elsewhere.

The music was better when I used to DJ there, but it's still not bad.

Cafe Lounge is at the corner of Crown and Goulburn Streets, Surry Hills.

Okay about time I mentioned a pub.

Like Sydney in general, The Old Fitzroy in Woolloomooloo crams a lot of multiculturalism into a small space. There's a very London-like Fringe theatre downstairs, one of Sydney's best Laksa's from the Thai restaraunt out the back, a front bar to rival any Irish pub and a retro upstairs lounge. Thank god it remains tucked away one of Sydney's scariest streets, as this is a hidden gem. Oh, and it has Blue Tongue Ginger Beer back on tap and available by the pint.

The Old Fitz is at 129 Dowling St, Woolloomooloo.

Lock up your DVD players and laptops - cheap heroin is back in Sydney! First we had grunge, then recently it seemed like House music is back, and now it seems like one more early 90s retro kick is back - cheap smack.

The dirtiest of the skank drugs, heroin has always fit in nicely in Sin-City - we just aren't rich enough New Yorkers to enjoy coke habits and despite the beaches and climate, aren't chilled out to be a weed culture. If Sydney were a drug it would be this or ice really.

How do I know? My lady friend and I discovered a junkie passed out in the grounds of Glebe Public School the other day, lying flat as a tack with hit fit next to him. Awesome, they leave dangerous needles lying around for kids and then vomit. And i learnt a valuable lesson that day: let sleeping junkies lay.

Expect to see more tracksuits on the streets of Sydney soon - just not in the Urban Style columns.

EDIT: I saw a guy "on the nod" over a plate of calamari at the Shakespeare in Surry Hills the other night - Sydney's new millennium junkies sure have come a long was in sophistication since the chicko rollls of the 1980s, that's for sure!

One image sums up Norton Street in my mind: a young man doing tearing up the block doing a wheelie on a Vespa Scooter. Say no more.

Lygon Street's poorer little brother, this was originally Sydney's home of cafe culture and Italian food, but has in recent years become a poor imitation of its former self. It's crowded, overpriced, and with the arrival of the Forum, a fake imitation. Yes, Norton Street is very Sydney indeed.

11 months of the year, drinking in Hyde Park or dancing in the fountain at 4am could get you arrested. For one month of the year, a classy big wooden tent rocks up in Sydney, and you feel like you're drinking in a 19th century Parisian cabaret lounge - and all is acceptable.

The Spiegeltent is a heritage-listed, world-class performance art and music venue, an antique tent made of ornate wood and mirrors, programmed with exciting and cutting-edge performance arts and music events. To the shock of all of us, Sydneysiders emerge from the darkened pubs of Newtown and the Rocks in sold-out numbers.

The Spiegelten comes from some foreign country - who cares which one, it doesn't matter, we all know it belongs in Sydney and should stay here.

We plonk it down in the middle of Hyde Park for the duration of the Sydney festival, and it's like it never left. Programmed with 3-4 shows every night, including a (shock horror) very late and unSydney-like midnight jazz/latin/funk gig. And in a true sign of egalatarianism, Hollywood royalty is forced to sit down with the plebs in the round (Keith and Nicole distracted me - and no, it wasn't a media launch or celebrity preview, it was just a regular Thursday night session.) Even current American TV darling Rose Byrne had to queue up like the rest of us. And if you can't afford tickets to a show, you're welcome sit out in the balmy Sydney summer night and have a $7 beer in the multinational-company branded garden and overhear the excited crowds inside.

So this leads us to ask, why doesn't Sydney just build a spiegeltent and have world class acts in it all year round? Because in typical Sydney style, it would be a ridiculously overpriced public-private partnership, be built of stainless steel and be fourteen stories high.

Above: Sydney crunk/jazz/gypsy group Waiting For Guinness rock the Spiegeltent to a packed crowd on Australia Day this year.