They’re the bars that stand back while you violently hurl your guts all over the bar, wipe it down, then gladly serve you another jug of Carlton.
The pubs with dodgy sofas so crusty, you’re pretty certain you’ve caught genital lice by walking past them.
The hotels that inexplicably remain open in the face of Department of Health inspections.
You wouldn’t dare bring a first date to any of them – but somehow, they’re all brilliant. What is Melbourne’s “best worst” bar, what antics have you seen at them, and what makes them so good?
Against my better judgement, I’m a fan of the Joint on corner of Flinders Lane/Elizabeth Street. You know the place… it’s up the escalators. Any pub that requires traversing up an escalator to gain entry is a pretty clear warning sign.
The place is swarming with backpackers, and the decor is akin to a early 90′s morning show TV set (think fading potted palms and strangely corrugated iron used as art). But it’s cheap, and you’re guaranteed to find a confused yet horny Swedish backpacker to drink the night away with.
The Joint is the best place in Melbourne to end an epic night. The place doesn’t close, and unless you actually manage to vomit on the security guards, you’ll always be let in.
But, for the sake of diversity and originality, I’m going to nominate the combo of Pony and Cherry. Although in the “post-Jet/Melbourne Denim Rock” haze, they’ve turned into mecca for the kiddies, they used to be awesome places where you could get poleaxed and lose your shit to Sabbath. Cherry is/was particularly infamous for not-so-clandestine sex in the disabled toilets.
My favourite Pony moment was convincing the bartender to give me eight (8) shots of Jack Daniel’s in a pint glass, topped with coke, which I then proceeded to chug as they closed immediately afterwards.
RSA? What’s that?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the Carlton Hotel.
Yes, they serve the best finger food (mmm mushroom risotto balls!) and their drinks are well made, but!! they have spray on velvet covering nearly every surface!
Every time I go there I’m scared to lean on anything in case I get covered in it myself!
Great Britain in Richmond. Tacky decour, they have a beer on tap called ‘Piss’ and you can accidentally set yourself on fire and they still won’t kick you out.
The Post Office in Coburg – okay, so it helps that it’s at the end of my street, but what was once a feared pub has become a bastian of just gettin’ boozy. There’s no pretention, there’s no wankery, it’s just dudes drinking as much beer as possible, and playing a few games of stick. There’s even a laminated table that has a photo of Jessica Simpson
The Joint should be disqualified on the grounds that it is a backpacker haunt and therefore a bloodhouse of scum and villianry by very definition.
Voting the Great Britain because they plain don’t seem to give a f*ck.
The Public Bar, hands down.
Apparently they have recently upped the price of pots on Mondays from $1 to $1.50.
Quite the rate of inflation, I suppose, but still the cheapest crap beer in town.
Yeh I know what you mean. For me it’s the scary lifesize stuffed emu standing over the bar STARING at me everytime I order a drink. One day it will come to life and kill us all.
The best bar in Melbourne is Tiger Bar especially on Friday nights, oh so cheap drinks =)
Often intending to go out other places I just end up staying there drunk over $7 jugs and $2 Sparklings!
vadette in footscray. esp on punk nights. sometimes they do punk karaoke in the beer garden, kinda funny watching punks murdering love ballads….
Until last year, I would’ve said the Vaucluse in Richmond, but they’ve gone and wankered it up. The sticky carpet and elderly barflies have gone, replaced with polished concrete and coffee wankers.
So, instead, I’ll go with the Rising Sun in Richmond. Because the carpet is slighly less sticky, and the elderly barflies slightly less obnoxious, but the spirit is the same.
The Curtin, opposite Trades Hall.
Looks like a lounge room, smells like a toilet – possibly due to their urinals, which are indistinguishable in scent from the Lion Pit at the Melbourne Zoo.
On the food front, the new chef recently upgraded their $8.00 pasta to $11.00 pasta by value-adding the taste of burnt plastic and making the penne crunchier. Meanwhile, their cheeky little risotto is now indistinguishable from curry spew.
Beer-wise, things start to pick up, with a choice of Carlton Draught or some weird-arse Coopers variant, and a couple of dodgy looking taps which are probably plumbed into the aforementioned urinals.
As with many pubs, access to the beer is gained via the relatively inoffensive bar staff – inoffensive except for one bipolar barmaid who looks like she has her makeup done by the creature effects department behind Stargate – and the beer itself is surprisingly cheap.
(No extra charge is levelled for the addition of a shot of lime cordial to the Carlton Draught, which is a must if you are at all averse to the flavour of ripe dog shit.)
Cam: I like the John Curtin Hotel for one reason: it’s got (hands down) the best urinal graffiti in Melbourne (though the Great Britain’s is okay). Someone wrote “Baise la Police” (fuck the police, in french) and someone else corrected it to “Baise les police”. Really, who corrects grammar in urinal graffiti?
I was looking hard for good graffiti in there, but either the smell was misting my eyes, or they’ve cleaned up recently, ’cause there was just a ham-fisted rewording of a Government Health Campaign “ALCOHOL WILL RAPE YOU!” poster and a few lame tags . . .
I’ll take a closer look next week for this quality francais of which you speak :-P
Pony is definitely up there, but I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Greyhound in Balaclava (or st.kilda, whatever it is).
surely not! Vedette is such a classy establishment, well.. for Footscray, at least.
The Tote.
Many nights I have stopped in there while attempting to walk home to Clifton Hill from Fitzroy, either for a last drink, a wee, or just to check out the crowd that came to see whatever the band was that night. Also, much like at Pony, I have had some epic seedy adventures in the upstairs toilet.
If you remember going to Pony – you weren’t really at Pony! :3
Pony.
Pony! It has to be Pony! Filthy but magic.
I miss Pony…
I know a lot of people hate it, but I’m going to go with St Jerome’s. Filthy unisex toilets, unreliable power, longnecks of Melbourne Bitter, and everything else in plastic cups, the scent of rotting garbage wafting in from Caledonian Lane… Despite all this I have never had a bad night there and lament its imminent closure :(
St. Jeromes is terrible, also the nerve to charge $2 to get in there!?
I went to the Curtain for the first time and yes, it’s like the Arty without the punks. Grotty.
I’d like to nominate the Doulton Bar at the end of Acland Street on Barkly in St.Kilda. It has no discernable crowd, just guaranteed alcos. In an area famed for its sun and fun vibe, it hides behind smoked front windows, low ceilings and a convoluted layout, possibly to hide the organ keeping it alive: the TAB. Plus, it’s part of a complex called the Village Belle. If that was the best my village could do, I’d start drowning ducks.
The comments regarding the Carlton (in Bourke St) must be channelling the *former* incarnation of this renowned tavern before it was spruced up in the late 90s. Prior to that, it was definitely one of the ‘last on the list’ city joints to end the night at.
But staying in historical vein, I want to put in a bid for The Club on Smith St. Before it closed down after a murder (which indicates the kind of class joint we are dealing with), you would descend two or even three floors to a sticky-carpeted, moth-eaten pool-tabled den of smoke and beer and crap bands … to resurface some indefinite period of time later to the scent of Melbourne’s crappest hotdog stand. Ooo-wee, loved those days!
Is it sad that I have fond memories of lots of these places?
I’d nominate upstairs at the Portland (stickiest carpet I’ve ever squelched, and added bonus of poles). Not sure if it’s open generally as a bar though, or just for corporate functions…
JJs bar at Crown has put prices up to a massive 10 dollars a drink. Their pretentious snobbery makes it uncomfortable for out of towners and locals alike who are usually finishing off their night from elsewhere. Snotty bar staff and thin skinned managers who can’t take positive criticism about their appalling social skills. Give it a miss, there are plenty of better places such as Silk, Manhattan Lane, Long Room, Comme Bar, Spice. The list is endless
The Orrong Hotel in Armadale. Costs bugger all (except for the stale overpriced beer in the bottleshop) for that local experience of groaning plates from the bistro and cold beer from the owner as she uses her A-frame to move around behind the bar. If you can get over the bright lights from the TAB, torn pool table surface, slow service and the regulars who hate each other then it can be a great experience.
RSA is just something those fancy new pubs deal with, as you can throw a credit card over the bar when you’re bordering on throwing up and still get served for a few more hours. Strongly suggest not turning up with any footy colours – can be unhealthy.
there are a few places you can have the pleasure of visiting that
seem to almost hum with personality. It was as if the building was
willing to take a break from its daily activity to let a band come
on it and play some songs. I reckoned the greyhound to be one of those
joints. I don’t know what happened there before we ar…rived, and i don’t
know what happened after we left, but i do know that in the short time
that we were there, we were regulars, woven forever into its story
Cherry was once a good bar. Being an old hand in Melbourne’s band scene, I would have to say Cherry Bars security is now keeping out it’s loyal punters of more than 15 years. The last 3 times I have been there I was admitted once, and that was the one time I was intoxicated. On the 2 other occasions I was told to grab some food and come back. On both these occasions I had not had a drink. If you want an old school rock venue only Melbourne can provide then I recommend Pony in the CBD and Brinswick for the real deal. The Cherry is dead to me!