{"id":76,"date":"2010-08-22T09:11:59","date_gmt":"2010-08-22T09:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/?p=76"},"modified":"2010-08-22T09:15:28","modified_gmt":"2010-08-22T09:15:28","slug":"24-hour-party-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"24 Hour Party People"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Only schooners, unfortunately<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whilst recently getting my daily intravenous shot of UK news, I was slightly perplexed to notice that the government will shortly be repealing the 24-hour licensing laws<\/a> and stopping pubs from serving alcohol round the clock.\u00c2\u00a0 Perplexed because I never came across a single pub that was open 24 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 Not one.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did I never stumble across (or indeed out of) one but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know of anyone else who found one of these, presumably, mythical establishments.\u00c2\u00a0 Was the whole thing an elaborate practical joke by New Labour or, more likely, a tool to divert our attention away from the latest catastrophic military intervention that we were embarking on?\u00c2\u00a0 I think we should be told.<\/p>\n

Things are very different in Sydney, however \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 24-hour drinking is very much a part of the social scene here.\u00c2\u00a0 There are some variations from council to council but I can guarantee that, if you are anywhere in central Sydney at any time of the day, you are never more than fifteen minutes away from a cold one.\u00c2\u00a0 How good is that?\u00c2\u00a0 Very is the answer you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking for.\u00c2\u00a0 It has to be pointed out that this liberal attitude (a surprisingly rare thing in Australia) to licensing does come at a cost namely zealotry from bouncers on an unprecedented scale.\u00c2\u00a0 In no particular order, these are some of my favourite denials from bouncers in Sydney:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not tonight boys, you look like you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had a few too many\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 This was said at 8PM on a Saturday evening when the people on the receiving end of the denial had had literally nothing <\/em>to drink.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Only three of you can come in\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 This was aimed at a group of four but, bizarrely, the bouncer refused to identify which one of us was persona non grata.\u00c2\u00a0 Admittedly this was at 2AM on a Tuesday so probably for the best that we were refused.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Had a drink have we boys?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 This was stated at 1AM on a Friday night to which the appropriate answer would be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No you fucking knucklehead, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve obviously been sitting at home sipping apple juice all evening before lowering ourselves to visit your dingy little cess pit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 Clearly the recipient of that denial didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take the opportunity to deliver that line though or I doubt he would have lived to tell me the tale.<\/p>\n

To be fair though, unless you happen to encounter a particularly idiotic bouncer (which, lets face it, are a global phenomenon) and you always carry your ID (even I, in the autumn years of my youth, have been ID\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d on a number of occasions here), you are sure to be able to get a drink somewhere at 5AM on a Wednesday which can only be a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whilst recently getting my daily intravenous shot of UK news, I was slightly perplexed to notice that the government will shortly be repealing the 24-hour licensing laws and stopping pubs from serving alcohol round the clock.\u00c2\u00a0 Perplexed because I never came across a single pub that was open 24 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 Not one.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “24 Hour Party People”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[34,35,36],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-randomnonsense","tag-24-hour-drinking","tag-bouncers","tag-drinking-in-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}