The Sun-Herald

This week in parties

For those who can't get enough party action, Amy ushers you behind the scenes for more of her unique take on Sydney's nightlife.

THE UGLY, THE BAD AND THE VERY GOOD

When as part of your job you visit venues where staff are their on best behaviour, service is impeccable and management obsequious, you need reality checks. You need to see what happens when people don't know you're a journalist.
I had one of these last Saturday, on a hens' night at the Bristol Arms' Retro Hotel, an establishment which makes that TV show America's Hardest Prisons look like a travelogue of luxury boutique hotels.
Here, we were confronted with a sobering insight into what is allowed to pass for "lively entertainment and fantastic service" (The Retro's website promise) in certain parts of Sydney these days.
Our hen, a meticulous woman, had phoned to arrange her night in advance and had requested a visit to the hotel's '80s floor.' Come on down, the management had urged. They welcomed hens' parties.
We arrived on time, in teeming rain. By hens' standards we were a tame group and a small one. Our most striking reveler was an eight-months pregnant girl who wasn't up to much except tapping her foot cheerily to the music and making regular toilet visits.
We were parked outside at the back of a long, soggy queue. We waited obediently. We didn't take issue with the barking security man who was treating the well-behaved queue as if they were something inconvenient he'd been asked to hammer into a hole. I was amazed at how patient these drenched, cold people were, and how compliantly they parted with their $15 at the door and then queued again inside, while another charmless behemoth yelled at them to 'stay up against the wall!'
We reached the front at last, but we weren't allowed to go to the 80s floor because it was full. Our hen politely asked if we could perhaps visit the 80s one later because she had, after all, specifically asked for this particular retro experience and had been urged to come along and try it and it was her hens' night. The glowering doorstop was unrepentant. It was 90s or out.
And so we entered the fun paradise we'd paid and queued for, and it turned out to be a joyless, dark, clammy-floored chamber reeking of disinfectant and of things the disinfectant was trying to mask, patrolled by more security staff bullying and intimidating with unchecked enthusiasm. The vodkas were $8 and pumping them out was a morose, topless barman in a policeman's hat and little shorts. He looked as if he'd rather be digging graves.
What struck me most about it all was the sheer contempt for the clientele pervading every nook of the place, and the cowed resignation of the crowds who had clearly come to expect nothing better. I wanted to take them by the hand and lead them to one of Sydney's myriad of quality, welcoming bars where service means you feel special and not an inconvenience and where no one will shout at you or make you feel like a stricken farm animal on its way into the abattoir. But I didn't get the chance. I needed to use the ATM in the bottom bar because the entry fee and bar prices had quickly emptied my wallet. On my way down, I asked Shrek at the stairs if going back up, armed with cash to spend over the bar, would be a problem. Nope, he grunted, that was fine.
Two minutes later, he'd changed his mind and despite my wrist stamp, ordered me back to the end of the very first queue - the one out in the rain. I texted my apologies to the hen, took my cash and spent it on a taxi back to civilisation and some very nice Pinot at Aperitif, where the manager welcomed me with a warm hug. But before I left, I asked one of the shivering punters in the queue why he put up with these horrors. He shrugged. "You just do, don't you? It's the Retro Hotel." How sad.
It turned out that the hens who remained behind continued to have an appalling night and were treated so badly that one of them wrote a letter of complaint and revealed herself as a journalist. She received a grovelling apology and an invitation to be on the guest list on a weekend of her choice to "change her perception of the place." We won't be going. We'd rather lick a gutter.
And what would be the point? Of course they'd push the boat out for a bunch of journos who might be convinced to praise them in print. But what happens to those poor, patient, paying guests who queue every week only to be treated like repeat offenders?
A much more pleasant experience was to be had at the launch of Bowie Wong's new wallpaper range at Kit and Kaboodle in Kings Cross on Tuesday. He's the first Australian designer to produce his own wallpaper range and the designs, decorating the clubs' stairwell, are delicate, ethereal and evocative. Bowie is a modest guy who was too embarrassed to write his own speech and needed some help from his partner. He threw an elegant and warm party and I wish him every success with this latest venture.
Kit and Kaboodle is a perfect example of Sydney bar service at its best. And so is the legendary Bayswater Brasserie, where on Monday the country's best bartenders gathered to celebrate the 10th birthday of their bible, Bartender magazine. There is no finer sight than such a celebrated crowd taking it in turns to mix and pour behind the 6th best bar in the world. The Australian bar industry is a wellspring of globally respected talent and we should be proud of it.
Unpalatable though it is, you do need the odd night out at a place like the Retro Hotel to appreciate fully the riches we have.

• by Amy Cooper at 02:24 AM
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I don't mind the New Modesty

The oddest sight at last Sunday's Easter Yearling Sales was a group of overseas prospective buyers skulking around wearing masks.

True, those who customarily drop millions on horseflesh are notoriously shy, but this mob's Michael Jackson-esque get-up is almost certainly a sign of the times.
In-your-face consumerism is currently as unacceptable as public flatulence. Spending in plain sight is plain gauche. It is not cool even to crave - unless you are craving a dented second-hand bicycle with re-re-recycled parts or an apple you've grown yourself.
It's being dubbed the New Modesty- or the New Presbyterianism, if you prefer your trends with a religious flavour - and it's a mood currently colouring our every visible action.
Whether the recession has cleaned you out or not, you must behave as if it has, and this means that flamboyant cities such as our own have had to engineer a swift, dramatic image update.
Smart clubs are hiding away their VIPS in discreet, darkened backrooms instead of displaying them in ostentatious areas resembling fenced stages. In general, underground, off-street venues are rising in popularity. The bars of the moment have understated entrances and few windows. Even the city's most schmanzy new eatery, Spice Temple, is a downstairs, dimly-lit affair where it's impossible to distinguish the faces of your neighbouring diners without a torch. It is the place to be, but not to be seen.
I'm told by my fashion friends that one of the major design houses now offers the option to have your goodies delivered minus the usual logo-festooned bag, glossy box and fat ribbon, but instead in a plain brown paper bag (although this makes me a little wistful because although I can only afford tiny items such as keyrings and notepaper from designer stores, I like being entitled to the same delicious packaging as the big spenders. There is a certain democracy in that).
Furtive spending is good news for those of us who don't have much to spend anyway. It relieves you of such pressures as "building a portfolio of jeans," (an urgent shopping priority identified by a fash mag just over a year ago) or keeping your car shiny. If your natural tendency is towards disrepair, these are actually rather pleasant times in which root regrowth, dropped hemlines, no manicure and a less-than-current wardrobe are signs not of weakness but of moral superiority and - more importantly in Sydney - being totally on-trend.
Hopefully there will be, at least for a while, no more 'rack rage' and unseemly fights over children's toys in shops at Christmas. Even a return to affordable, locally sourced goods and produce which stems the flow of mass-produced tat around the world.
The danger of course is that all this restraint veers into competitive austerity. No-one wants a ban on all the good things in life and there are enough fun-avoiders out there influencing our free time anyway (see my blog 28/02: Let's Banish the Fun Dodgers).
But I suspect the New Modesty will redefine rather than remove our fondness for acquiring stuff. The wealthy will simply go underground, savouring the subversive thrill of secret spending, while the rest of us could cultivate a new appreciation for quality and beauty - including the old, the flawed and the quirky.
In the meantime, expect to see me down at Woolworths in a Phantom of the Opera mask, so you don't catch me overdoing it in the confectionery aisle.

• by Amy Cooper at 11:29 PM
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