Posts Tagged ‘uni games’


Getting Loose in Melbourne

I just spent 10 days in Melbourne, the first few just getting acquainted with the town and the following just smacking up the town like never before. The occasion of course was Australian University Games, this is a week long event of hitting the piss hard, waking up, playing sport and hitting the piss hard again. Needless to say, things sometimes things get a little out of hand.

It became pretty clear to us pretty quickly that there are 2 completely opposite types of pubs in Melbourne, those that take themselves too seriously and those that absolutely don’t. I can’t remember all of the places but CQ and the Queensbridge Hotel were shit. Both of these places were the Uni games sanctioned social venues however they were being exclusive in who they were letting in, only dribbling people into the venue and on Thursday night telling them that it was too late and they had been drinking for days so they couldn’t come in – regardless of wether they were too drunk or not.

Then at the other end of the spectrum there were heaps of smaller places that were awesomely accommodating to a mob of drunk uni students. At the top of the list is “Bev and Mick’s bar” in North Melbourne. This place hosted the mixed netball boat races and even though they shut early than we had hoped they really didn’t give a shit about what went on. The number of glasses that were smashed by people standing on the bar, the number of pissed people painted green and the fact that there was 130 of us in a place designed to fit about 80 all went down without a shadow of complaint.

The other bar that get’s my vote for being accommodating is a little place called “The Red Violin.” We happened upon this place at 3am after being kicked out of the Traffic bar on Federation Square, (which was also happy to let things get loose) the security at the Red Violin were happy to let anything happen as long as it didn’t affect anyone else. At one stage a bouncer woke up a sleeping guy, not to kick him out for sleeping but ask him to take his feet off the table. This isn’t to mention the ridiculous drunkenness, stupid attire or people spitting in each other’s faces. This was all capped off at the end of the week, on Friday night when the dress code had clearly been raised (people wearing suits) and the doorman still let us in, cause we were “cool”.

Hats off to the Red Violin, Bev and Mick’s and everywhere else that made our week grand.