Australia   : loves and hates

 Tuesday, 9 April 2002

The pub with no cheer

It's Australia Day at Burningbird. Once you adjust to the electric red, white, and blue color scheme, you'll find a series of posts dedicated to Australian bloggers and related subjects (so far there's a Vegemite item but nothing on Tim Tams).

But all's not well Down Under. In today's Sydney Morning Herald, The Heckler protests about how bland corporatism has killed off the traditional Aussie pub:

Indulge me in some cliches, but the classic pub had atmosphere. I lament the demise of the quaint watering hole with horse-shoe bar and threadbare carpet marinated in beer and smoke; the tradition of bands, pool comps and meat trays; the bookshelf of battered classics, the tattered mementos and trophies. I pine for the pub dog, that half-blind mongrel that wandered in one day five years ago and never left.

Community is a ghastly word, but that was what good pubs gave you a small sense of. They were a homely patch for regular Joes and Josephines to chew the gristle, have a drink and forget the grim grind beyond the doors.

But the modern pub-hunter has different views. He and his consortium see this place as a big old bull elephant. So having stalked and killed their quarry, they set about gutting the corpse. In accordance with the laws of modern pub taxidermy, they start by ripping out the old furnishings and fittings, and tearing up the carpet and replacing it with polished floor boards. Lots of blonde wood and stainless steel, that's the trick - attracts the suits like flies to honey. The tiles must be replaced with plaster and plastic wood, and the horse-shoe bar junked for a teller's desk, staffed by surly brats completing business management degrees.

9:26:03 PM    comments ()