There’s a pub across the road from my house. When I moved in, this information brought with it some excitement and agony over the future of my working life. Excitement because the thought of taking my laptop over in the afternoons and writing with a pint sitting next to me was, somewhat, appealing. Agony because the thought of taking my laptop over in the afternoons and writing with five empty pint glasses sitting next to me was, somewhat, concerning, no doubt not least of all to my editors. My editors and my liver (well, it’s all relative) were saved, however, when I made my first visit to the pub and discovered that this was not the kind of pub you settled in with your wireless notebook, gazing off into the distance, deliberating whether to use the word ‘deliberating’ or ‘considering’ and what the real difference is between the two. This was the kind of pub where you sat gazing into the distance when your last hit had kicked in and you couldn’t quite manage to lift your hand to wipe the drool from your chin.
This was the kind of pub where the woman behind the bar, once given her order, turned around to the fridge, paused for a moment, and turned back around to ask you what you wanted. Even upon telling her your order the second time, you were only likely to receive the first half and would then, so as not to embarrass the old girl, have to pay for and deliver the anorexic tray of drinks to your mates before sending one of them back over to order the second half – twice.
When you were at the bar, you’d have to endure being ogled and hit on by the row of craggy old dudes dripping from their bar stools who couldn’t tell and didn’t particularly care whether you were male or female, seeing as the only other people they saw socially were the other craggy old dudes. On one of my first visits, one of the old dudes did ask me whether I was a man or a woman, and upon discovering that I am, in fact, just your run-of-the-mill effeminate boot-wearing type, said, “Oh, I thought you was a chick and I was gonna give yer a crack.” Then he paused for a moment, looked into the bottom of his glass, looked at me again and added, “I’d probably go you anyway.” I nearly wept from the sheer romance of it all.
There was a pool table and a Big Buck Hunter arcade game in the corner, which, after one visit, featured all my mates’ names in the ‘top shooters’ list, I’m almost certain because no one had ever played it before, even though it looked like it had been sitting there since 1985. But there was also a jukebox attached to the wall, and it was this under-appreciated piece of pop-culture gadgetry that would keep me coming back. For $4, you could choose ten songs from the reels of albums contained within, from Janis Joplin and The Doors to Talking Heads and REM. It was the selection of ‘90s and early 2000s albums, however, that was the real prize find, an authentic recent relic not yet ‘in vogue’ in other beer traps. Where else could you play a game of pool while listening to the Cyprus Hill, Deadstar, Smashing Pumpkins, Gin Blossoms, Sneaker Pimps, Coolio, Alayna Myles (even if Black Velvet does remind me of sitting in the car waiting for my mother to come out of the supermarket and needing to pee so bad I was this close to going in my school bag) and Meat Puppets. It was like my childhood dream of being one of the flannel’d members of Citizen Dick in Singles was coming true, and I didn’t even have to hang out with Eddie Vedder.
There was an entire section devoted to Big Day Out compilations, the ones I never bought because they always seemed like such surface-level skimmings of the popular Triple J acts of the time and held little interest other than meaning I might hear the occasional song I liked when I was at an extended-family function – because everyone owned them, regardless of their taste in music. (There was at least one occasion in 2003 when I realised the influence of the BDO compilations, in which, at my aunty’s birthday party, Neil Diamond was followed by Green Velvet’s La La Land and my uncle started gyrating his hips in the middle of the room. I think that’s when I decided LA was clearly not for me.) Now those compilations are like time capsules of sunburnt days wandering around with a rainbow slushie, pining for the Hole/Marilyn Manson awesomeness that was the 1999 line-up. Even Skulker can bring on nostalgia if the beer tap has been left on long enough.
One of the greatest attributes of this manky den of destitution was that, regardless of what you chose from the jukebox, the bloke who owned the pub – a shy, portly guy who might actually have just been a customer because, really, I had no basis for assuming he owned the place other than that he was there all the time and wasn’t as hammered as everyone else – always commended you on your song choices and contentedly mouthed the words to each of them as they played. I liked the thought that he’d hand-picked each of the CDs in the machine so that it didn’t matter what anyone chose, they’d all be his favourites.
Now, some time after first walking through the door, the pub that says good morning to the world with smashed beer bottles paving the entrance and good night with not-so-domestic domestics happening on the footpath (and the occasional sly snog around the corner, which is always entertaining to watch from my front window if one of the snoggers’ girlfriends of boyfriends catches them in the act) has become a place of bizarre comfort, a curio of whimsical nostalgia and lost souls, but also one of the happiest places I know. I’ve never seen an episode of Cheers, but I imagine it was something like this, so long as Kirsty Alley had a smack problem and a fondness for being groped by drunk old women.
So, while others will be vomiting on each other in 4am cab lines this week, trying to get their sequined arses out of the city centre while the police do their very important job of hassling drunk people who are attempting to get home without being discriminated against or ripped off by a taxi industry in an appalling state of ill repair, I’ll be across the street. I’ll be shooting arcade deer (hey, we vegos get to have fun sometimes, too), listening to Texas and Slint and being chatted up by grandpas whose old fellas couldn’t say Happy New Year if you gave them a cocktail and a party popper. Because, sometimes, it’s in the places that are the most lost that you find a little piece of yourself you didn’t even know was there.
Happy New Year, love The Breakdown.
From end of year issues, December 30, 2009
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