the floor called, my feet answered

After the wedding I met up with JohnBoy. Our plan was to go to this dance party at the Metro, we hadn’t heard of the DJ but hotness was there so I was motivated. We got to the Metro at about midnight and they wouldn’t let us in, because it was closed: the performance was over. wtf? A quick googling from home now reveals that Josh Pyke is not a DJ at all, but a performer of folk music. Mark and Tracy, being soft, had piked. It was just John and I, a boy’s night on the town.

Our first stop was Bar Ace for a couple of quick warmup drinks (actually we tried the RSL and 3 Blind Monkeys but they were both inaccessible). We decided to check out Home. We had only walked a few hundred metres when the first event of the night occurred. We were on Liverpool Street, near George (Spanish Quarter) when a brawl erupted directly across the road from us. One of the groups grabbed a guy and threw him into traffic. He was hit by a car. The fight kept going until a cop arrived and basically saturated all their faces with capsicum spray. This stopped them a bit but they weren’t screaming with pain or anything, which is what I would have expected. Within 30 seconds at least 5 plainclothes cops just magically appeared out of the crowd and started rounding up and restraining the brawlers. Meanwhile the guy on the road kept trying to get up but collapsed every time. His mate dragged him to the side of the street. Not good. It was the sort of thing you would expect to see in America, guys lying face down on the sidewalk with their hands bound behind their backs.

As an aside, there have been recent moves to arm Aussie police with tazers. A tazer would have been almost useless to the first cop as there were maybe eight guys fighting. At least with the capsicum spray he was able to subdue a lot of them from a reasonably safe distance (The spray comes out in a stream like silly string, not a mist like mortein). If they get tazers they should keep the capsicum spray as well.

The show over, we continued on to Home. The bouncer at the door asked us if we knew what was on that night, and then told us that it was techno and rock. We wanted a dance so we paid our entry fee and walked into an empty club. We went up to the mezzanine level and found all of the punters. The small room (with all the glass) was full of sad kids watching an emo band and subtly nodding their heads. Maybe that is how emos (sp?) dance. I did a quick scan but it was clear that the place was dead so we left. On the way out John tried to get our money back but they refused since we had been “warned” that it would suck.

I suggested we try Pontoon/Wallaby Bar as Josephine might be working and I would be able to mess with her head at work. We went over and found a long queue, so the plan quickly changed to what we always knew it would be; what it always is. Chinese Laundry.

We ate some cookies on the way over there but they didn’t taste very nice. Once inside we immediately knew we had come to the right place. The crowd was jumping and it had that packed-but-not-too-packed, low-roofed atmosphere that I love. To the bar. Whilst John was buying I received a photo from Bunni who was also out and looking good. I responded in kind. The lines are getting blurred, she is starting to exist in my Real Life.

The place was a sausage fest, maybe 85% male, but I didn’t care because I was there to dance. And dance I did, mostly in the cave room where the music was better. Even though the population was skewed male John and I were always surrounded by girls. Another boost to the ego on a day of such boosts. A girl with a black and white striped top on kept brushing past me and running her hand over my bum. There was one group that kept coming back to us all the time. They were five, and all good looking. Their queen was obviously hot and was always encircled with guys (often including John :P) but it was the tall (also hot) one who was interested in me. Like I said, I was there to dance but she mistook my aloofness for ignorance and decreased the subtlety of her advances. There was a lot of accidental touching and bumping. She was very good at playing the dancefloor game and it was a lot of fun.

At 4AM the lights came on and it was time to leave. I was talking to one of the staff, asking for suggestions on where to go next when stripy walked past. He said “see that girl, she’s wasted”. I already knew. He suggested that we go to Tank or the club above Empire in Kings Cross, and then gave me a handful of two-for-one Laundry tickets. Despite reservations, we decided to walk to Tank, arming ourselves with Powerade for the journey. We weren’t allowed into Tank because John wasn’t cool enough (heheh) so we cabbed it to the Cross.

Once at the Cross we realised that we had both lost our dancing legs so went in search of a place to have a quiet beer. Every place had a queue, even Barons. Barons’ licence must have changed because it is now a condition of entry that you have a meal before proceeding to the bar.

Unable to introduce John to the pleasures of the dodgiest dive bar in Sydney, and without the promised backgammon, we went into a sports bar named Sports Bar. We had a beer and I went to buy the next round. When I got back to the table we had a new friend. Brett is a some kind of horse guy and mentioned several times that he works for Bart Cummings. He lives in Newcastle, is 38 years old and not really happy. He was either drunk or illiterate because he was unable to write his phone number down and I had to write it for him. I don’t know why he wanted to give us his phone number.

At about 5:30AM the bar shut and the sky was lightening but we were still having a good time and decided to kick on. I remembered when I lived in Surry Hills, all the times I used to drink with Greg after tweekin. We drank at the Crown, it was open 24 hours a day. We got in a cab. We get to the Crown and they were shut, but the guy inside recommended a bar near Central. We started walking, went past my old house on Marlborough Street, it still looks the same after seven years. We got to the bar and we were not allowed in due to being drunk, even though we were not.

We cabbed it back to our starting point, Bar Ace. We met some randoms and played a few games of pool with them. We won every game, because we rock. Then I was home by eight. What a top night, lots of fun. John is an excellent partner in crime.

[update 9 October]: I just got the Josh Pyke album and it is alright. I don’t want to have his babies but I was surprised to find that I knew one of the songs. Don’t want to listen to it too much because my testosterone levels will decrease too much.

[update 9 Oct]: yep, they’re decreasing. Soon I will be listening to Snow Patrol like craigeaux