Pubs & Bars: The Town Hall Hotel (326 King St. Newtown).

Reviews are supposed to sway you. They exist to show you, the reader, what you should do with your life in a consumerist sense. Should you buy the new Hilary Duff CD? Should you order Lusty, Busty Sluts 39 from that mail order catalogue? Should you go to that embarrassment to Sydney bars, the hilariously harem-themed indictment of taste Zanzibar?

Indeed, Reviews are the guiding light in a world full of darkness and jeans that are too low.

Having said all that, there is no conceivable way I could change anybody's opinion of the Town Hall Hotel. I could berate it for its lack of aesthetic flair, I could scoff at its sometimes dubious clientele and I could express my disgust at once finding a pair of turd-stained undies in the men’s toilets. But it wouldn’t make a fucking difference, because everyone who has been to the Townie knows it’s marvelous.

There is no greater stalwart in the inner city of Sydney. The Townie is open when you want it to be, its bouncers are only occasionally cockheads and the beers are cheap. The crowd represents everything good and right about Newtown; goths worshiping Satan and drinking VB; no-hopers hell-bent on death through alcoholism; punk rockers with questionable haircuts; schizophrenics who’ll threaten to beat you then buy you a beer; nerds who masturbated over Return Of The King; and ageing rockers who pretend they don’t want to be noticed.

There’s something good and right about the Townie. There’s some unspoken bond that tells everyone there that they’re doing something good - that with every beer they drink they’re one step closer to their fellow man. They’re probably not, but the feeling is there. And sometimes feelings are all that we have. Especially when we’ve drunk too much. Amen.

(Originally published in The Brag as part of the Under The Bar column).