Anyone now in their late thirties remembers what drinking in the eighties was like. Pub rock was more than just alive and well, it was screaming from the rooftops. You could walk into just about any venue and see live music, of one variety or another. It was the era of pub bands like the Hunters and Collectors and the Black Sorrows, but if you couldn’t get into one of those gigs, there was the Rock Follies, Captain Spalding, The Melody Lords and a hundred other cover bands playing every night of the week. You could pile out of a taxi just about anywhere, walk into the first pub you came across, and see a band. If they were any good, you’d follow them across town for a few weeks, or months, and discover new pubs, new people, other bands, and often be happily reunited with old drinking buddies from six months ago, who had followed the same meandering path to the new stomping ground. There was some vague feeling of community and a shared journey in it.

No, I’m not saying it was all fluffy hugs and wine spritzers. There was drunkenness, there were fights, there was vomit on the footpath and there were letterboxes ripped out on the way home. There wasn’t a cop on every corner, but if you fucked up as the van drove past you didn’t jack them up, you did what you were told and pissed off home immediately.

A night out always meant a few (or a lot of) drinks, but it wasn’t our sole raison d’etre. Remember the rush to the bar between sets? That was because we’d all sit on one drink while the band was playing, and it slowed us all down, for a while at least.

The Espy, which really hasn’t changed much at all in 30 years, is the flagship Melbourne pub. I remember sneaking my little brother in there when he was about 16, for a Dave Graney gig. Dave was playing in the Gershwin Room, and it was full of laid back dudes in safari suits and Hawaiian shirts. The back bar had some heavy metal band playing, with its requisite crowd of leather, tattoos and long hair. After the gigs were over we all mingled in the front bar, downing beer and whiskey by the bucket. Fights? Trouble? Glassing each other? Not a bit of it. Just the eclectic mix of happy drunken folk that the Espy has always done so well (maybe their management should start running classes for the asshole factories in King Street).

Back then the city wasn’t much, except on a Friday night if you worked there and didn’t mind being surrounded by shoulder pads and shiny suits. As for a Saturday night, forget it. The few late night venues were combination meat market and blood pit (Tunnel, anyone?) they had a small select clientele made up of dozy schlappers and speed freaks, all stuck in one sleazy cesspit until the end of the night.

Of course, all this was years before the open all hours ethos that’s overtaken the city in the past decade or so. There was no Casino and 24 hour licences were virtually unheard of. And there were no pokies.

Being a good little St Kilda/Elwood-ite, I rarely venture into the suburbs that much anymore, but when I do, it’s an eye-opener, and it brings a hint of sadness. All the great suburban beer barns we used to frequent are no more. One that stings especially is the Manhattan, where I used to stand at the edge of the revolving dance floor, watching girls like Jane sniggering at my mates and me as they passed, knowing that they were way out of my league. The building’s still there, but where there used to be a disco and a nice rough public bar, there’s now a big glittering tweeting room full of pokies and the drones attached to them, with the requisite beige laminex “family bistro”.

It’s the same at just about every great suburban venue of our youth, and dozens of smaller ones closer to home. Where once there were bands and music and stupid pissed young folk hanging from the rafters, there’s just pokies and plastic and a dreary smokers’ area backing onto the carpark.

The city, on the other hand, has gone absolutely bug-nutty for licensed premises. Twenty years ago there were about four hundred liquor licences in central Melbourne, and that included restaurants. Now there are a couple of thousand, many of them open 24 hour a day, huge, anonymous and the only thing to do when you get there is drink and drink and drink.

Events of the past year or so have brought licensing, and therefore our drinking culture, into the spotlight. There have been vicious brawls, even deaths, outside major nightclubs, and it’s a popularly-held belief that the city’s not safe after dark, filled with marauding packs of drunken thugs looking for a head to kick or a throat to glass. Take a drive down King St in the wee hours and you’ll see all manner of things that will confirm this for you.

But is it actually any different from twenty or so years ago? Is it just more concentrated, now that the yobs from the suburbs don’t have their own local barns to go for drunken stupidity? Or is it just that we are looking at them through the eyes of happily married almost 40 somethings? I’d rather spend next Saturday night masturbating with a cheese grater than spend it drinking in King street, but if I could take a time machine back to 1987 would I feel the same way about the yowling crowd at the Great Brit? Probably, and so would most of the folk from my generation, so are we really the ones who should be wailing about the tragic turn that today’s young drinkers have taken? Or, with our experiences, are we the ones who should be pushing for a change?

One thing that seems to be missing in the problem venues in the city is a sense of ownership. My mates and I used to pretty much spend all weekend at the Manhattan, so we got to know the staff, we knew which locals were likely to muck up, and we kept an eye out for trouble. It was our place, we wanted it to stay open and be a fun place. We’re pretty much part of the furniture at The King these days, as are a lot of other locals, and the same thing applies – if somebody comes in hell-bent on being a cockhead, they’re as likely to cop a talking to and a boot in the arse from the regulars as they are the manager. The barns in the city are huge, and anonymous, with high staff turnover, and a need to pay enormous rent, and there’s no value for them in regulars or anything resembling a sense of ownership or community.

If a change should be made, is there anything that can be done to curb the apparent out-of-control drink-till-you-drop-someone culture? The government seems to think so, having just produced some very amusing ads about alcohol-fuelled violence. You may have seen them, in billboard or TV format; they’re basically saying that blokes should look after their mates, and offer some right-on-kids tips that have come straight from the brain of a researcher who’s obviously never been out for a drink with a bunch of men, and an advertising exec who has, and can’t believe how much he’s being paid to make this shit.

One bit of right-on, not at all dangerous advice is “If your mate’s getting a bit too drunk, make sure he switches to water or soft drink.” Yup, your mate’s getting a little pissy and belligerent, he’s gonna listen to reason, and is going to be more than happy to stand there looking like a soft-cock with a bottle of fizzy drink, and even if he does, everyone else is going to be pouring bourbon into it for him.

Or even better, “play the diplomat”, and get in between your mate and someone else’s mate while they’re doing a bit of the “what are you looking at, dickhead?” Every man alive knows that is the one thing guaranteed to turn a one-on-one push and shove into an all-in knock-down, drag-out box-on, ended either by the tender mercies of the bouncers, or a faceful of capsicum spray. Because it’s the “diplomats” who end up either getting glassed in the back of the head, or arrested for drunk as they try to make a detailed explanation to the very bored, annoyed and overworked policeman about their stupid mate’s bitch girlfriend and the inequities inherent in the current socio-sexual environment and can’t a bloke just go out and get pissed with his mates and I’d like to be a copper one day is it like what I do I’m a security guard at a supermarket on weekends and have you ever shot anybody and do you drive V8s officer?

Instead of the constant stream of ineffectual complaint about the youf of today, or running another advertising campaign telling kids they should stick to milk shakes and soda pops, why don’t we look at the sprawling outer suburbs and ask what alternatives the teenagers and twenty somethings have to the liquor barns of King Street? Let’s make some moves towards giving local pubs and live entertainment back to them. Give them somewhere they can have a few drinks and meet their next one night stand without having to go trolling through the city with the yobbos. Then we can settle comfortably back in our armchairs and go back to complaining about their stupid hair and dreadful music, without having to worry about getting rolled when we leave the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical playing at the Russell Street Theatre. [Editors’ note: we have never been to an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, and have no intention of ever doing so. Unless it’s in London and someone else pays for our airfares tickets and accommodation and we can get thoroughly drunk before the show and get kicked out within the first fifteen minutes.]

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