McDirtiness

Take one look at the sign and you just know it's going to be all wrong inside.

One: It's red.

Two: It has no nuts. It isn't a bull, it's a steer.

Come humour me. Let's take a tour.

This was once the Club Hotel. It used to be populated by dirty, grumpy old men who spent all day betting on the horses and stared at you when you walked in the door, as if this was their loungeroom and you were invading it. Every table would have scrunched up TAB tickets on it and an ashtray with one butt in it. I remember the lady who ran it then. No wonder these guys felt like they were at home - she was a crotchety old coot just like them. I used to sell her crumbed cutlets once a week when I worked at the butchery. In three years of seeing her regularly I did not once see her smile.

It moved up in the world, breifly, when another publican took over. There was enough space in the back room to squeeze a band in between the pool tables and have about fifteen people on the dancefloor. I played there a few times. Nothing spectacular - in fact the only thing I really recall about it was that the carpark was the home of a family of Potholes From Hell that loomed up in the headlights like bottomless pits.

And then it was closed. No more. It was bought out by somebody who, like every other bastard these days, decided it was a brilliant idea to buy an old pub, rip the guts out and make it into something that is trying to be trendy. Instead of a counter lunch for seven bucks, you get cuisine from a top chef and pay twenty-three dollars for a couple of stalks on a plate.

Gut it they did. The entire pub, bar the front wall, got knocked down. The front wall had to stay because it was heritage listed. Not the entire thing. That cracks me up no end. Only the front wall was heritage listed. The rest of it, after rebuilding, is a travesty of trying to be sauve and modern that ends up in flat concrete walls creating a sound box that is deafening if you get more than five people talking at once.

On entry, you're funneled straight into the line-up at the bar. I've fought my way through it many times. The drink of choice here tends to be Smirnoff Double Black (premixed double shot vodka) or Pulse (energy drink laced with vodka). That says it all. These things go down like lollywater and it gets very messy very quickly. Especially when you dump a busload of barely legal twits from one of the uni colleges into the fray.

There's a jukebox. No DJ. Just a jukebox that goes on autoplay and a dancefloor the size of a shoebox. Everybody crams onto it and attempts to fight for their space. Mostly, I groove on the edge of it, or just give up and groove outside in the smoker's pen. Why do I go here? Sadly, there's only three places in town with late licences. One is usually dead, the other is a little too redneck for my safe comfort levels. So it's this one.

But let's move on with the tour to the final destination.

The toilets.

If you're a bloke you have the profound pleasure of pissing on a red bull (ahem, steer). In a brilliant design concept, they've replaced the normal stainless steel trough with a painted bull (steer) on the wall faced over with perspex. (Yes, I have been in there myself). What happens when it's wet? The water turns it into a mirror.

Now, if you're female... Well. You might be one of those idiots that decides to leave an empty Pulse can in the toilet bowl. Oh gee. That's a good place to put it. You might be one of those drunken young twits being held up by her friend while you vomit because those half dozen Pulse cans you've had in the last hour because some guy who wants to lay you is shoving them down your throat, those drinks have sent you past active and hyperactive and into hypervomitrous. You might be like me and just be hoping to get in and out of there as quickly as you can, trying to keep your pants out of whatever liquid happens to splashed about the place while you're at it.

Or, you might be there because some local lesbian slut is intending to fuck you.

McDirtiness.