This Used To Be Our Playground
In August of 2015 I published an article called ‘Goodbye Soul’ which lamented the forlorn state of Sydney nightlife. Four years later I feel compelled to write an epitaph to that story. With a flagrant disregard for the direct impact that past political malfeasance has had on the night time economy, I cannot stand idly by and remain silent on the issue.
Firstly, let me say that I really did struggle to decide whether to publish this piece at all. I do not want to shine a light on the parlous state of the industry and damage its reputation further by revealing the truth about the lack of venues and its uneven delivery of local talent and events. A consequence of which would be to further discourage potential patrons to venture out into the dark chill of a Winter’s night.
But in the context of history, there is much to be said and so I choose to compare the industry of today with the hazy memories of yesteryear. For those that do remember those halcyon days, you will be disgusted by what you now find. And yet there are innumerate members of Sydney’s rank and file who know not what I speak of because they never experienced Sydney in its heyday. So therefore they do not care.
Secondly. Full disclosure. I do not have a vested or financial interest in the Sydney debate. Nor do I own a venue. I am way too old to hustle for gigs and I now reside to all intents and purposes in another State. I do not have any pull whatsoever within the Sydney community (if I ever did) and I do not manage artists nor their bookings. In the spirit of full disclosure though, I have provided written copy and biography services for DJs and artists in the past but am now semi-retired in rural Australia. I still, on occasion, provide that advice (in the most part for free or at extremely discounted rates) and directed mainly at international markets. I also have a blog that reviews music releases. But I do not promote events nor clubs as it is the artist and the music that are my primary concern.
I am now simply an aged and concerned citizen who wishes to see people have the same employment opportunities as in other Australian cities and to see entertainers and artists connecting with people in the real world.
If you believe that the current status quo and malaise is acceptable and that speaking out is undermining current business models, then you need to read on. You need to understand how bad things are. You need to be angry. You need to make the government see that in a city like Sydney, what it is currently doing is too little, too late.
So, whilst trying to keep my fury in check, long live the nightlife, dream big and read on those of you who have yet to be gentrified….
Ashes to ashes. Dust to Dust. Thou shalt commend the memory of Sydney to the waste bin of the ages. For there is no power. There is no glory. There is only the finality of heart-breaking grief. This is Sydney nightlife in 2019. A pale and distant descendant of what was once a glorious empire.
This may well be a sad indictment of what Sydney has become in recent years but this is the only truth I know and after venturing out last weekend I can see no other way to describe what we saw.
We have not been out in Sydney for some time. We moved away at the beginning of the year and came to visit one of the most majestic cities on the planet and found it not just to be dead, but a rotting carcass that had more in common with a funeral procession for a person who will never be missed. Two mourners hired by the relatives and a priest absently flicking holy water on any who would come near. Administering the religious rites to a deceased victim who would never see God’s grace and who would only feel the weak embrace of melancholy and shame.
This was beyond a pithy joke or a whisper of sentimentality for a time when the streets ran wild with excess like Sodom and Gomorrah. What we witnessed was an abject failure of government policy to understand what it means to be a global city.
To virtually see tumble weed blow past us underneath the Kings Cross Coca Cola sign was so heart-breaking that reminiscing was too painful an emotion to endure. And what makes me more than just a tad angry is that any possibility of performing a Jesus-like miracle and bringing the old girl back to life is gone. To the victor go the spoils of apartment development and a featureless landscape of sentinel skyscrapers watching over a lifeless cadaver.
I remember the tapestry of life that used to swirl around the Cross which painted a picture of humanity that was not sanitised. It was not pretty. It was people at their very best and their very worst. But it was real. It was alive.
Fast forward to a time where people have become accustomed to being subsumed by boredom and saturated with stay-at-home options. Where you can be strip-searched by police in a clear violation of people’s human rights as highlighted in the current inquest into festival deaths. Where you can be slammed to the pavement for breaching the crime of being out or for just being on your way to your next DJ job as happened recently. Where you can be accused of doing drugs because you are a music fan. Where we meekly allowed a government to destroy people’s livelihoods with a stroke of a pen. Where we permit investment companies and construction firms to become rich off that same misery. Forgetting what being human really means and replacing it with social media which makes us ironically completely unsociable.
Life has become an endless ritual of TV streaming services and work. And we have stood by as successive governments have taken away every granule of fun available to the community. Guilty as charged. We freely let it happen. Its not our problem as law abiding citizens. Well it surely is and people should be concerned.
Yes people partied too hard back in the day. Yes they probably should have behaved better. But can you tell me in all honesty that none of the people on Macquarie Street have stayed out until 6am and celebrated their existence?
Congratulations to those same politicians! Our police bill is down. Hospital admissions are down. We are in an economic surplus. Brilliant work. There are thankfully no cases like Tom Kelly’s any more but come on! There’s nowhere to go either. And the problem is we now have a generation of young adults so fearful of life that they are paralysed by a belief that to go out at all will lead to certain death, ruin or arrest.
They know no different. It has been a perpetual message delivered by the media and now the older ones among us talk to them of a distant time which is as alien to them as the barren landscape of Mars. Coincidentally, a place also supported by a thin atmosphere that no person can endure, pointing only to what once was a self-sustaining community creating a fertile industry of opportunities.
In a week when humanity is celebrating going to the moon and decrying the fact the we have never been back, we may as well view Sydney nightlife through the same lens. A permanent reminder of what we once achieved and what we can no longer be bothered to aim for.
To put forward misguided policies such as the creation of a night time mayor to fix the situation is plainly ridiculous. Mayor of what? Three bars, a strip club and a Darling Harbour precinct which has about as much excitement as a bad day at a motorway service station.
Walking around the old haunts, all I could hear on the sidewalk were the echoes of my own footsteps and the memories of what once had been. Make no mistake. This is a travesty. Twenty-Four-hour convenience stores that could be open for twelve. Taxis lined up for customers that will never come. The last train home at midnight. Bars with boarded up windows surrounded by fast food outlets with salmonella being cooked under warming lights.
Sailors must be so bitterly disappointed when they dock at Sydney now. I remember when an international naval ship sailed into town how the officers of various countries warned their men about the temptations the city had to offer. Now surely, they would rather hand out Xanax.
We visited four venues around town and admittedly Sydney is notoriously fickle about its desire to go out during a blustery Winter but I just lamented the fate of the DJ who must now play to a dedicated few in smaller and smaller pockets of existence. These same DJs who would put many international artists to shame and who also produce and release their own music which is comparatively superior to the offerings on the web.
When you eventually manage to find and stumble into an event, it’s either filled with those who need to be seen or by people who are embarrassed because you have discovered them participating in a guilty pleasure like Gollum with his ring. And please don’t think I am running down the promoters or artists that are trying to keep the dream alive. To these desperate band of men and women, I take my hat off to you. I salute you.
In an ever-shrinking market handicapped by legislation and regulatory enforced intimidation, they are the last bastions of integrity faced with a tidal wave of banality and tedium. Having to contend with noise pollution complaints from the entitled and enduring the suffrage of lock-out laws; they operate eternally in the realm of uncertainty and upon the whim of media counter culture.
WE could have helped them. We could have enabled a more certain trading environment. We had the chance to do all of this and we blew it. The election in NSW was the perfect opportunity to send a message and change the insipid and suffocating overlords who protect us from ourselves. But we didn’t and with that inaction comes a heavy price.
Now there is not even the whiff of discontent. Only a rebuke from the evening breeze that you MUST go home. You MUST be safe. Ensconced in your apartment cell. Away from the glitz. Away from the glamour. Hiding under your blanket. Waiting for that knock on the door to take you away for being a free spirit.
Artists and entertainers have been forced to abandon the very endeavours that bring us all together. Songwriters writing dance songs for a web-based audience. Never understanding how their work moves and connects people as they don’t get the chance to showcase their wares in front of real people. For those that do get work, rarely are they permitted to move beyond the one hour set which is like asking a chef to make two-minute noodles.
The government knows they have backed the wrong horse. Melbourne knew it too which is why they reversed these ridiculous laws as soon as possible. But when the culture has been hung, drawn and quartered and made inaccessible to the many and exclusive to the few, what are the people to do? Marching doesn’t work. Launching a political party has returned a few concessions but not the ones the city needs.
Short of a revolution, I think that the current generation have found alternative ways to connect and have moved beyond the fantasy island their parents or older siblings describe. But I will not go quietly into the night for we have lost a major pillar underpinning our culture and which has therefore undermined an economic vehicle that added enormous value to the bucket of tourist dollars.
What we are now in, is a fetid backwater swamp whose ecosystem has collapsed in on itself. On the outlying banks we have satellites of existence gripping to life with a forlorn passion for their genetic heritage. I do not want to go offshore or interstate to see people enjoy themselves and listen to the music I love. I want to come to Sydney to do this. I want to feel it. In a venue that is an amphitheatre for the senses. The government needs to know what it has lost and we should be heard. We should shout it from the roof tops. We want our Sydney back!!!
If we don’t, we will be forever bound by the shame that Sydney has become….
