Young drinkers, don't get dragged into pubs' fight

Joel Gibson 
January 9, 2009

 

Hic. You'll have to excuse me. It's 2.30am, I've just queued for 20 minutes at the bar and they've told me I can't have a drink for another 10 minutes because they're having a "time-out" imposed by the State Government. I didn't even want a cocktail or a glass to drink from. Just a beer in plastic is all.

I'd take my custom elsewhere but there's a 2am lockout.

I'm so ropeable I've decided to spend my 10 minutes of prohibition putting my thoughts in writing on the back of this beer coaster. I might even have my photo taken and join the campaign dontpunishus.com.au to lobby the Government to restore my drinking rights.

That'll fix the wowser bastards. Hic.

Such is the sad lot of the responsible drinker at the state's most punchy pubs, according to a new "grassroots" campaign organised by a bar-hopping consultant called David Hempton and backed by the publicans' lobby.

The way they tell it, new curbs on drinking after midnight at the state's 48 most violent bars are an infringement of the civil liberties of young patrons, who pay the price for a few aggro and self-destructive troublemakers.

In an attempt to mobilise their boozed-up base, they are photographing patrons with speech bubbles saying "Don't treat me like a child" and "I'll decide when it's time to go home thanks" and posting them online.

Don't do it, kids. As your representative in the media, I must advise you to step away from the camera and shut up.

Under-35s already have an image problem. The way the world sees it, we drink too much, we post images of ourselves on the internet wearing and doing things we will one day regret, we are political ignoramuses and we whinge. This campaign quite brilliantly manages to push all four buttons at once.

The world is trying to cope with a recession, a war in the Middle East and an all-out assault by the forces of Paris Hilton, and you want to fight for your right to party.

But like a late-night skinny-dip that ends up on Facebook for all to see, this fight will backfire. The morning after, you will look a spoilt, drunk prat who does not understand what the latest battle royal between governments and publicans is all about.

These new bar rules are not about mums and dads in Macquarie Street and Canberra turning off the tap on generations X and Y. They are about stopping a small group of people from generation YDFVB - young, dumb and full of VB - giving everyone under 35 a bad name. And they are about putting pressure on those venues that treat gen YDFVB like VIPs to treat them like the children they are.

Most of us are being inconvenienced for the sins of a few of us but it is a small price to pay. When they banned $1 drinks (remember those?) the majority suffered for the excesses of a few, as they do after midnight when bottleshops must close. That is what happens when a product displays a tendency to make people dance badly and headbutt strangers.

The jury is still out on whether the late-night restrictions imposed on the Top 48 will work. Previous trials have found violence increases at first, as confused drunks learn about the rules the hard way, but often declines in the longer term.

Blind Freddy could see from the start that the regular 10-minute time-out is a farcical notion that turns bar staff into timekeepers and patrons into racers, desperate to get to the bar before the siren sounds. As for the rest, we shall see.

But let the professional lobbyists duke it out; do not become an unwitting stooge because they approached you at your most malleable.

At the very least, send the pub an invoice for the use of your image. Suggest they take a photograph of the angry ape behind you instead, the one punching a passer-by for looking at his girlfriend.

If you are irked by the new rules, it means you are probably at a venue that could be the setting for a Tarantino film. Go elsewhere.

But the vision of a turpsed 21-year-old thumping the bar at 1am, demanding a margarita, is doing nothing for the cause of young people everywhere.

I am betraying my age here but when the Brooklyn hip-hop trio the Beastie Boys released the song Fight For Your Right (To Party), millions of kids failed to realise it was a joke, a send-up of dopey party songs - and still do.

"There were tonnes of guys singing along to Fight For Your Right who were oblivious to the fact it was a total goof on them," Mike D from the band has said.

If the most you have to fight for is your right to drink cocktails from a glass after midnight in one of the state's most dangerous gin joints and you're still whining about it, the joke is on you.

Joel Gibson is a Herald journalist.

 

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/08/1231004192755.html