You gotta love a late afternoon beer on a Sunday. With the working week ahead of you, there’s nothing quite like going out for a beer on a Sunday afternoon with a mate, getting a little bit pickled, but still getting home early enough so the working week isn’t affected. For many years I used to go out for a drink or two on a Sunday night, just to make the weekend last a little bit longer.
It all started when I was living in Brisbane. Sunday afternoons there consisted of going to The Alliance and later The Terminus. The Alliance was a terrific Sunday afternoon gay Brisbane institution. As I recall, licencing laws at the time restricted trading hours to 4.00pm to 10.00pm, and so it was a fairly intense period of drinking, drag shows, and catching up with friends. The most legendary drag queen of the time was Freda May West. Freda was of advanced years, and made a thing of appearing in ill-fitting costumes and never being able to get the lip-syncing correct. I remember vividly the day when Freda wore the dress of another Brisbane drag queen, Destiny, and lip-synced to “Sweet Transvestite” from Rocky Horror. The laughter that followed the appearance of Freda in an ill-fitting costume and struggling with the line “I see you shiver with antici……………….pation” remains with me.
Many years later, moving to Sydney, I quite enjoyed a Sunday afternoon at The Beauchamp, The Oxford and later, The Midnight Shift. The Beauchamp was memorable for the sheer number of people who attended. Across the road was The Albury, and so of course, The Beauchamp earned the nickname The Wodonga. The Oxford back then was dark and a bit dingy, in contrast to its modern incarnation as a bright, summery kind of place. The Midnight Shift had an enviable reputation for playing retro music, back in the days when retro meant 60s and 70s under the brilliant DJ skills of David Hiscock. In recent years, the word “retro” has started to refer to music from the 90s. OMG!
In the last couple of months, Graeme and I have been to Sunday afternoons at The Imperial on a couple of occasions. The recent trend for “jugs” (and patchy bears in young people – if you can’t grow a proper beard, don’t grow a beard, I say) has meant for an amusing afternoon of chatting, listening to great music, and watching people fall over from having consumed too much alcohol. In this, the second decade of the twenty-first century, it’s clear the phrase “RSA” clearly refers to “regular service of alcohol” not “responsible service of alcohol”.
Older and a bit wiser, I keep my Sunday afternoon alcohol consumption to levels where I can come home, think about a bite to eat, do a bit of clothes planning for the week, and generally chill out a bit. Still, it’s great fun to go out for a beverage or two to make the weekend last a little bit longer.
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