Sydney is more Brooklyn than Brooklyn

In Sydney people were drinking cider, claiming it was a perfect cider climate. Some were drinking whiskey. In certain bars every guy was wearing the scuffed boots black jeans blue denim greaser outfit. No one was that interested in artisanal pickles, but still, there was a whole lot of what I’d taken to be Brooklyn style on the streets of Sydney.

And then there was Shady Pines, a basement saloon behind an unmarked door on an empty alley wedged between Crown St. and Oxford – two of the city’s most happening strips. A speakeasy to make any true Brooklyn trendster weak at the knees. Sydney’s only American Apparel shop was less than a block away.

Past that unmarked door, was a low-ceilinged room, its floor spread with worn carpets. A long bar stretched along one wall, its bottles catching the dusty light of the ornate lamps. The stuffed and mounted heads of North American animals – everything from bison to catfish – adorned the walls.

Having spent a semester trudging about Brooklyn, investigating the whole urbanised, hipsterfied Americana thing going on there, I’d now found in Sydney something far edgier, and infinitely more confused. A parody of the Brooklyn parodies of old school Midwestern dive bars.

Our table was lit by a candle in a grimey mason jar – the mason jar! Adored festish of the Brooklyn hipster enclaves from September to October 2011! – and we ordered whiskey and local cider. A bowl of peanuts in their shells was placed on the table by a disinterested waiter.

I did what any aspiring young Brooklyn trendy would do; I got out my phone, and when no one was watching I took photos. And then I pretended I wasn’t embarrassed to be doing so. And the room was so dark, so like authentically divey, that the pictures turned out terribly. And then I planned my next blog post.

 

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