Drunk In Paradise

Sydney, Back When It Was Waiting For Its Close Up Mr DeMille

The 1990s were fun. I knew it at the time and I knew it was going to end somehow. If you want to cut to the ending, I guess the fun of the '90s spilled over until the day 9/11 happened and that was that. 

Still, when I think back, I kicked off the decade starting at film school and that was a gas; and while there was that horrible recession-we-had-to-have going on in the middle of the decade, I tumbled through the decade having a lot of fun working in the film business and doing interesting stuff. I also worked with a Japanese advertising giant a lot and that led to nights out with the client going from restaurant to drinking holes to saunas to brothels. My own motto as it were was "How Much Fun Can One Boy Have?" - which, I still keep for my facebook page. 

It was the decade where a night-club aesthetic bilged out of Darlinghurst and lots of people were drinking heavily, popping eckies and fucking at sex parties. The first half had no internet and the second half barely had any internet worth talking about., so there was a lot more of a raw interaction with other humans in those days. Somewhere in there it was decided Sydney was going to host the 2000 Olympic Games and the city went a little nuts in the anticipation of its moment in the global spotlight. My own recollection of all this was that we were out wandering from place to place quite a bit, wondering what wonderful thing might be around the corner next. 

Sometimes we would end up at the Judgment Bar in Taylor Square. The sun would rise rather perfunctorily as we staggered out and looked eastward down Oxford Street towards Bondi direction. And it would be in those moments I'd wonder if there was anywhere more like paradise than Sydney. Sydney -if it were a person - was brainless, yet attractive; It liked thinking it was sophisticated all the while being anti-intellectual and decidedly into bad taste. Sydney was a party animal with an endless reservoir for snark and even then you couldn't exactly hate it because it has its charms. Even today if I were to characterise Sydney, it would be as a city that likes to guffaw at its own jokes while strung out on substances. 

If there was a problem for me in all of this was that I nursed a heartache, a mortal wound I sustained in the 1980s - a decade I detest for the misguided nostalgia it garners  - and I was haunted by it. It's hard to get over personal betrayals. Revenge movies play big with the audience precisely because betrayals never leave you. And so there was this dichotomy of the fun, the superficial joy, the effervescent bullshit of a happy-go-lucky town and this weird animus I carted around from party to party, scene to scene. I never really soured to Sydney. What I did sour on was its propensity to celebrate itself at every turn. I mean, yeah it's good, but is it that good?

All the same, the 1990s in Sydney were great. We were all there, kinda drunk, in Paradise. 

Come join the fun!