Sydney Kidney

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON 5th JULY, 2004!!

If Delhi gives you belly then Sydney definitely gives you a kidney situation. Ozzies are known for their drinking and women (Know the difference between an Ozzie babe and a parrot?? You can teach a parrot to say NO ;-)...

Having lived the earlier part of my youth and with bizness requiring me to be there every now and then, I have my own faves amongst millions of deliciously sleazy pubs and other such places inhabited by the nocturnal fauna in Sydney. Topping the list is Jackson's on George. This is a meat market. It is a generic, no holds barred, meat market. A girl can easily spend the evening here without having to spend a penny on a drink, though the sort of guys you find here generally still believe that means you're ready and raring to go home with them and bonk their tiny little brains out.

Having said all of that, the bar boasts over 70 cocktails, the bar gals are cute and approachable, and there's a nightclub which has good generic dance music to go off to. If you're on a buck's or hen's night, for example, and are after a cheesy place where the values of the eighties are still alive and well, you couldn't do better than to visit Jackson's on George.

Something quite nice to do is come to the pool tables on the 2nd floor just before sunset and have a few games with a Baileys in your hand - very pleasant. Other than that - look, it's up to you. Jackson's on George is on the George Street (don't know the complete add.), just on the way to the Rocks area, opposite the Regent Hotel.

And then there is Arizona's Cowboy Bar. This is definitely as close as you'll get, down under, to the delightfully tacky bars of America's midwest, complete with barrels of peanuts, (and the subsequent shells on the floor), cow skulls on the walls and 13 different flavours of margaritas. The restaurant prices can get a little hefty once you factor in the yummy cocktails, etc. topped off with shots of tequila and all the rest of the stuff people get up to in big drunken groups, but it's hard to care as you pick up an equally drunken stewardess in the Cowboy Bar, dance the night away to the usual dance stalwarts and end up half-drowned in a $(Thankfully Ozzie $)27 jug of margarita.

I have seen a hen's night with a stripper posing as a policeman, I have had a tequila shot with a worm in it (but I'm told they don't do this anymore), I have witnessed the funniest and most embarrassingly wild stuff happen here. If you're after the sort of night where you can eat nachos, then sleaze onto an Irish backpacker before stumbling through the swinging saloon doors giggling helplessly, this is your bar. And it's right next to the City Centre monorail station, so if you for some bizarre reason wanted to go to Darling Harbour, it couldn't be easier.