Websites promoting the charms of this Collingwood punk rock institution are keen to highlight its sticky carpet. Don’t be misled, the carpet is long gone; all that remains is sticky. Sticky and a lot of facial hair.
On our second day in Melbourne, we asked the friendly homosexual opening our bank accounts in a suburb south of the Yarra what it was like on the other side (of the river, that is, not of the sexual divide).
“A lot more of your type,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“More beards.”
He wasn’t wrong. At least seven in every ten men at the Tote had one or more of a full covering, Noddy Holder sideburns, patchy bum fluff, lippy, goatee or perfectly manicured porno moustache. They also seemed not to have eaten in days if the stampede for the free bbq was anything to go by.
If you don’t need everything pristine, sanitised and branded and prefer your nights out with a little more grit, the Tote’s great. Six bands, from the faltering and experimental early acts to the genuinely captivating Kes Band (sometimes people have no choice in what they are and Kes’s Karl Scullin couldn’t not be a singer songwriter with his haunting Jonathan Donohue / Syd Barrett vocals and love of oddly beguiling melodies). There’s Coopers Sparkling and Mountain Goat Hightail on tap (and the Goat’s marvellous IPA in bottles) and people aged 30 and under having genuine, well-informed and passionate debates about the merits of Roy Orbison crescendos.
Just don’t expect the staff to smile.
Leave a Reply