Up to our armpits in night-life
WELCOME to the Mould Coast: a decidedly damper version of our glittery southern cousin, but a potential incandescent mecca of gambling and flashing lights in its own right.
Cairns is a city on the move with ever-present whisperings about future casinos brimming with Chinese bazillionaires itching to go broke (please don’t mention Aquis), $370 million worth of hotels being built and new inner-city nightclubs waiting in the wings.
How times have changed since 2003, when lax age-checking practices at the former Casa de Meze bar above McDonald’s helped us conniving high schoolers to settle in for sangria jugs and poor, drunken attempts at Latin dancing on a Friday night.
The statewide rollout of compulsory ID scanners has presumably knocked that teenage rite of passage on the head, although kids are notoriously crafty when it comes to felonious groggery.
There was the now-defunct SOHO Nightclub, a fun joint with strobe lights, lasers and two bug-eyed old blokes (probably only in their 30s, in retrospect) who always seemed to be gyrating on the dance floor with pockets full of ecstasy and fairly con- spicuous generosity towards other patrons.
Who could forget Mad Cow on Spence St, hands down the most pungent dive in the southern hemisphere, with its $1 basic spirits, urinals overflowing with half-digested dinners and a 2007 article in the Cairns Post about a patron getting electrocuted by a live wire in the dunnies.
People ask “where were you” when the Berlin Wall fell, Diana died or JFK was assassinated, but the one moment in history that sticks in my mind is the ban on smoking in pubs coming into play on July 1, 2016.
It was a Saturday night and we were settling in for a huge one, the smokers getting fidgety about what to do with their hands, all lined up outside Mad Cow.
The night was already fairly well advanced and the bar was chugging along nicely, packed to the brim with punters chasing a cheap drink.
We finally got to the front of the line, showed our 18-plus cards and walked through the swinging saloonstyle doors, only to get smacked right in the face by the most noxious snout of body odour in human history.
The compound effect of 200 sweaty lads and lasses sliding and grinding against each other like rotten greasy cogs had concocted a fierce stench that would have otherwise been masked by the stale scent of tobacco smoke.
As we baulked at the rot on the air, we came to the realisation that Cairns folk did not believe in deodorant. They never had to. Up to this undignified moment in history, cigarettes had always dis- guised the olfactory assault that lurked beneath.
The reek gradually subsided over the following weeks and months, although Mad Cow always retained a certain fragrance.
As a side note, a high profile NRL star once got kicked out after trying to get behind the bar to sling drinks and let fly with a do-you-know-who-Iam-type-response, to no avail.
The city’s night-life is moving into a new phase with strict statewide regulations and, hopefully, bettersmelling patrons.
In the background to everything is talk of there being a world-class casino development on the horizon with Paradise Palms Resort and Country Club at Kewarra Beach generally seen as the logical location.
CBD Councillor Richie Bates recently suggested somewhere closer to town might make more sense and also provide impetus for construction of a light rail system linking the airport to the city-centre. Who knows what will happen. All we can ask is that, as we move towards summer, venues consider leaving free deodorant in the bathrooms – maybe in wipe-on sachet form, to stop people inhaling it to get high.
WHO COULD FORGET MAD COW ON SPENCE ST, HANDS DOWN THE MOST PUNGENT DIVE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, WITH ITS ... URINALS OVERFLOWING WITH HALF-DIGESTED DINNERS