Back off, bouncers, you're a bunch of egotistical bastards
Whenever a patron dived off the stage or got too rowdy, a refrigerator-size bouncer would elbow his way through the crowd, place the culprit in a terrifying headlock and drag him outside.
A few days later I was in school assembly. The headmaster was lecturing us on bullying, warning that we could be charged with assault for as little as laying a finger on another student. I reflected on what I saw at the club and asked myself why the same laws didn’t apply there?
Fast-forward 20 years. I was outside a nightclub in Darling Harbour where a good friend of mine was DJing –- his first paid gig. He’d put my name on the door so my entry was guaranteed. Or so I thought.
“What you carrying?” snarled the bouncer from behind a pair of Terminator sunnies. He was half a foot shorter than me, but a foot wider. From the way he jittered, I could tell he was high as a kite.
“My wallet and my phone,” I told him. “And your mother’s underpants,” I added, in my thoughts.
“Let me see,” he replied.
I pulled my phone and wallet out, feeling ever so queasy. “Satisfied?” I asked him.
“What else you carrying?” he repeated, jamming his hand into one of my pockets.
I stepped back in shock, told him to keep his bloody hands off me and caught a cab home. When I raised the issue with my DJ friend few days later, he apologised but acknowledged that’s just the way it is.
The sad thing is, he’s right. Sit down with any group of young people in Sydney and you’ll invariably hear stories about how bouncers humiliate, extort, sexually harass and -- while things have improved since my early clubbing days -- assault patrons as a matter of course.
“Last weekend we had to wait 20 minutes in a line and undergo the standard looks of disapproval that accompanies clubs in Kings Cross,” wrote one of the 17 people who commented on my Facebook posting about Sydney bouncers.
“As we went in, the bouncer gave my girlfriend the greasiest of stares, like it was his birthright. Once inside, we were surprised to see virtually no one in the place, despite the checkpoint outside that made us feel like we were going to have a personal audience with Osama Bin Laden.
“A group of us were in a bar in Manly and went out for a smoke, but were told at the door to leave our drinks inside. A few moments later, the swarming crowd inside pushed a few people out onto the street, one being my girlfriend who was still holding her drink. Within seconds, a very aggressive bouncer came up, grabbed her drink and said ‘I told you not to take your drink outside’, then tipped it over her head!”
So we do we put up with it? Why don’t we use our buying power to strike fear into the hip pockets of club owners who employee rock apes as security guards? Why don’t we launch a national awareness campaign to expose Sydney bouncers for the knuckle-dragging, pill-popping, bottom-feeding hominids they are?
The main reason, I assume, is because we all have better things to. Because it’s not important. Because Sydney bouncers –- and our tolerance of them -– are symptomatic of our glamor-driven, money-fueled, drug-laden society.
But they can’t all be bad, can they? Surely there are bouncers out there who are polite and conscientious; who put their physical well-being on the line to ensure venues that hire them are safe and secure for patrons to enjoy. I know this to be true, because for a very brief moment, I was one.
Several years ago, I was working as a bartender at small basement bar in Bondi, frequented almost exclusively by locals. One day, when the bouncer failed to turn up for work, the manager asked me to stand at the door. It was a meet-and-greet job a monkey could do, and it meant a bit of variety from what was an otherwise mundane job. I was happy to give it a go.
The night went swimmingly. Patrons who for months had done nothing but shout drink orders at me took time to greet me. I was invited to an after-party. Girls bought me cigarettes and drinks. I rejected no one and had no intention of doing so, until a group of meatheads in Lycra-tight T-shirts who looked like real bouncers turned up at the door.
“Sorry guys, private party,” I said, repeating the words that had so often been addressed to me.
A moment later, two regulars -- one breaching our dress code by wearing shorts -- walked up behind them.
“Step aside,” I told the undesirables, greeting the other two and welcoming them inside.
“What about those two?” demanded the largest of the five, squaring up to me. It was like the scene from "Rocky 4" where Rocky Balboa faces off to Ivan Drago’s cleavage, except there were five of them and only one of me -- and the largest block in my food pyramid isn’t anabolic steroids.
“Private party,” I repeated, without blinking. It was imperative I retained my composure. Otherwise, I was dead.
My adversary looked me dead in the eye, turned around and looked to his mates for guidance. One of them said “stuff this” and walked off. The others followed. My adversary backed off.
I finally knew what it felt like to be a bouncer. But in retrospect I realise what I really felt that day was my bulging ego.
