State of the Union's Pubs and Bars - Parte the Seconde

Pubs. They're everywhere. I heartily recommend them and you'd best get in now before ALAC start infiltrating the nation's policy committees with the same kind of sanctimonious fervour as ASH and the NZQA have done. Luckily for you slothful pricks, I'm on to it. A pub in each club catchment area of our mighty union.

Last week I laboured under the strain of visiting the Puhoi Tavern, Miss Cue's in Hibiscus Coast, The Brownzy, The Northcote Tavern, The Copper Room and Pat's Garage, and Navy (sort of). This week my liver takes a pounding from establishments in or around Helensville, Glenfield, North Shore (Devonport), Massey, and Marist. Remember that drinking should always be done in moderation and that alcohol and sport are not synonymous. Indeed, drinking too much can be irresponsible and may result in grave health problems such as cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, and being pestered by sanctimonious social retards.

Helensville: I'd be fucking kidding if I told you I could remember anything about my time at the Helensville Bowling Club. I'd started on Guinness with Sambucca chasers two hours prior to arriving, so by the time I got there I would've been willing to drink aircraft gasoline. They didn't have any, so I had double rum and cokes for 3 bucks a go. Within an hour of leaving, I'd forgotten I'd been and only remembered by virtue of shitting black bile for a week.

Glenfield: The Glenfield Tavern. An institution in the same way that the Northcote Tavern is. It's situated in the pub equivalent of the Twilight Zone: between a sterile, just-passing-through main road and the kind of valley where fog lasts about an hour longer than the rest of the city. It also seems to be popular with types who spend three hours drinking in quiet conviviality before kicking their bar-stools aside, ripping heads off, and pissing into the cavernous holes. If you're local and regular, you're loved and cared for. Just keep a low profile for the first one or ten years.

Devonport (North Shore): Institution-wise, you're looking at the Masonic. Puhoi Pub/Northcote Tavern/Glenfield Tavern/The Poe(RIP)/ The Mon(RIP)/The Masonic: these are the historic staples of our catchment area. However, let's take a wee visit to the troublesome old bank (post office?) building in Devonport. Situated next to mad old Jackson's nutbar Muzeum (sic) with it's Royal Doulton lavatory in the window - coz if there's one thing that Devonport's substantial foreign tourist market likes, it's a faceful of old expats' shit - The Patriot Bar plies its trade. It's the best re-incarnation in a long while, despite the building being incongruous for the means. If I want to go to the pisser, I don't want to have to walk up stairs and through a labyrinthine maze to do it. However, one is rewarded with various wallplace witticisms from Irish, Scottish, and Irish poets, and The Declaration of Arbroath sits proudly at the top of the stairs. (This was the famous Scottish Declaration of Independence, circa 1400, shortly before the English slaughtered them at Culloden.) It instills a swell of historical pride that serves you well before you fall down the unfeasibly steep stairs and shatter your spleen. The staff have the rare distinction of being pretty and providing good service - traits I'd previously believed were mutually exclusive in our city. Nice Guinness: a rare treat.

Massey: You'd have to pay me a fucking lot of money to go to a bar in Massey.

Marist: I went to The Stadium Bar and Brasserie but much like anything with "Brasserie" in the title, it sucked arse. I don't like Italian restaurants much because I prefer oil in food to oily waiters, so I went to The Claddagh in Newmarket because it's Irish and we don't have a proper Irish bar in North Shore. Mary mother of God, did I get royally munted. I love Catholicism. God save the Pope and all that.