Bowled out

No, not the Saffers - not yet anyway (though Kallis just went for 93) - but one of Dunedin's best and bodgiest student watering holes. Seedy, seamy location of many a dodgy evening, as well as three consecutive editions of Bathurst Beer Bingo (including the infamous 'World Cup Wake' event, the morning after the All Blacks bombed out of RWC 2007; the Wallabies crashed out the same night, but oddly enough I got negligible stick over it that day), the Bowling Green Hotel (locally 'The Bowler') has closed its doors, suddenly and abruptly, after more than 140 years of thirst quenching and rabble rousing. The usual complaints - primarily noise related, not surprisingly given the Bowler was over the road from the hospital where both Lucas and his mother were born - hastened the demise of the ancient brown temple of drunken stupidity. However it was the Big End Of Town - namely the University itself - which had delivered the coup de grace some weeks earlier.

The University is Dunedin. It's the biggest employer, the economic driver, and basically the reason Dunedin isn't Invercargill. And it's a bit fucked off at the reputation it and its home town have been getting courtesy the antics of the pisshead element among the student populace, who are best described as complete fucking animals.

AB de Villiers has just gone for eighty-odd. He's a choad.

Anyway, things went to shit during O-Week with the Toga Parade going decidedly pear-shaped - although allegations in our yeehaa parochial arserag newspaper of buckets of poos being flung at student participants were never actually backed up by witnessed evidence - and the Uni flexed its considerable muscle amidst the Tartan Mafia and suddenly the liquor licence for the Captain Cook Hotel - who each year promote a number of large, squalid all-day boozefests entitled 'Cookathons', originally during O-Week but more recently repeated throughout the year - had been queried by the fuzzy muff and the establishment was forced to can the 'Thon and close midway through their biggest trading day of the year. Didn't stop the kids getting trashed first thing in the AM and heading out for a big day regardless... which, as per established Gen Y standards, lasted about three hours before passing out in a gutter on eighteen RTDs skolled prior to the opening of play in their grody animal-enclosure digs.

And herein lies the problem. Alcohol is disgustingly cheap in NZ. Beer and wine are sold in supermarkets for two fifths of bugger all. The bottle shops specialise in the spirits and RTD end of the market and heavily discount in order to compete. As such, it's far, far cheaper for Scarfies (archaic slang for Otago students based on their winter attire, though these days the uniform seems to be black puffer jackets, skinny jeans, bleached blonde hair and a deeply cretinous look on one's face) to stay at home and get fucking trashed in their third world scum-landlord flats than to head out at a reasonably social hour and knock back a couple of jugs at traditional student watering holes like the Cook, the Bowler, the Oriental or the Gardies. Which is what the fluoro-clad nuff nuffs of Gen Y do, before heading out much later in proceedings, more off-chops than a meeting of PETA, vomiting on each other and not being let into pubs.

In response the pubs have taken to more and more aggressive promotional activities to try and get students back through the door - usually involving loss-leading drink prices and promos encouraging the sinking of vast quantities of piss, thus undermining the only argument they had in their favour - that drinking in licenced premises at least provided a safe controlled environment which pissing it up furiously in one's flat would not. The Bowler probably never recovered from the stink surrounding an ill-advised promo a few years ago where they held a comp where first prize was their ancient putrifying brown couch - and a can of petrol to set the bastard on fire. Burning couches is an arcane and unlikely student tradition which began on the terraces at Carisbrook back in the days of international one-dayers there - once you've dragged a busted-arse couch all the way from North Dunedin to the 'Brook for the purpose of reclining thereupon to drink twenty cans of Speights and watch the BLACKCAPS lose like busted arses, you're hardly going to want to drag the fucking thing all the way back - but one which the University would rather the students ceased and desisted therefrom, along with most of the other deeply antisocial habits the residents of the student ghetto have developed over the years (seriously, there is no place on Earth where students behave like they do here. Google 'Otago student riot' or similar for a bit of an indication.) As an indication of how dimly the University (and, as things follow around here, the fuzzy muff) viewed the promotion, the bar's manager was charged with sedition. As in what terrorist/anarchist types making declarations seeking to crush the state are charged with.

And so, at the end of last month, the Bowler's owners pulled stumps, as have the owners of a bunch of other Dunedin pubs, including the Backstage, El Sol and Murphys (meaning one less dodgy faux-Irish pub in the world - cause for celebration methinks.) The Cook's owners, ex-Scarfies themselves, run a burgeoning business empire which encompasses upscale city bars, a gourmet burger chain and a construction business - who conspicuously failed to finish their highest profile recent job, the refit of the Cook itself, before the return of the students in February - would probably be a bit more of a challenge for the Tartan Mafia, but the Bowlerers caved in the end and sold up. Of course, given our history at the place, we all wondered who the new owners were, and how long it'd be before they opened for business again - after all, even in a tight economic environment and even with competition from supermarket takeaway liquor, a student pub is and always will be a licence to print money, and no bastard alive would be stupid enough to buy a student pub and not keep it open as a student pub, yeah?

From the Vice Chancellor's report to the University Council, today:

Last week the University of Otago completed the purchase of the Bowling Green Hotel building, at the corner of Frederick and Cumberland Streets. Under University ownership this building will no longer operate as a liquor outlet. Instead it will be converted into academic offices for research and teaching.

The Bowling Green Hotel was a historic “student pub”, but it has also been involved in some inappropriate promotions in recent years. I think we can draw satisfaction from the fact that this establishment will now be helping to meet our pressing need for more space for research in the health sciences.

The University of Otago has also complained repeatedly about the inappropriate promotion of alcohol by retail outlets, including steep discounting and the sale of cheap liquor in the morning. In this respect, I can report that the University of Otago has lodged an objection and will be appearing at the hearings to oppose the renewal of the liquor licence held by the current proprietors of the Captain Cook Hotel...

Fucking gimlet-eyed Scottish Presbyterian moral recidivists.

The Doctor is OUT.
As is Duminy, thank Christ.