Some­times, a bar is too pre­ten­tious even for me. Though by “pre­ten­tious”, I don’t mean what some people seem to mean by that: expens­ive, styl­ish, ambi­tious or glam­or­ous. No, it’s bars that make a great show of aspir­ing to all those qual­it­ies, and yet end up being the same-old same-old Cour­tenay Place tack, that really set my mand­ibles on edge.


Take this place, for instance. It’s keen to impress punters with its “exclus­iv­ity”, but if there’s any door policy here it seems to be “must be wear­ing this sea­son’s Supré”. It wants to pro­mote itself as a bur­lesque-style cock­tail bar, but play­ing end­less remixes of 70s and 80s hits is not the way to do that. It pre­tends to embrace dec­ad­ence and dar­ing, but is deeply con­ven­tion­al and cor­por­ate. It wants to dazzle us with “glam­our”, but looks like it’s aim­ing to attract the sort of brain-dead bleached and gelled pseudo-slebs that infest the Auck­land gos­sip rags.

Maybe if it were hon­est enough to admit that it’s just aim­ing for the bridge & tun­nel crowd of glossed-up RTD-swill­ing teen­age girlies and the thick-necked leath­er-jack­eted middle-aged men who love them, it would­n’t grate so much. And frankly, in such a loc­a­tion, one should­n’t expect too much more. But by pro­mot­ing itself as exclus­ive and soph­ist­ic­ated, it’s open­ing itself up for ridicule.