Do you crave waiting in line for hours to get into a bar?
Do you want to be complimented on the way you order tempranillo in a Spanish accent?
Do you unironically listen to jazz?
Look no further. This four-step guide will help maximise your experience at Adelaide’s most pretentious bars and clubs.
Step 1: Enjoy the sunset at Adelaide’s marquee rooftop bar
2KW. It already sounds like a luxury model of car. But don’t be fooled — this place is the bee’s knees of Adelaide rooftop bars.
With an exclusive lift, views across the River Torrens and Adelaide Oval, and Adelaide Hills semillons and sauvignon blancs (savvy bs for you uneducated fucks) flowing like Niagara Falls, 2KW is a melting pot of upper class middle-aged white people looking to ‘partay’.
Prepare to meet the bank account of your life.
Step 2: Make a drunk business deal with a bloke drinking spiced rum in Adelaide’s small bar precinct
After a cheeky sunset tipple atop Adelaide CBD, next, it’s time to dive into the city’s ‘scene to be seen’ aka the pavement in amongst the suits and ties in the bars on Peel and Leigh Street.
Adelaide’s well-established, male-dominated indie bar precinct offers dozens of little institutions to choose from.
But to help you narrow that choice — they’re all the fucking same thing.
Gin & Juice will without question be the first item on many of the bars’ cocktail lists, and beers are served in unconventional glass sizes just to confuse all of you bloody bogans trying to order a pint.
The soft drink mixers are normally poured straight from a freshly cracked and hand-packed 200ml bottle (which is partly why the bars have to charge at least $12 for a house spirit and mix); and there’s enough charcuterie and cheese plate options to feed a small French province.
Up there with our recommendations are crowd favourites and slight novelty acts Maybe Mae or Pink Moon Saloon — one is a hole in the wall, the other looks the house from Pixar’s Up.
Either way, you can look forward to waiting up to half an hour for a cocktail containing all of three ingredients.
No — but seriously… it’s the place to be.
Step 3: Wear your flares, perm your hair and… wait in line
“All the girls standing in the line for the bathroom 1970s themed Adelaide dive bar.”
If you like leather jackets, double denim, tucking t-shirts into jeans, and look like you surf (but really can’t) — you’ll fucking froth Cry Baby.
It even has a jukebox — a bit like a 1990s/early 2000s Hungry Jacks.
We can’t confirm why the queue outside gets up to hundreds of people on a Friday and Saturday — but the good news is they do pour a decent beverage and have a pool table.
The bad news is the pool table will always be fucking taken.
The other bad news is the pool table also takes up most of the free space.
Step 4: “OMG Rocket?”
If a strip joint, shisha lounge, the casino, or partying with feral teenagers doesn’t appeal to you, and you wish to go somewhere that’s guaranteed to have some variety of human population post 2am, Adelaide leaves you with one option — Rocket Bar & Rooftop.
Rocket is like if Triple J was a bar — a place that has made private school grads, who feel slightly alternative, comfortable for years.
It costs $20 entry and not much less for a drink. But OMG — rooftop, rollies and no regrets.
Are you sold or what?
Go forth and enjoy what this handcrafted guide to Adelaide nightlife has to offer in terms of vino tinto (red wine duh), craft beers, overalls, moustaches, and so much more.
Make sure you post an Insta story of your journey… otherwise it never happened.
THE MANKAD 