Despite its loud, yowling denial of this fact to any bouncer who glances in its direction, the bogan loves to queue. Nightclub operators have been aware of this for many years, and prime bogan clubbing localities are famous for creating 10 metre queues at the front door of a half empty bar. The queuing process creates anticipation in the bogan’s mind, like a particularly diligently wrapped gift.
Often though, a queue of bogans will become unruly. Forced to arrange themselves in a logical sequence, squabbles and yelling matches regularly erupt, creating a public nuisance and causing the venue operator to worry about being placed in a “high risk” liquor licence category. The solution for this problem is a velvet rope.
Put a velvet rope anywhere, and the bogan will line up behind it. It will queue for longer periods, and with less complaint, than it will behind a rope of any other fabric, alloy, or fibre. The presence of velvet is almost soothing to the bogan, and brings forth some of its best behaviour. But there are other motivators behind this improved etiquette, for the bogan is a complex beast.
Because the rope is velvet, the bogan will assume that whatever it is excluding people from is VIP, and likely to contain a DJ. OR CELEBRITIES. There could even be x-treme danger. Either way, a velvet rope makes the bogan strangely docile when it eventually gets to the front of the queue and is informed that it will cost $50 to proceed further. It will obediently hand a pineapple to the cosmetics-smeared door wench operating the till.
Once inside, the bogan will eagerly scan the room, searching for more velvet ropes. There is one by the cloak room, so the bogan joins this queue. 15 minutes later, jacket offloaded for $5, the bogan is ready to queue for a $9 bottle of locally produced foreign label beer, or a $10 Breezer. It will spend the remainder of the night switching between the bar queue and the velvet rope in front of the DJ booth, where it attempts to grind hips with inebriated bogans of the opposite sex each time the smoke machine creates enough haze to lend the air of initial mystique.
The bogan emerges from the club at 4am, $200 poorer, and visibly irritated due to the queue at the cab rank being framed only by a sticky steel rail.
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LOL. Perhaps I should fortify the ancestral manse with a velvet rope?
I once saw a 50m queue at the Penriff Krispy Kreme Donuts on a Friday night (around midnight).
I wasn’t attending the venue but found humourous on many levels = the bogan obesity epidemic, a change to the midnight lamb sandwich after crawling out of Panfers, waiting for “donuts”, and so forth
Anyway, there is an obvious Simpsons reference here, Fiona, but I doubt your kind would understand it, or the references above. No matter
LOL. Your butchering of the English language hasn’t helped me in my attempt to understand your comment either.
I never forget one cold melbourne night in june 08 and we were driving home through “narreeee waaaaren” and the que for krispy kremes was unbelievable. Most of the cars were souped up commos with the driver being a massive bogan whilst his equally obese partner was sucking on the horizons waiting for her turn to down half a dozen of these sugar death traps.
What made even more shocking – the time. It was 11.30 pm on a weekday!
Im calling you out Fiona of Toorak.
Produce proof of your alleged champagne lifestyle or STFU.
AF
No need to. She is obviously an experienced troll.
I have learned to appreciate her art.
Me too Benjamin, I sniffed her out as a troll ages ago, and just sat back and laughed…
LOL. Just LOL.
If you are anti the lovely Fiona this may not be the place for you. Just so you know.
LOL. It’s probably that hag-of-the-west Shazza in disguise.
Meh, a bit slow on the TBL front today guys?
Try sylvania maccas at around 3:30am on the weekends after everything shuts. Security at maccas I shitteth you not.
lots of maccas in melb not only have security,but also you can only line up for your shit sandwich in the drive-through,as they lock up the store fucking hilarious seeing people on foot getting turned away from the drive-through booth as they only allowed,by law too serve people in cars.
You LOL a LOT. Is it a disorder?
Never picked you as a parson’s daughter.
Bogans love crowds. They will drive past a place and if it has a huge queue that’s where they want to be. St Kilda Festival will draw them like flies to s—. 200000 people? Right lets go!
The St Kilda Festival is great unless you actually live in St Kilda, when it becomes a big bowl of fuckhead soup which forms a moat around your flat and prevents you from doing anything.
TBL – St Kilda Festival special ploise. It’s like a lawless Big Day Out that doesn’t cost anything, leaving plenty of cash money for $20 sixpacks of pilsener from the Barkly St Cellarbrations.
The funny part with velvet rope is that if you stick one in a Bank branch, they’ll either ignore it or little Jaxson will start playing with it.
Banks got it wrong, they can easily see what’s going on the other side. Air of mystique gone. Also, they easily consider bank tellers to be beneath them.
They are very perplexed as to what the fuss is about having velvet (loads of it) at a bank where there are no celebs, potential roots or pretentious door staff to impress.
Perhaps to calm the beast they should be offering a beer with each transaction and have whoever was in the last bank ad, appearing as a celeb and their bank manager could hire a door bitch to get that vibe right.
If I still worked in the bank (not saying which one), I’d make a suggestion to marketing that the ‘Over The Counter’ fee be abolished and replaced with a ‘Cover Charge’.
We should start a bank lol.
The First Bank of Bogue
Noice!
Or the Commonbroke (can also be mistook for the Commodore broke) Bank.
First Bank of Bogue would be a hit…just cash in on Bogan economics!
Personal loans interest free for the first 12 months to compete with ‘Harvey Normans’…and then hit them with an outrageous rate of about 16.75%. For what they ended forking out for the new loungeroom suite, they could have bought Taylah her dream car for her 21st..a Hyundai Getz with pink car seat covers from Autobarns…and paid cash…
High Interest Car loans for P-platers wanting to buy highpowered XR6 / SS utes. This would include having them pay a huge upfront insurance premium (which would be added to the loan amount) for a policy that pays out the loan after they have written off the car and themselves off after the first month of ownership. ANd when they get out of hospital, we’ll sell them another loan…
Credit Cards with 0% intrerest on all transferred amounts and then 20% after 3 months. Also has “reward points” feature offering the bogan the dream of the free exotic holiday and only costs an extra $100 p.a, which basically means that after 3 years of out of control spending, the bogan, can get a free toaster, not the free flight to the Gold Coast as first thought. Of course we can send out unrequested applications for an increase in credit card limit. After years of increasing limits and only paying the ‘minimum amount due’, the bogan can’t afford the interest bill anymore, so we pretty much take everything they’ve got. They call us a bunch of c***s and run to ACA for a whinge.
Line of Credit Mortgages that allow the bogan to keep dipping into the equity they have in their house to spend on the lifestyle they have become accustomed to but can’t afford…
That’s why Westpac are having all those “I’m the bank manager!” ads. The bogan will see the ads, then the velvet rope, and its subconscious mind will tell it that there are TV celebrities to be seen.
The ‘Velvet Rope’ has been a ploy for many years for bringing patrons to the door…
Thought there may have been a link to the Discount Airlines and Border Security from this one, as the bogan does not appreciate queing at the check-in counter at the airport. Perhaps its because they use retractable seatbelt style bollards… and we all know how a Bogan does not like to be restrained…
As a security guard I can relate to this phenomenon….it’s funny though when the bogan will queue for 30 minutes to get in only to find something not to their liking and storm out yelling “30 farkin’ minutes for that shit, it’s full of wogs and poofs”
I remember with keen fondness the guy who used to post reviews on one of the Sydney bar/club guides, story was he would give each bar (no matter what it was) a rating out of 5 knuckles, for his chances of getting in a fight with a popped collar tosser. His review for Cargo Bar still stands out in my mind noting the ongoing review feud he started with a bunch of obviously ‘holier than thou’ nouveau bogues who said ‘his kind wasn’t welcome there, it was for classy people.’
Further to the above, this is comedy gold:
‘Full of pretentious young kids spending their parents money pretending they’re succesful (sic) businessmen whilst trying forget the days when they used to get touched in the showers at their private schools.’
Or worse, not getting touched.
Choked on my own air then.. Good one!
You should see this phenomenon in Adelaide, where the 10 metre que contains….no one. But still has the velvet rope and security guard with clipboard. I suspect the security guard’s clipboard is used to covertly hold reading material to keep the guy from dying of boredom standing outside a venue with no customers.
Haha SM, so true. I too have seen this phenomenon here in sleepy town.
Glad I am too old to enter these fine establishments anymore without looking like the creepy old guy.
I’m sure my teenage daughter makes up for me though.
It’s the clipboard, one piece of classy work.
One of the menial copyright monitor tasks I was given at my last job for a fair few months involved walking around my building monitoring/collecting these papers from the copiers and accounting briefly for them until I got back to my desk to count them.
Well, it really was as simple as that and any kindy kid could’ve done it. But, I carried around a clipboard and I swear to God everyone who passed me made a comment that I must be doing something very important. I thought they were just being funny at first, but they would sometimes make me stand there and explain to them what I was doing. They hated the monitoring but loved me buzzing around with my clipboard, excited them muchly.
They were mostly tech/tafe teachers, does that make them bogan?
Or perhaps classy piece of work.. whichever does it for you.
Did you have to wear a dustcoat as well? That’s a bit retro – enough to be cool, in fact.
Trade teaching = bogan.
Off topic, but cam we please have one on paedophiles? Poor taste, I know, but bogans love nothing more than going bat shit crazy about the recently freed paedo who’s moved into government housing two streets over.
WTF? I’m not a bogan and I would go batshit crazy too. I wouldn’t be putting wooden coffins outside their door, but come on.
Funny you mention it, that guy in question used to work in my office in in Sydney two years back….
Pedo’s should be thrown into a pit of syphilitic baboons who have been kept on a near-fatal diet of Viagra for 2 weeks, while onlookers cheer.
lol – hmm perhaps I’ll switch the nylon rope on my bedposts to velvet to form a queue line..lol
You want a conga line of bogans in your house?
lol@Tracey…maybe the clientele you’ll attract with said ropes will change your mind. But if you don’t mind, I suggest offering free bundy & cokes and they’ll be lining up in droves 😛
Or Jagerbombs…
My favourite is the skimpily dressed women who wander around bars trying to convinces young bogans to drink whatever drink it is they spruiking at the time. A group of which I was a part (all PhD students, mostly philosophers) had one approach us one evening. She stood at our table as though she would naturally attract our attention simply through her presence. We studiously kept up our discussion of the nature of normative theory, and its applicability in international relations, and particularly foreign relations. She decided to but in, and asked if we wanted to enter a Jagerbomb contests – every time we ordered a Jagerbomb, we could come to her and she would give us a scratchie, where we could win a prize. We duly resumed our conversation.
Later that evening at the bar (ordering beer – the lifeblood of philosophy), I saw many well-groomed young men with popped collars furiously scratching their Jagerbomb scratchies. And I thought, how sad for them that a scantily dressed woman can convince them to buy drinks at $11 a pop.
I too have seen the plight of a C-U-B (Cashed-up Bogan) be coaxed into buying drinks for merchandise…
We had the pleasure at our local watering hole of a couple of dressed-up bogans in Jack Daniels attire… (I use the term dressed-up loosely, as they were not really dressed much at all)…
These girls had a loyalty card system, where if you bought 5 Jack Daniels’ you would get a hat, then if you bought another 5, you’d get a stubbieholder, and another 5, a t-shirt, and so on and so on….
at $10 a stubbie of JD, they would be the most expensive stubbieholders you’d ever see… only to be lost when the bogan walks home from the pub, and unwittingly throws his empty JD bottle into someones front yard, forgetting the bottle is still inside the stubbieholder…
The joys of a friday/saturday night in bogan-towns…
Marketing genius.
Get the bogan to market your product, and get them to pay for the privilege.
the bogan duped/fleeced is one of my favourite reoccuring themes of this blog 🙂
Now that you mention it, the prizes were free Jagerbombs, Jagerbomb t-shirts, hats, and a mysterious (to me) item called a Jagerbomb bar-towel. So this lovely young lady was convincing bogans to buy drinks to enter a contest to advertise the drinks they were buying. Marketing genius indeed.
Crappy alcohol branded merchandise…not even Ed Hardy wear says “I am a bogan” more than a Jack Daniels or Jim Beam t-shirt.
How many bogans do you see with Guinness leprechaun hats after they discover their ‘Irish roots’ on March 17 every year… and then for some reason, a few bogans feel compelled to wear them to the cricket a year later…
it all started back in 1989 when the ultimate bogan radio station, triple m, convinced the bogan that his car, suburb or if he was clever enough his name rocks MMM.
Sure they didn’t pay for the privilege of showing that sticker and plugging triple m for free, but the seeds of what we see today in mass marketing towards the bogan was planted there and then.
Oh how i hated those stickers,
Ah, Dribble M! The all-Barnsie ad-free half hour. So many things you wished you’d never had to hear.
Ahh, Dribble M. Did they invent the all-Barnsie ad-free hour?
We had 96FM in Perth, same thing with the stickers. With some creative cutting and rearranging of the surrounding suburbs’ stickers I managed to adorn my car with “96FM Sucks dicks”. Champagne comedy!
such is life for a hetreo james
These posts spook me as they are so dead accurate. You should come to Geelong someday half our clubs are owned by a sleazy paparazzi king called Darran Lyons (our best known ‘celebrity’ who became a millionare by taking photos of celebs in London). He charged something like a $50 entry fee for one of his clubs to take advantage of the after-Grand-Final celebarations after Geelong won it this year. Does anyone else have any more details on this? You can’t get much more cheapskate than a bogan ripping off his own.
Also you should go into a bit more detail as to how taky the nightclubs in Australia are/or have become. You know like ‘Heat’ nightclub in Crown Casino style (i.e. tacky Las Vegas):
The interior looking like that of a strip club. An unkown dj playing what sounds like dance commercial radio without the ad breaks, only the transition of songs never quite blend in properly. Not to mention every song played is followed by one thats a completely unrelated genre. I mean you could play a Ministry Of Sound or Wild compilation (remember them?) from start to finish and you would never tell the difference. The cattle-market like ‘matings’ between male and female bogues on the dancefloor. But be careful if you step into a herd with a male species present he’ll punch you. Then its 4pm. Closing time. The lights are switched on and the cattle is herded outside by security guards. Now drunk and outside with no intimidating Mauri bouncers to be weary of, unprovoked bashings now occur between different bogan clans. Other herds however, line up at the taxi rank, where a security guard is also needed to keep order.
The Bogan, now in the safety of a taxi will talk openly with the driver. The driver however, couldnt care less and wont respond. The bogan then unleashes a barrage of abuse (racial if the driver is Indian) for the high price of the fare apon arrival. Which then leads us us to where many bashings of Indians occur, but thats a topic all of its own and it ought to be your next post!
This same storyline unfolds at a town near you EVERY Saturday night around the country. Albury/Wadonga, Bendigo, Newcastle or any other town with a min population of 70,000. Not just the big cities.
NO OTHER PASTIME captures Australian culture in the naughties decade (2000’s) better than Bogans frequenting taky manufactured nightclubs. Its like what in Disco was to New York in the 70’s or those acid parties in 80’s UK.
Its MAORI not Mauri. Git ut right cuzzy bru
LOL. That’s the very reason I only go clubbing in NY. I only go about 6-10 times a year, as the travel does get a bit tiresome and I’m not THAT much of a club goer.
You go clubbing? Eww…
LOL. It’s different in NY. I don’t expect you to understand. How could you really?
Umm – no it isn’t, just full of American bogans.
Tokyo is a hell of a club scene. Been there Fi? or is Asia (even though its Japan) a bit to third world?
LOL. I dabbled in the Tokyo scene for a short while, but it’s just not me. I use my time in NY to check my properties and stay abreast of the fashions and trends that for the most part, don’t even make it here.
probably seals……
Sorry Fiona, just engaging in a bit of snobbery of my own – snobbery of the intellectual variety.
LOL. It’s spelled “ineffectual”.
Touche.
LOL. And while we’re at it, I’d agree that a PhD in Philosophy is generally to be lauded, but it’s not exactly a higher degree in the Classics, is it?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a philosopher at all. Both classics and philosophy are far too removed from reality for my liking – I’m a political scientist. And we all know what a strong connection to reality political scientists have…
On a related note, does anyone know if there is a generally accepted qwerty keyboard-based sign for sarcasm?
I believe her phrase was the Classics. James could probably tell us what a solecism is, Fiona.
It was indeed, but like any good social scientist, it is my job to work as hard as possible to undermine the humanities at any opportunity. Thus “classics” loses the prestige of its “the” and capital c.
I was thinking the reverse actually – the definite article is the tinkle of piss-elegance.
LOL. Pray tell, what is a “good” social scientist?
LOL. Well, I’m sure we can agree on one thing – the term “scientist” is improperly used when the word “social” is the qualifier. Perhaps “worker” would be more apt?
Fiona,
It’s a bit common to name drop you higher qualifications. Bit like if I mentioned I had tea with Russell Crowe last night. We expect better of you.
But isn’t Russell Crowe a bogan?
Bingo.
lucky you weren’t glassed.
Or phoned
Big Russ does not have to stand behind the velvet ropes. I suspect this annoys him and is why he glasses cunts, he regrets the phone incident though, feels he lost some cool marks there.
On a good social scientist, I though we had that covered. Then again, in my experience people who study “the Classics” tend to need to read things a few times to absorb their meaning…
All PHD’s are in Philosophy as it is a Doctor of Philosophy.
So explain a Phd in Economics….
Bogan thought: Behind that velvet rope must be a good place to glass a c***!
LOL. Followed by “… I sure hope his blood doesn’t spray on my popped Ed Hardy collar.”
Correction – “on my fucken popped Ed Hardy collar but.” You really don’t get to Australian clubs much, do you?
lol – popped collars should have an entry all of its own.
Beginning with private school boys and girls in the eighties’?
You know, when this blog first started, I was sorely tempted to write a screed criticising TBL – not for attacking bogans, but for failing to attack the social and economic conditions that allow boganism to flourish.
But, thanks to the fine folk behind this blog, I now realise that I was in error. For the economic boom that Australia has experienced since the mid-1990s has been of great benefit to the bogan.
Of course, the blessings of this boom have not flowed through to everyone. They haven’t flowed through to people with disabilities, they haven’t flowed through to students, they haven’t flowed through to old coal mining and heavy industrial regions, they haven’t flowed through to the long-term unemployed, and they certainly haven’t flowed through to indigenous Australians in remote areas.
But for any drongo capable of twirling a stop sign at a roadworks site or who can stomach working in a call centre for six months before rising to a management position – yes, dear bogan, you have been advantaged by the boom. Rising incomes in low-to-middle-skilled occupations, combined with a loose and deregulated credit market, have given you more material possessions and available spending money than ever before.
Which is why the nouveau bogan is now able to spend a ridiculous amount of money getting drunk at places with velvet ropes. And spend $129 on Ed Hardy beach towels. (No, I didn’t actually go inside the Ed Hardy store in my city the other day – just looking through the window was enough!)
It just goes to prove that greater material wealth doesn’t give people taste nor intelligence.
Go on, you popped in didn’t you?
They have Ed Hardy stores? Just goes to show, you don’t find what your not looking for.
Indeed, James. I came across the shop in Brisbane quite by accident only last week. And, after going to edhardy.com.au (an excellent exercise in learning how to suppress your gag reflex), I’ve found that there are many Ed Hardy stores across Australia. There are two on the Gold Coast alone.
One shopping centre, Westfield Bondi Junction, even has two stores – one for le bogan nouveau, the other for la boguette nouvelle. In a part of town I would never have associated with boganism.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Seious business, that Ed Hardy shop is the longest-opening shop in town. I’ve walked past at 8pm some weeknights and it’s still open.
I am. That website is scary.
That website is shocking! Homepage total load 7,713KB with in excess of 200 http requests. FAIL FAIL FAIL
They also sell Ed Hardy bedspreads. Google them. Amazing.
LOL. Nor, it would seem, the ability to use “nor” correctly in a sentence.
Good Lord – what will those horrid, common, lower-class “bogans” (as you call them – so witty!) get up to next? “Lining up” to get into venues which are clearly intended for their social betters! Imagine that – the cheek! What will these upstarts get up to next!
I say we round up these frightful fellows and confine them to some other part of town, where those of us with taste and refinement no longer have to see or hear them. Or smell them! Hah!
I hear there’s a place called “the western suburbs” somewhere in Sydney. Wherever (or whatever) that is, I hear it’s positively ghastly! Just the place for these horrid, smelly “bogan” fellows!
Good lord – is that the time? Time for tea and scones! Toodle-oo!!
LOL. We also have such a place (and named thusly) in Melbourne.
Fiona-the gift that just keeps on giving ha ha
LOL. I’m just generous like that.
More bogans south of the Yarra Fiona, so guard the barracks.
Don’t forget the velvet ropes put up outside the Michael Hill Jewellers at your local Westfield. The queues end up looping backwards and forwards as more bogans haul their screaming kids into line and wait for ages to be admitted into the cavern of savings, where they purchase ugly diamond-encrusted jewellery for 5000% more than it’s actually worth (and by purchase, I mean opt for an installment plan with heinous interest rates).
Actually, can we have a post about bogans and Tiffany & Co? Walking past it on the weekend, that place is wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling bogans. And once they’ve made their purchase, the female bogan will keep the blue paper Tiffany bag the purchase came in and use it as an additional handbag, despite its tiny size and propensity for tearing, so that she may continue to display the fact that she’s xtra-classy to people who aren’t close enough to see the freaking huge TIFFANY & CO emblazoned across the locket on her chunky chain necklace.
Only bogans use the abbreviation LOL or lol so most of you self righteous wankers have just outed yourselves.
LOL.
CW, Chill out brother. Go home, sit in your spa, and watch price is right on your outdoor TV.
Hey – that crosses the line. I might well be self righteous, and I am definitely a wanker, but I do not use LOL.
After dinner one night some friends and I were walking to the train station and had to go past a grotty club popular with the ‘bo-jahn’ population. Sure enough, there was a rope across the entrance and about 15 people waiting to go in.
And as we passed I actually heard the shrill, nasal whine of the classic boganette say “Awww my Gaaawwwd!! I fink there’s someone from Big Bruvver in there tonight…”
In the spirit of #75 and also in affirmation of subsequent comments regarding the bogan’s need to be among crowds, I was reminded of the behaviour of my bogan mate many, many years ago. Driving to the beach for a surf we would both strain our necks to catch the first glimpse of the ocean once it came into view. However our observations were never aligned because regardless of the type and quality of waves, he would only ever look at the number of surfers in the water – something any self-respecting surfer wants very few of. If, when driving past Long Reef and looking down (in the days before beach regeneration made such a thing possible), we’d see a small peak packed with surfers, my mate would yelp, “ye-hi! Looks great!”
Best post and comments….Ever
There is a “club” in Perth that takes this to the logical endpoint. It actually creates a environment that is effectively one long queue. Theres velvet ropes at the front door and a bouncer to give “prestige” and a “secret” (ie: normal) entry ’round the back with a short but consistent queue. Even if you pay for a “private event” which grants “prestige” frontal entry to you and your guests, its not even guarenteed. And nobody complains, its marketing genius. Once inside you’re issued a ticket whereby you get funnelled into a poxy mostly empty bar with massive prices and a number monitor like at the deli counter. You then drink on a tiny filthy couch whilst waiting for your number ticket to come up. The ticket gate is the central feature of the room and very brightly lit so bogans can bask in the glory of being the CHOSEN ONE! Repeat ad infinitum because there are a tonne of floors in this club. I’ve never reached the top floor but allegedly, theres a DJ there… XD
[…] fails at. An enormous glitzy shortcut of a metropolis that promises instant riches, human peacocks, velvet ropes, year-long Cirque du Soleil (or other franchised entertainment), suiting up, bad nightclubs and, […]