Nude Bar (Aussie Youth Hotel) – Glebe
In keeping with its saucy history of being a brothel in the early 1900s, the Aussie Youth Hotel named its upstairs bar Nude and covered the walls with paintings of naked women that you can gaze at while sitting on one of the chesterfield sofas there.
Colour me crazy but as a man who appreciates the subtleties of the female form I can’t help thinking this is an interesting concept for a bar and so I decide to check it out with my gay wingman, who’s not so crazy about the idea.
I actually wanted to check the bar out a long time ago but every time I arrived I was thwarted. The first time was on a Wednesday night: I’d told my date about it and we were both excited only to discover on arrival that the upstairs bar was closed. I asked the barstaff and they said it was open from Thursdays.
So a few weeks later I went on a Thursday night with another date (this was back when I had mojo – it has long since gone) only to find out the bar was still closed, even though the website said it was open from Wednesdays. I then returned with a friend a few weeks later on a Friday only to find out there’s a private function upstairs.
By this stage, quite frankly, I’d given up – until now. Sans mojo and date, I find myself here with my gay wingman who doesn’t appreciate the paintings anywhere near as much as I do.
“This place is very 70s,” he remarks distastefully, while my eyes are still roaming.
“I like it,” I reply.
The bar counter is a dark wooden affair that looks like it came from a Black Stump circa 1979, complete with a mini curtain that hangs above it. Gilt-edged mirrors are wedged between the nudes on the walls and wrought iron chandeliers hang from the ceiling. It does feel like we’ve just done the time warp, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I ask for the cocktail list and the barmaid looks at me as if I’ve just tried to order crack cocaine with a side order of angel dust. “We don’t have a cocktail list,” she says. “I can’t even remember us ever having cocktails.”
Oh.
We end up with beers as we survey our surroundings. A few groups of 20 and early 30 somethings quietly sip and chat while lounging on the sofas and red velvet armchairs that, because of the bar’s layout, are spaced out to provide a fair degree of intimacy and privacy, meaning you don’t have to eyeball strangers sitting opposite you as you do in some other bars.
It might be a little gauche but this place certainly has character and it’s good to see a quiet bar in Broadway and Glebe. But I do think it’s a pity they don’t serve retro cocktails, even if no-one orders Brandy Alexanders anymore.
The downstairs pub, meanwhile, is an atmospheric drinking hole – the food here is good (I’ve had fish and chips here) and it’s got a nice restaurant section down the back, complete with high ceilings and wooden beams, as well as a decent smoker’s courtyard. They also have pub trivia here on Wednesdays from 8pm.
Now it’s your turn – how do you rate this bar?
(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)
Loading ...
Nude Bar, Aussie Youth Hotel, 63 Bay Street, Glebe. Phone 9692 0414 or see the Nude bar website.
Related posts:
Great bar..Thank you for sharing. Very interesting.