The Mouth: New York’s JG Melon’s is the perfect neighbourhood bar. Why can’t Sydney have something like this?

There are plenty of problems with Sydney’s nightlife, but there is one thing missing that other countries do well.

Cheers Bar, down the seedy end of George Street, is one of those places you wind up only when all other options are exhausted.

Which is funny because it is named after the sort of bar everyone wants, or once upon a time wanted, to go to … the cozy neighbourhood bar of the 1980s sitcom with regulars Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, and George Wendt (“Norm!”).

As “neighbourhood” bars go, the two could not be further apart.

And in fact the difference between the two highlights one of the great problems of Sydney (aside from, well, everything else).

Simply put, we don’t do “neighbourhood bars” particularly well.

This was slammed home to me by an email from a friend who had recently visited New York City, and popped in to a great local boozer on a Monday night.

Supplied images of JG Melons Bar in New York which is a popular venue on a Monday night. .

“The place looked like it hadn’t change for years,” said The Mouth of this popular NY bar.

The place, he said, was called JG Melon’s, though to be frank it could be an one of a million places across the 50 states.

To hear my friend tell the tale (and see his pictures) it was absolutely heaving, even on a day when people theoretically had to get up the next day.

The place looked like it hadn’t changed for years if not decades: the ceiling was pressed tin, the bar cedar, the staff friendly, the food and booze cheap and good.

Over the course of the evening he downed a number of beers and a bacon cheeseburger and spent less than $100.

He also got right into the banter with other patrons and the bartender.

A burger, and a martini, at JG Melons.

“Why can’t we have things like this here,” he asked?

Sadly, Sydney – as sparkling a gem as we like to think of our city – seems to mitigate against this.

Even though both cities are brutally expensive, Sydney’s commercial rents are killer.

Our puritanical government taxes alcohol to buggery, and our puritanical neighbours would rather be up doing some wellness activity with the dawn than staying up ‘til it.

Other things also seem to mitigate against this kind of establishment: Why do we all gravitate to our own little high tops rather than sit at the bar? (There are exceptions, i.e., the wonderful Waratah in Darlinghurst).

This may be beyond the writ of one column to turn this around, but wouldn’t Sydney be nicer if we could have such nice things?

— The Mouth is an undercover critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.