RIP Ding Dong Dang, a Sydney institution from happier times

Karaoke has never been so transcendentally awesome as within the four seedy walls of the Ding Dong Dang, the infamous Surry Hills bar which, like a doomed romance in an easy listening ballad, has finally come to a heartbreaking end.

• What you get as a Daily Telegraph subscriber
• Sign up to Our Newsletter
• Download our app and stay up to date

There are certain rules one should live by and, of these, none is more important than: “No champagne or fireworks.”

These immortal words were contained in a wall-mounted warning sign at the Ding Dang Dong, the infamous Surry Hills karaoke bar which, like a doomed romance in an easy listening ballad, has finally come to a heartbreaking end.

Known variously as the Dang, the Donger and the Dingely Dangely Dongely, the Ding Dang Dong was a genuine Sydney institution, its demise a sad reminder of a happier time when the term “social distancing” did not exist and when Sydney’s night life was every bit as loose, drunken and raffish as the city itself used to be.

Sydney karaoke venue Ding Dong Dang succumbed to the economic impacts brought on by COVID-19. Picture: Reddit,

I can’t remember the first time I went to the Donger, nor the last, nor many of the times in between. To enter the Dang was to lose touch with time itself. Its small premises, tucked in a dingey side street off Elizabeth St near the old Dental Hospital, had the vibe of a hastily renovated brothel, as if all the johns and hookers had been given an hour to clear out and were replaced with cheap sofas, TV screens and microphone stands.

The aesthetic inside its dozen-odd, maze-like, private rooms could be described as panel van chic, the walls covered with flock-art pictures of the solar system, zodiac signs, herds of horses, all done in garish glow-in-the-dark paint.

The words on that aforementioned warning sign encapsulated the ethos within the secret world of the Dang. I don’t know if someone had injured themselves and others by simultaneously lighting a Catherine wheel, a strip of penny bungers and popping six bottles of Bollinger inside one of the Dang’s private karaoke rooms but it felt like something that might have happened there, or was likely to happen one day.

At a guess I would say my first visit to the Dong was in around 2000-2001. At that stage, the venue was not even licensed and sold only unusual Asian soft drinks like lychee flavoured iced tea and energy drinks with names like Krating-Daeng and fizzy drinks made out of birds nests that guaranteed virility.

To enter the Ding Dong Dang was to lose touch with time itself.

Located as it was in that little triangle of joy comprising The Evening Star Hotel and the Aurora, our usual approach after a significant run-up at either or both those establishments was to hit the Dang around midnight with bottles of takeaway Bacardi Breezers hidden in our pants, and to settle in for a night of song.

The licensing arrangements of the Dong evolved organically, where the genial lady owner seemed to figure that if so many people were going to smuggle alcohol into her karaoke bar, she might as well start selling it herself.

For a place that was literally awash with booze — and I do mean literally as if you stayed immobile you could end up stuck to one of the vinyl sofas — I never saw any acts of violence or unpleasantness in my many visits.

There was one night, sadly, when the venue couldn’t open as it had been covered with crime-scene tape on account of a murder but, setting that one nasty moment aside, the Dong was a genuinely happy place.

Police outside the Ding Dong Dang in 202 after a man was gunned down during a street brawl between up to youths outside the bar.

This is chiefly because karaoke itself is the great leveller. There is only one rule — full action, as an Indonesian friend of mine taught me on debut at a venue in Jakarta. You can’t sit down. You can’t just stand there. You’ve got to throw yourself into the song. It doesn’t matter if you can sing or not, just have a proper crack at it.

In a musical sense, this means if you’re doing Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush, you do the Kate Bush interpretive dance. If you’re doing Born To Run, you wave your arms like the crowd at Yankee Stadium when the Boss starts singing about how the highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. And at that heartbreaking point in Air Supply’s All Out of Love when Graham and Russell ask “Ooooh, what are you thinking of?”, you punch the air with a clenched fist and drop to one knee, as if an arrow has just pierced your own heart.

David Penberthy’s framed photos was mounted on the wall of the Ding Dong Dang next to the “No champagne or fireworks” sign.

Misty, water-coloured memories. And it begs the questions: can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?

Karaoke might be fun but it has never been so transcendentally awesome as within the four seedy walls of the Dang. It was such a welcoming place that those of us who made a habit of going there ended up with our framed photos mounted on the wall at the entrance, just next to the “No champagne or fireworks” sign.

There was a photo of me there for years posing happily with the lady owner, like one of those shots you see of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra posing over a slice of pizza on the wall of some Italian restaurant in Queens. It wasn’t a celebrity wall, as I am certainly no celebrity. It was just the owner’s little reward for those of us who had a bad case of easy listening addiction, which was occasionally interrupted to put out a newspaper.

We are the poorer for its passing. Dong, but not forgotten.

David Penberthy is a former editor of The Daily Telegraph and a favourite son of the Ding Dong Dang