The Club
August 23, 2013
The Club
Most clubs are now gambling dens. Forget Raffles of Singapore or the Kurhaus of the Dutch Scheveningen, they played Baccarat and Écarté then.
Mischa Elman en Wladimir Horowitz, Richard Tauber, Lucienne Boyer, Greta Keller, Marie Dubas, Maurice Chevalier, Herbertvon Karajan, La Argentina, Duke Ellington, Ray Ventura,
Bela Bartok,Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, George Brassens, Maria Callas, Marlène Dietrich with last but not least the Rolling Stones, are some that performed in The Kurhaus till about 1965.
Clubs are all populated by spinning wheels and flashing lights now and we play the poker-machine. Participants sit grim faced behind those flashing electronic machines. They feed money in them as if there is no tomorrow. For many there is no tomorrow. The tomorrow has been fed into the machines. The plastic shopping bag with food is all that some of them will (hopefully) come home with.
Lately clubs are advertising that they, more than anyone else, are encouraging ‘problem gamblers’ to seek counseling. What the clubs are less enthusiastic about is minimizing the number of poker machines and/or limit players money withdrawals from their ATM’s…Poker machines are worth their weight in gold and pubs and clubs know it.
Anyway, it was on a stormy day. The temperature was 8c and the day loomed long and overcast. We decided to visit a local ‘workers’ club.
The origins of Australian Workers Clubs seem to have got lost in the bowels of history. I can’t find much in that area on the internet. It is interesting that in one of the largest, The Revesby Workers Club they have a large insignia at the front of it depicting a crossed plumber’s wrench and hammer. This seems to hint at a communist influence in earlier days. One can just imagine the board of directors compromising after a heated debate to allow a hammer and sickle design. They replaced the sickle with a very large plumber’s wrench, Ha, ha.
The general advertised aim of clubs is to provide good amenities for families to meet and spend enjoyable social times together. The clubs are non-profit where all income (from gambling) is ploughed back in many areas for the welfare of communities. Sports, leisure, care for the aged are just a few social items that most clubs are involved with.
We arrive and after entering were met by a very nice warm blast of air conditioning. At the desk we complied with a very odd and much questioned ritual of filling in a form requesting our full name, address and driver’s license. We are not a member of the club but even so are always very welcome as long as we comply with this ritual. Whenever we ask; why this strange procedure?
Answers vary depending on the level of club expertise, ranging from ‘getting a win on the pokies and not paying taxation’ or; most common, ‘well, that is the law!’ Some vaguely mention liquor laws and the distance of the venue and the non-members home. Others mention that the law allowing people to drink a beer on Sunday (after church) was only passed (1962) if clubs would comply with this compulsory form filling by non-members. This, as so many other typical Anglo oddities remains a mysterious puzzle for us pragmatic Europhiles.
The Workers clubs in Australia are very popular with well designed pleasant architecture combining nice affordable food with range of beverages of coffees, wines and everything in between. The services are excellent and the gambling part well away from the family or diners. There are open fires, comfortable seating with lounges and soft furnishings. I could easily spend my days there, reading up, sipping a short black and observe its clientele, including the non-members. When we were there many just enjoyed the warmth away from the hostile bitter cold blasts swirling the tree branches around outside.
I had a lovely rump steak (rare) with a vegetable mix of cream sautéed potatoes, beet root, baked pumpkin with fresh coriander. With this steak& chips came a real silver boat of pepper sauce, my favourite! My lovely H decided on a Beef burger which was so huge, she took half of it home and even then it needed several tissues to wrap it up. Milo looked hopefully up to H when the other half was eaten in the evening. No luck though. He had just been given his chicken neck. This is Milo’s favourite as well.
So, in summing up; clubs do provide enjoyable venues and do much good in the communities, but… all on the back of those gaming machines which causes immense miseries for many.
Would a higher taxation on all income be a better option, still have clubs but without all those poker machines?
It is all so difficult.
Tags: Bela Bartok, Communism, Duke Ellington, Dutch, Kurhaus, Marlene Dietrich, Raffles, revesby, Russia, Singapore, The Rolling Stones< the Club
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I had to be away for a couple of days recently and where I stayed is a cheap dive of a place that needs a good scrub at its edges, but what ho! I had to secure a place overnight to attend an appointment.
The proprietor has matters set up so it is impossible to do anything but enter one of these sad gaming rooms to access the key for the room and reception is barred. I referred to the environment as sad as I have never been in one other than by being tricked or my back up against a wall of survival, so that I was sad feeling I had to eat humble pie so to speak and walk through one to get the key to my room (that can’t be legal or ought not to be)… and because I see it through the eyes of someone who believes they know better than to believe anything about these places has any saving grace or ultimate benefit for our society as long as they exist, and to think about better than the blurb about Community Benefits has us believe, and the people in them are generally sad. The latter goes with the patch… and as well talk is about social media reducing people to alienation (phooey) and isolation (yeaaahhh?). Talking to someone coming off one of those machines is like, again, talking to a child freshly made to leave off an engrossing television programme, with nothing to immediately relate because of the overwhelming swelter of colour and flickering movement, some small and larger disappointment at loss.
Clubs, mostly a euphemism on this scale leastwise for places that have engaged my attention to read about them … including I edited substantial material about them and their machines for community writers and care workers. Holy hell on earth, listening willingly to the stories of their victims, side-stepping being entrapped by some.
Walking through this cheapskate environment because I can afford no other represents to my way of thinking the lowest anyone has to go to access a key to a hotel room so I can access a rural service having no choice but to stay overnight to take a bus back to my home … it makes me want to vomit seeing the posture on the people in front of the machines, seeing how nervous some are every time the door opens and look to see who might be coming in, the poor people. Poor in every way. Trying to win their way out. The sound of the machines and the curtains tightly covering the windows…to look is to see and have no doubts that this is not a difficult question. Seeing these people having their money taken off them at these machines is vomitous. Absolutely and utterly immoral.
If this is the only way we can organise ourselves in our society and potentially congratulate ourselves we thought of a solution, what kind of a stinking (literally, they smell) world do we live in. The truth of it is that it doesn’t affect the people it doesn’t affect because it is kept out of sight from the innocents by the curtains on the windows and the experience of people in them as equally as their experience is isolated to their focus on the spinning symbols and hypnotic jangling of the music of the machine.
Are there any innocents left? Do we pretend to be nice to our family members and friends affected by this and suffer being bored by stories of gains made to be nice?
And avoid the back bite. By the same token do we say we’re not sure when we really are? Nicely compiled essay, Gerard.
I am attempting to avoid pubs until the election is over.
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I don’t have much time for these palaces of prostitution nowadays. They’re good at spinning one thing where the reality is something quite different. I mostly see misery coming out of these places.
The sport thing where they pour money back into sport is just a crock. I’ve been involve in community sport administration now for a number of years and there is no evidence of them pouring much back at all apart from their name. The may sponsor an event by putting in say a few hundred dollars but the kudos they receive is much larger. Youngest daughter was a promising swimmer who could have some for the country, who learnt to swim at the local club, an excellent swimming school and recognised as such. However when it came to competitive swimming the support was at best scant. She’d often compete at meets where she’d be the only competitor or be of a team of three or four. We tried to move her but other things intervened.
The other thing was the cheap meals, ours served qweilo chinese, which there is little point in our area given we have our own chinatown. The other thing they do is buy out the bowls clubs run them for a few years then shut them down for the land.
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Actually I am a member of one (just one) – the Commercial Club. Joined because it was, at the time, the only place open 7 days a week and could come in handy for entertaining visiting profs. Stayed a member because it is too bothersome to go through the paperwork to rejoin if necessary. Only go there about once a year. Their business lunch was delightful but they have cut back days of operation. Their dining room now charges as much or more than a truly excellent restaurant. The whole set up is now nearly 10 times the size it was in the old days. They also bought a golf club.
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Panthers bought a local bowling club “to give their club members competition a few years back. The locals though this was a win win with some renovations to their club, which it was for a period. Anyhow the renovations didn’t take place and some time on they closed the club down. No warning nothing less than a weeks notice, They wanted the land to be developed. Eventually the local council stepped in and bought the land and are in the process of returning it to the community.
I’m still a member like you vivienne for the the once every blue moon I need to go there. It would be for the food, the wall to wall pokies or the scintillating entertainment.
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I have a different view on how much good they do for the community. Only in recent years has our biggest club given anything significant. Always claimed to but their annual reports proved otherwise. Gave a pittance. The money went to improving the club – it just gets bigger and bigger.
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the office bearers are usually unqualified boof-heads, who get payed in excess of 100 thousand per year, and skite about the club’s profits (millions) then think they’ve helped local sport by contributing 500 bucks to soccer, 200 to netball, etc…close to five cents a head!
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Clubs are funny things, aren’t they/ My dad has been having some cancer treatment at Nepean Hospital, so we visit, and take him out somewhere local. last week we ventured further afield, and went to Penrith leagues. The usual sort of club, all sparkling like a cheap whore, but one with a kind heart. Lovely people. Beautiful fresh seafood in the all you can eat. A couple of yagoonas with Dad, and we were all happy!
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Why the forward slash, instead of a question mark?
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They are both on the same key-board button. 😉
You are right, clubs provide some very good things but the gambling part is dodgy. Still, a cheap whore ( with a kind heart) is better than an expensive honeymoon in some cases. How is your dad?
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I agree, gambling pays for most of that, kind heart, or not. Dad is having some follow up chemotherapy for bowel cancer, which, with the previous surgery, is expected to be curative. Fabulous set-up at Nepean, accommodation cottages for cancer patients, outpatient treatment during the day, all very accommodating in terms of appointment times, etc. Dad and step-mum travel from the central tablelands, and stay during the week. Unfortunately (for me!) my colostomy expertise has been exploited a few times!!!
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