Years ago I used to enjoy eating at the Great Northern hotel on Rathdowne St with friends who used to live nearby in North Fitzroy and North Carlton. I’ve not been there in several years – perhaps before the smoking ban in pubs came into effect – because the large rear beer garden was new to me when I was there last Wednesday night. The food is as I remember it – generous serves of familiar pub food and lots of good beers on tap.
Unfortunately what is also new since I was last there is a commercially packaged trivia competition hosted by a roving speaker with a radio mic and the PA turned up to 10. Compared to the genial, gently spoken man who did the pub trivia without amplification at the former haunt of the group of friends I was with on this occasion, the London tavern in Richmond, the trivia at the Great Northern was an intrusive and disruptive affront to the conversation at our table.
Before I explain more about the trivia, I should say that there is nothing wrong with the food. I tried one of the specials, a parma with fetta and olives on top, which came with amazing chips and a salad. My friend, who likes his steak well done, felt slightly special needs when his steak burger arrived with its own special flag, but the burger looked impressive.
It quickly became apparent that the trivia was not an ironic hipster oriented review of bogan culture. It was not ironic, but the content was primarily the kind of American oriented gutter pop culture, sport and misogynistic sexual innuendo popular with the subhuman underclass.
The Great Northern is a child friendly, family oriented venue, and I have no issue with this. It’s not a fashionable venue, but a comfortable one, and this is a good thing. The people at the pub on the night we were there were diverse in age and fashion aesthetics, but most seemed to be playing the trivia. My table abstained and watched in increasing disbelief and distaste as the evening proceeded.
The trivia was founded on a morass of mediocre questions about mainstream American films, television and music. What we found most offensive was the stone aged sexual politics. One question required participants to convert a picture of American celebrity Paris Hilton into the sound of the word ‘whore’. Another showed a picture of a fully clothed older woman and asked us to guess whether she was a ‘tranny or granny’.
The worst question showed a photo of a young blond woman wearing shorts and a tshirt, and asked us to guess whether she was a sports start or a porn star. There were of course no equivalent questions about men, or the appearance of men or their integrity as sexual beings. In comparison, the sexual politics of this event made the homophobic principle of Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar sound like a radical lesbian separatist.
The vile underclass aesthetic of the trivia was not what we expected or wanted from a comfortable North Carlton pub. It was offensive, distasteful and a powerful disincentive to returning. By all means visit the Great Northern hotel for a beer and a meal, but don’t do it on a Wednesday evening when the subhuman peformance provided by Funky bunch entertainment is in progress.
Helpfully, their site details the dates and times they appear at the various pubs they service, so you can use that to ensure you avoid them completely. Unless of course you’re a bogan, somehow lost in North Carlton, who can’t find your way home to Frankston or Craigieburn. But then you wouldn’t be reading this review, because it uses too many big words for you.
16 November 2010 at 7:51 am
Thanks for the warning! I was to meet people there next Wed, will change to another night…
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16 November 2010 at 9:33 am
“to many big words”?
lol, you’re a funny lad Brian. You left out the locals of Broadmeadows.
Billy
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16 November 2010 at 11:03 am
Ergh. Our past favourite weekly trivia is over and last week we began shopping for an alternative. We tried a different bar with a pleasant atmosphere and decent cheap food and were subjected to a similarly ghastly set-up full of sexually regressive jokes.
Looks like quality pub trivia is difficult to find!
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16 November 2010 at 3:58 pm
:/
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16 November 2010 at 7:53 pm
Thanks Brian – I hope your post has some impact!
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22 November 2010 at 5:06 pm
I’d love to see you delve into the issue of trivia night etiquette in the future. I’ve been to pubs with those same hosts you’ve mentioned, and other ones with similar jokes, and for me personally I’ve had no issue with the lowbrow humour the hosts usually employ to keep the crowds entertained.
I should first make clear that I believe that, if you’re being made uncomfortable in a social situation, the right thing to do is to speak up even if it seems like a trivial matter. In Carla’s situation, work functions need to keep everyone entertained and happy, and if people are getting upset this sort of thing needs to be addressed rather than tolerated.
However, where should the line should be drawn with regards to pub humour? Can some level of absurd sexism/gross-out humour be appropriate, or is it better to stick with topics that don’t provoke disgust?
I ask this because quite a few of my female friends go to these trivia nights and, rather than seem uncomfortable with things like ‘Pornstar or Sportstar’, they find it amusing and take it as a joke that the host presumably intended it to be. In comparison to other pubs where the hosts simply ask the questions without much banter, we all seem to have a better night when a bit of controversy occurs.
Some comments definitely go over the line, and I’ve seen looks in all my friends faces (male and female) which indicate that. But we generally shrug them off as poor judgement on the hosts’ part and hope that he or she stays on an acceptable level for the rest of the evening.
So yeah, I’d love to get some more insight about this issue from both yourself and Carla, if she plans on writing more detailed descriptions of her experiences. As much as I’d love to dismiss these sort of issues with the line ‘it’s a pub, there’s booze, what do you expect?’. it’s not that simple and I’d like to see it from another perspective if possible…
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22 November 2010 at 5:11 pm
Low humour is not necessarily racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory. The trivia at the Great Northern was overtly sexist and made no vulgar references to men, only to women. If it’s so funny why is it not equally offensive about men and women? In the case of this pre-packaged trivia, I think the host simply reads from the script. Part of what is so offensive is that the whole thing is pre-packaged, and is thus a sexist commercial product, not simply a single sexist moron behind the microphone.
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1 December 2010 at 10:55 pm
I’m a regular at The Great Northern Hotel and I find the trivia night quite entertaining. Sure, some grotesque and maybe sexist jokes may occur but that is what makes it all the more entertaining.. What I do find offensive is being labeled a Bogan by some Uppety Snob who doesn’t realize that everyone else in the pub is enjoying themselves (most of whom come back weekly). If this brand of trivia is not for you then use that stunning intellect to find the door instead of insulting those of us who know how to have a bit of fun:)
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1 December 2010 at 11:04 pm
There’s a difference between humour and blatant, vicious misogyny. The obvious clue is the lack of cruel and negative representations of men. Where’s the equal opportunity in the gender humour?
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2 December 2010 at 3:18 am
As a regular at this night I would like to make a few comments. Some of us enjoy a joke, and a mid-week beer and others, like this guy whom we know only as ‘Brian’, are as lifeless, boring and spineless as his reviews and blog suggest. You know they do put men in their Sport Star or Porn Star questions too, you just happened to see all women that week and assume sexist, misogynistic, ‘commercial’ trivia week after week. I’d like to see your ‘genial, old fellow from the London Tavern’ pull a crowd of 50-80+ young, happy people regularly. Do us locals a favour and stay in Brunswick St? In fact, do Brunswick St a favour and stay at the Provincial? That way, none of us will need to ever deal with you and you will be in your definition of hell with outer-suburban bogans ‘visiting’ on the weekend.
In closing, I’d like to finish with a jibe, just like you do.
You know, blogs are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink.
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22 December 2010 at 5:35 pm
Having not been to the GNH for some years, I was planning to revisit soon, so thanks for the warning, and good on you for condemning this regressive shite. I had expectations that the current management’s emphasis on interesting beers might also imply a pub aiming a little higher than average, but I guess not.
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