Balcony 1: A group of   young boys who look about 14, gather on the upstairs balconies  and suck with manful seriousness on grown-up cancer sticks.

Balcony 2: On the other balcony where other smokers packed chest-to-chest,  and puff thunder-clouds of smoke like a volcano; and drunk women scream in decipherable high-pitched gabble. Downstairs on the street groups of ten men outside for a smoke, take turns to drunkenly shout: the conversation goes like this – at about 80 decibels   Yock Yock gabble gabble Fuck gabble gabble fucking yock yock fuck yair, wot! Fuck, fuck, yair!  Fucking yair, wot, eh!  Yock Yock Yock.

Infants out for good time: Young girls, about 15, in short dresses and high heels, crowd in. Two portly bouncers in black, man the doors. These are the ones to  are supposed control the crowd. While I watch, young girls enter. No request for ID are made. Their dresses are so small there’s nowhere to hide the ID, any how.

The rock band starts up: This time the Townhall Hotel has the doors closed at 10 30 p.m . A good sign. But why has it got a rock band at all?  Is it a dance hall? Is it a club?

Yobsville:  Experience tells what happens next. The ‘ back to the car’ mobs will shout for the next hour;  throw glasses and bottles onto the local gardens, vomit next to lampposts, and pee on walls. Some times (yuk !) they even poo in dark places.
Is this the ‘hassle-free” nights NSW Governebt policy promised? Hard to say as the locals are frightened and stay inside; the risk of hassles feel way too high. In my lane the light sparkles not on the stars, but on the  starry starry night of broken glass, and the sheen of pee puddles. Its a local pollution  -  like BP in the Gulf of Mexico.  Licencee Phillipe de Maurier has drilled for money and pushed the side effects onto his neighbours.
12:35 on Sunday am. Band is till pounding it out;   30 people smoking on the foot path. Others stand in the middle of the street to hail taxis. A security siren wails. They are all drunk so they think this is fun. The neighbours don’t think its fun. A Police siren joins in.
12:50 am: Band has stopped. Roar of mobs in the street.

Vomit index: A pool of vomit on the bus stop outside the hotel on Darling Street Saturday morning after Friday’s Townie drunkathon.
As usual the Saturday drunks noise starts at around 9 pm; and does not stop until about 2 am.

Get cheap alcohol here: “$9 Tooheys New Jugs during live Super 14′s, Australian International or Tri Nation games”.

12:04: The band pounds on.  A drunk come out of the bottle shop with a carton of beer at mid night.

11 pm: More of the same at the Balmain Town Hall Hotel.
Band pounds on; drunks in the streets, drunks shout on the verandah, drunks shout in the alley in the alley way.  ‘Yuh fucking moll’,  the words show what sort of person gets drunk here.

At 10 45 pm I was drawn outside by the riot-like sounds, shouting, swearing; and found a crowd of 30 shouting men blocking the foot path, two bouncers, the  usual scared-looking foreign students, (huddled on the bus stop), and the usual gang of smokers gathered in a coven out side the gambling room, in the green glare of the spotlights puffing smoke in the air like B doubles going up a hill. Welcome to the night garden of the Balmain Town Hall Hotel.

So whats new: The hotel now offers $10 steaks to compete with Dicks Hotel but runs short on the homey atmosphere. Tonight it looks and feels like a Darwin truckies pit stop.

Delicious tinkle of cash into the till: Its loud bumpa bumpa rock music and drunks, drunks drunk. And one imagine the delicious tinkle of cash into the till  Late-night fights remain a recurrent and regular affair.

With an hour to go, The Balmain TownHall Hotel cranks up the pace.

Are they shouting in the street or on on the two upstairs verandah?

Its just the usual shouting by persons who have lost control out side  The Balmain TownHall Hotel.

How the alcohol sellers see the issue: A quote from the AHA taken today says problem is drunks.  (This is not a joke, but AHA policy)
-  According to Hotels lobby group, the AHA

RESPONSIBLE SERVICE OF ALCOHOL – AHA STATEMENT November 2009

“The last thing hotels want is to provide the small minority of patrons who are responsible for anti-social behaviour in licensed premises to think they have a licence to cause trouble.
“Irresponsible consumption of alcohol – including binge drinking – is a complex problem. “It will not be solved unless all stakeholders work together…..The AHA will continue to encourage hotel patrons to monitor their behaviour at all times…when they are consuming alcohol because drunks in pubs are bad for business.”

What about the peace of the neighbourhood. It gets no mention in this AHA policy.

So I went out with my camera to do a little documentation.

I found the Balmain Townhall Hotel staff with their camera, shooting pictures of me!

This is excellent.  We can call it a form of flash war; a community engagement;(let’s hope, not the type of  community engagement the State of Israel has with the Palestinians).

What followed, by 10:57, was something close to silence. Great. And it began to rain. More good news; as rain seems to sober things up. This should also drive the party off the verandahs.

I’d like to see those verandahs closed down for good.

“Make us your local” is the Balmain Townhall Hotel promotion.  Most  locals who live nearby stay away, and hide in their houses.

The five oclock Monday drunken shouting  event is typical of the lowered tone in the area outside the Balmain Town Hall Hotel .

A drunk man and a drunk woman shriek, shout and swear at each other as they exit the hotel and go homewards. The shouting starts at the hotel and proceeds up the street, on both sides.

My place is a good 250 meters away but – me, and the other people who live here – get the full surround sound effect of drunken alcoholics, who have lost all sense of concern for other people.

- Have they been drinking and gambling all day?  The voices sound familiar … are these regular gambling drinkers of the Balmain Town  Hall hotel?

- If so in the interests of the hotel-owners obligations for responsible service of alcohol, may they might ban these two from the hotel.

And here you find a very pretty publicity picture of the Premier.

Here’s what she says: “Unfortunately when large groups of people come together, and especially when there is alcohol involved, violence and other sorts of undesirable behaviour can be the result”.
(In my case I do not even need to “have a night out”  to experience “undesirable behaviour: induced by alcohol. I can hear it all from my bedroom window, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It comes to me).

Does she mean me? “Innocent bystanders and our police officers are often placed at risk by these behaviours”.

I think I will write to the Premier as ask her to add Balmain to the list: Thats the list of places in the Premier’s policy of  Hassle Free Nights, part of  the “NSW Government’s Action Plan to further reduce alcohol-related crime in some of the most popular entertainment districts of NSW, including sections of the Sydney CBD, Manly, Newcastle–Hamilton, Wollongong and Parramatta”.

And it works: Progress has been made in reducing violent crime, with non-domestic violence assaults dropping by 4.5 per cent across the State and by 11.6 per cent in the Sydney Local Government Area.

There is more to do, says Keneally: “Hassle Free Nights will build on this progress by delivering local solutions to local problems concerning alcohol-fuelled violence. A key priority is getting people home safely after a night out.  The Government will work together with our partners, including local councils, licensed venues, transport providers and the community, to make sure the people of NSW and visitors to our great State can enjoy a safe, enjoyable, hassle free night”.    Nice. I like it.

Maybe I will vote Labor if she can arrange for me to get a good night’s sleep.

Tonight it has two floors going with full surround sound, and 19 spot lights, and two bouncers.  A band pounds out the sound.

Upstairs the two verandahs packed with screaming roaring drunks. The smaller verandah has 14 drunk young men. They look barely of drinking age. They drink, and push each other,  raring for a fight.  They shout and every third word has four letters and ends in k.

The other verandah is full and holds about 100 smokers, mostly men.

Downstairs the dance floor is full, and people constantly come in and go out the three doors to these two venues at the rate of about 50 every minutes. About 20 people smoke and shout on the footpath. Drunks wander freely on the road.  Taxis cruise like dingos around a waterhole.

The doors and windows are open in contravention of the Development Approval clause sent by the local Council.

Drunks park out side my place, and yell and swear in the alley way.

What a loss of public amenity and what a cost to the taxpayer – all so the hotel can sell alcohol?

- At midnight 40 drunk people on the foot path outside the hotel.

- Across the road drunk young women sit on the foot path. Drunks meander up and down, jaywalk  jeer, dance stupid dances and , shout at each other and do all the things drunks do.

The hotel gets more garish by the week as it adds more signs, spotlights, alcohol  advertising and  happy hour offers.