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Unearthing Sydney's underground bar scene

The City of Sydney council will investigate mapping the central business district's network of underground retail arcades in search of hidden spots suitable for small bars.

"Unlike most cities, we have an absolute labyrinth of underground shopping arcades but they basically pull the shutters down after the 5pm commuter exit. There's an opportunity to activate those places after dark," said Jeff Lewis, a spokesman for the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore.

Mr Lewis pointed to the arcade that joined Town Hall station to Pitt Street Mall, the link from the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth streets to Museum station and Park Street, and a stretch from York Street to Wynyard to Hunter Connection to Pitt Street. "Who knows what's down there. I know Wynyard had a number of levels they used for storage and there's a whole World War II storage area under [St James]," he said.

Andrew Dodds, a bar reviewer from the website Where is the Pub?, remembers Wynyard's Hunter Arcade packed full of drinking spots in the '90s. "That building had about eight or nine if you counted them. There was the 747 bar where the windows and seats were styled like you were inside an aeroplane. The Porthole was fairly small but the Jungle Bar was a reasonable size," he said.

Mr Dodds said he was more pub patron than bar fly but welcomed the liquor licensing reforms proposed this week. "If the pubs had listened more to what the people wanted rather than just the pokie punters, then they wouldn't find themselves in this situation," he said.

The former Hunter Arcade bars, owned by the nearby Menzies Hotel, were closed in the early '90s after the Menzies' owners decided to focus on the hotel. "I do remember the Jungle Bar was a very hot R'n'R bar during the Vietnam years," said one long-standing Menzies worker, who asked not to be named.

A City of Sydney councillor, John McInerney, said he would rather have a tipple in the sunshine than underground but said "there are a few little nooks and crannies in that area that are left over from warehouses and funny little subdivisions running down to Darling Harbour".

Cr McInerney also pointed to the underground public toilets at Hyde Park, Wynyard and Macquarie Place that were filled in when the former lord mayor, Frank Sartor, was in office. "Something I would like to do is unfill them and put them back as some other use. The designs were very nice," Cr McInerney said.

He also floated the idea of bars in disused train tunnels at St James station. But a spokesman from the Australian Rail Historical Society, Graham Thurling, said public access to the tunnels was banned after September 11, 2001. "Those tunnels are heritage protected and they won't even let you do tours since the terrorist thing came up," Mr Thurling said.

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