Melbourne's Pony To Close In December
News posted Friday, October 5 2012 at 03:00 PM.
Related: Pony.
Melbourne live music institution Pony – home of the famed 2am set – will close on December 2 after more than 12 years of late night debauchery.
According to The Age’s "Sticky Carpet" column, rising rents are to blame for the closure. Jon Perring, one of Pony’s three owners, has explained to The Age that while he is sad to see it go the decision “is essentially a business decision based on not being able to agree on a rental that would work for us to operate long term into the future.’’ Perring also owns the Tote, Bar Open and Yah Yah’s with business partners Andrew Portokallis and Sam Crupi.
Camillo Ippoliti, who owns Revolver in Prahran, Cookie and the Toff in the city with his son Daniel, has negotiated a new lease for Pony says that ‘’it is likely that after renovations live music will continue’’. Ippoliti also leases the Bridie O’Reilly’s next door to Pony, but says that the two venues will continue to “operate as separate but complementary businesses”.
Pony was one of the key points on Melbourne’s “Bermuda Triangle” of late night live venues in a three-pronged party vortex that extended from Cherry on Corporation Lane to Ding Dong on Market Lane.
Writing about the Melbourne rock scene of the early-2000s in a recent piece for M+N, editor Darren Levin recently described Pony as “the only place in Melbourne where you could (and still can) listen to ‘Search & Destroy’ at 6am while downing a Carlton Draught, until those musty red awnings would fling up and you’d be left scurrying out into the real world among the joggers and the soccer mums".
The pub was immortalised in Treetops' 2005 single 'Pony in the Morning': "The lights go on/ The dead of dawn/ It's Pony in the morning/ The meat market is open."
(via FasterLouder)
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so good.
Does that mean the toilets are going to be fixed?
hey it's a pony on the wall behind the stage. i always thought it was a dinosaur. a pony makes much more sense
I seem to remember Airborne having a song called Holy Trinity or some shit about the three-pronged party vortex.
Bro hoof
hopefully up to the point of functionality, but not to the point where they remove the considerately-placed stainless steel shelves
I brought it up on another pony thread, but is anyone able to confirm or deny whether Public Bar will, as I have heard, be operating under a late night/early morning weekend licence, allowing for Pony-transference?
*answered
I miss Little Reata's
Amazing that place was ever a restaurant.
ah no this sounds like bad news. excellent place sporting a decent rocknroll smell. I played one of those late night sets a few months ago, they gave me a lot to drink and then they made me play the card game UNO not knowing I'm actually pretty good at it
I'll miss late night Pony visits as a Sydney-sider. Got to play there, got drunk as fuck there and have great memories of visting at the point when smoking in pubs was band in Sydney but not yet Melbourne, very stinky!
I saw a girl get fingered in the crowd at pony. True story.
Only too believable.
florence welch oughtt've known it wasn't her scene
What about the Digger & The Pussycats ''Pick Up At Pony''?
Pretty ambivalent about this. Pony had some really great staff on board at one point who were supportive of the shows I booked there - but over time this became the exception rather than the rule. By 2008 I gave up on it altogether as an option for bookings purely because of the prospect of interacting with management on the night of the show. The space itself remains pretty solid for live performance - I always thought it worked well for shows of a more physical disposition.
yoghurt said 21 hours ago:
I saw a girl get fingered in the crowd at pony. True story.
I'm sure most of the boys and girls on this site broke into a cold sweat thinking it was them when they read this. Haven't been in years, but kids these days suck so I'm sure it had its day.
Picked out in a line up?
Carbie video embed added
Awesome. Thanks!
And don't forget 'Northcote (So Hungover)' by The Bedroom Philosopher:
''Riding around on the 86, so hungover
Gonna go down to Pony
Pretend I'm in Kings of Leon.''
I heard digger and the pussycats invented the 2am sot by just getting up and drunkenly playing covers after the main band had finished. Classic digger.
Don't close it.
Where else can you listen to good music whilst watching beer-goggled indie-bogans picking up utterly wasted girls at 6am? There seems to be an unspoken 'no good-looking people allowed policy' after 3am...and that's kinda cool
We can't all date fashion models blacklight ;)
that's a bit harsh raph, they're called lowies.
humanityisthedevil if you have something less than positive to say about pony's current booker, Andy 'fantapants' Moore, expect a virtual punch in the face.
Pony,
you think you're cool as fuck,
Pony,
you're just drunk cunts,
Pony,
just looking for a fuck,
Pony,
but you're way too drunk,
2am,
think i've found the right place,
everyone's off their face,
at pony,
the band was blaring,
and she was staring,
my mind was racing,
and my heart started pumping,
Pony,
you think you're cool as fuck,
Pony,
you're just drunk cunts,
Pony,
just looking for a fuck,
Pony,
but you're way too drunk,
6am,
drank too much beer,
she had lots of wine,
and we're having a good time,
now she's drunk,
and she wanted more,
but i couldn't move,
i was stuck to the floor
Pony,
you think you're cool as fuck,
Pony,
you're just drunk cunts,
Pony,
just looking for a fuck,
Pony,
but you're way too drunk,
Andy is great
(Obviously) Last show is on Saturday December 1. I'm sure he's working overtime to make it a big one
end of an era.
I liked it better when it was Little Reatta's
Nope, not referring to the booker.
He wasn't even the booker during that time.
booker booker. booker t
I was gonna say something but Humanityisthedevil pretty much summed up all my feelings
''Pretty ambivalent about this. Pony had some really great staff on board at one point who were supportive of the shows I booked there - but over time this became the exception rather than the rule. By 2008 I gave up on it altogether as an option for bookings purely because of the prospect of interacting with management on the night of the show. The space itself remains pretty solid for live performance - I always thought it worked well for shows of a more physical disposition. ''
Always had great and helpful bookers but dealings with security and trying to get paid just got worse and worse as time went on.
It's a filthy, horrible, depraved place of beauty and I will miss it. Last show should be awesome.
2pm to 7am. it hurts already
Some naughty person vandalised the poster for the UnAustralians gig there