Social Club Artefact Wednesday - a post-social club reminiscence

Oh lord, another in a series of sooky 'wasn't the past better than what exists now' posts. Tomorrow marks four years since we left what was Bob Jane Stadium, before it became Lakeside Stadium again. It also marks four years of having no social club (no, Beachcomber doesn't count), which our helpful timer has been illustrating for some time now, much to the dual amusement and annoyance of everyone at the club, including myself.

Ah, it was a poker night, not a casino night.
 Image courtesy of George Kouroumalis.

But even though that's the 'official' duration of having no social club, the fact is that the social club was used after that for at least one club function. Later that year, probably around August or September (or was it even the next year? surely not) there was some sort of casino night hosted by the club. I didn't attend that night (and by all reports it was a fun night out), but I did help set up the tables and such the night before.

Although works had started earlier that year on bulldozing the terraces, work on the social club hadn't really got far. The casino night therefor was meant to be the pre-redeveloped social club's final official usage. I think I got roped into helping out by virtue of the fact that I was at Port Melbourne watching a game, and one of my companions got a phonecall from one of the movers and shakers, and all of a sudden we were off to Lakeside.

Anyway, the job done we chucked the TV above the bar on to watch the footy, some pedestrian affair that I think Hawthorn was winning in a canter, so I said to one of the blokes 'change it to SBS'. Now Friday nights of course at the time being SBS' soft-porn night, and after giving me a quizzical look he changed the channel, and there was Diary of a Nymphomaniac, with its inventive use of a glass coke bottle on a lithe female body.

See, the last the four years without a social club haven't been completely terrible! As for the timer, if we never end up getting a social club, let it stay there like the Mark of Cain.